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Client Requirement
A mobile platform for businesses to promote their offers and track customer loyalty. Businesses can stay in touch with their customers in a better way with this mobile platform.
Businesses that register to this platform get a unique QR code; customers scan that code so that businesses know how many times the customers come to them. Businesses can send the “offers” to customers and promote their businesses. They can also create punch cards to give appropriate discounts to their customers. Detailed reports for customer behavior are created and customized discounts are given accordingly.
Although customers can check out various offers, they get “offers” only from those businesses whom they are associated with.
Key Highlights:
- Businesses can understand customers better.
- Customers are sent attractive offers to urge them to come back.
- Offers work like free advertisements for businesses.
- Enables customers to stay connected with your business.
- Staying in touch with customers real-time with a mobile platform.
- A rewards system that is customizable to suit individual business requirements.
- Simple program management.
- Easy access from any computer or mobile – web based technology used.
- Low maintenance frequent buyers card.
- Customer rewards system.
- Punch card-free rewards, coupons and discounts.
- Activity tracking tools for customer behavior.
Challenges
The team faced the following challenges:
- The project was built for small scale businesses that have a very choosy set of customers and the application needed to serve this purpose by being intuitive.
- Web usability principles were used to develop the various features of the project.
- Maintaining security while tracking customers was a challenge.
Technology Used
| PHP (Server-side Language) | A suitable managed code development environment for handling the extensive project. |
| Red hat Linux | Sturdy and stable operating system with high level functionalities for online development. |
| MySQL Engine | Versatile, low-maintenance database management system. Cross-platform compatible database component of the LAMP platform. |
| Subversion (SVN) | Ideal application providing stratified storage and back up of code files. |
| Symfony Framework | Symfony is a full-stack framework, a library of cohesive classes written in PHP. |
| xCode and Android | Android and xCode |
Manpower
| Project Leader | 1 |
| Phone Gap Developers | 4 |
| Phone Gap UI Designers | 2 |
| Quality Assurance Testers | 1 |
Planning
A 4 tier development approach was used considering the complexity of the project requirements
- The Database layer: Contains databases like MySQL Server Database, Tables and Triggers etc.
- The Data Access layer: containing the Data Access DLL responsible for accessing data from Database.
- The Business Logic layer : all business logic procedures for modules
- The User Interface Layer: which forms the Graphical User Interface of the website.
Development Highlights
PHP5 and MySQL Server 5 was used for this project considering the social networking nature of the website. An interface translating the object logic to relational logic was used to communicate with the relational databases in an object oriented manner. This enabled effective access to the database.
The intermediary abstraction layer ensured ease of access of data from database. Triggers, stored procedures and custom MySQL functions used for complex calculation of data from multiple tables. Conditional syntax was used to ensure smooth functioning of the website. The UI layer was isolated from business logic and images, apps and data was called from their respective servers. Web usability guidelines were strictly followed and AJAX, CSS3 and HTML5 controls were used to make the site’s navigation more intuitive and user friendly.
The site was completed and fully functional within 5 months.
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