I prefer to deal with larger, multiple-staff companies.
I’ve got a new potential client looking for some custom coding.
They are a large seating company, Australian based but with an international company parent.
They distribute seats mostly through their network of dealers, and wish to make their website help their dealer network sell more seats.
there is 2 parts to the project.
Part 1:
A google map function.
They have heaps of dealers located around Australia.
Each dealer’s name and contact details will be in the database.
They want to give people a list of locations on a page to choose from (drop down menu), and when the user chooses a location, a google map shows at the city or region level how many dealers are in that location.
An example would be: I choose the state of Queensland, and I am shown a map with little flags at Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Brisbane and Gold Coast, each with the number of dealers floating above the flag.
If I click on a specific location flag (eg, Gold Coast), then in a space next to the google map, I am shown the business names and contact details for each dealer in that location.
(this functionality below will be used again in Part 2 of the project – would be good to have it as a reuseable module)
Put a “Save PDF” link near the top of the list of dealer contacts, and when the user clicks the “Save PDF” link, then those dealer contact details are exported into a pdf, and a dialog box appears asking the user where to save it on their computer.
Put a “Print” link near the top of the list of dealer contacts, and when the user clicks “Print”, then those dealer contact details are exported to the printer – it needs to look exactly the same as the PDF – maybe export to pdf first, then print the pdf immediately?
These PDFs and printouts need to be on A4, with company letterhead and footer for branding.
Part 2-a:
A public user can arrive on one of the client’s sites and see 3 input boxes. These boxes ask for info about the truck or car that the user wants a seat for.
Make: (choices: Toyota, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Ford, etc)
Model: (choices: depends on what Make the user picks. If they choose Toyota, for example, then they will see all the vehicle models made by Toyota that our client makes seats for)
Year: (choices: 1930 – 2009)
When the user clicks submit, they are shown 3 seats that our client can provide to match the user’s vehicle.
The 3 seats will be: a cheap seat, mid range seat, high price seat.
For each of the 3 types of seats, there will be a photo of the seat, price, description.
In an Admin section, have input boxes where Admin can set the prices to define what the cheap range, is, mid range and high price range. Eg 0 – 2000 = cheap, 2001 – 5000 = midrange, >5001 = high price.
Also in the database, visible only to admin, is the profit per seat.
Note: it is possible that there will be more than 3 seats that the client COULD provide to match the user’s vehicle, but they want to limit the number of options for the user to 3. So we need a function to display only the seats with the highest profit out of all possible matches.
So display the highest profit cheap seat, highest profit mid-range seat, highest profit ‘high price’ seat.
Be able to Save those results to PDF, or print.
Put a “Save PDF” link near the top of the list of seats, and when the user clicks the “Save PDF” link, then those details are exported into a pdf, and a dialog box appears asking the user where to save it on their computer.
Put a “Print” link near the top of the list of seats, and when the user clicks “Print”, then those details are exported to the printer – it needs to look exactly the same as the PDF – maybe export to pdf first, then print the pdf immediately?
These PDFs and printouts need to be on A4, with company letterhead and footer for branding.
User sees a link for “Find a Dealer”.
When clicked, this shows the Google map function described in Part 1.
It needs to only show dealers that sell the seats shown in the list. (Note: not sure if all dealers sell all seats. Can find out later).
Part 2-b:
Same as Part 2-a, except it will be a company dealer using the functionality, and researching which seats to sell to their clients on behalf of our company.
The difference is that the dealer branding will be on the PDF and printouts, instead of the company’s.
The dealer will need to log in.
The dealer contact details and logo image files will need to be held in the database ready to go into the PDFs.
The dealers have their own prices for those seats (company price + dealer profit).
The dealer prices will need to be displayed for each seat, not the company prices.
This data will be updated by Admin once ever 6 months or so.
We may need an Admin section to do the updates, but I think there is a staff member at the company with enough skill to do it direct in the SQL database.
BRANDING on the pdfs and printouts.
The PDF and printouts need to have different branding, depending on whether a dealer is using the site, or a public user.
If it is a public user, they see the company branding.
If it is a dealer, they see the dealer branding (which they will then offer to their clients as a price quote, so it needs to look like it came from the dealer)
TIME FRAME
they are looking to start some time in the next month, and wish to have it all complete in time for a re-Launch of their new website in January.