New Django Site: Samz Market and Gourmet Foods

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New Django Site: Samz Market and Gourmet Foods

By Paul Kenjora | September 24, 2008

For the past 2 years I’ve been looking for a place like Samz Market and Gourmet Foods to open up within 10 miles of my house. I have a 4 mile commercial dead zone, with only a Quick Trip gas station near. At the edge of this dead zone are 2 shopping malls and 2 shopping centers. All containing generic fast food and chain restaurants. I’m not complaining, its nice to go out for a burger or dine at a high end trendy restaurant but sometimes I just want something Mom would make. A nice fresh made sandwich without a any grease in sight…

I knew Samz Market and Gourmet Foods was that place as soon as I walked in. What I didn’t foresee is that I’d be doing the restaurant’s website. Sam (the owner) and I started talking a bit, it was the first week the store was open. I mentioned what I do, create websites for small businesses, and she suggested I create a proposal for her new place.

Within a few days I outlined a basic plan to get Samz Market and Gourmet Foods online and visible to the world. Nothing too dramatic, just three pages for the menu, contact, and directions. Sam had some of the graphics for me, and she had a general idea of look and feel matching her restaurant. The technical as well as business plan was well understood by before we started the site. A few intermittent days of work later we had a finished website.

It was definitely among the smoothest projects I’ve been involved in. I started thinking about what made it so successful. Sam is thrilled with her site, her friends and colleagues have complimented the work. I too am happy with the results but even happier with the process. I think the secret to success was that Sam trusted me to fulfill her vision. She gave me broad goals, we worked together to determine a budget, and set expectations for when things will be delivered. Beyond that Sam was hands off, she trusted me to deliver a solid site and I trusted that she would pay for the work. We mitigated risk by agreeing to incremental delivery and payment. We both met goals for delivery dates and payment dates. Granted it is a simple website, so there is little margin for error but the keys were absolutely trust and accountability. Planning and setting expectations is key.

On any project, Django or otherwise, keep in mind that the customer must feel comfortable about hiring the developer. Avoid the pitfall of being so eager to deliver a technical solution that the business plan does not align with the site two months into the project. Saying no to a feature today may save the project and ensure continued mutual benefit down the road. With frameworks like Django and Rails, developers should have more time to deliver better quality not just quicker implementation. Django should allow developers to start stepping into the roles of consultants. Remember, developers are vested in implementation while consultants are vested in the customer’s success.

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Topics: Tech News | Comments

Guest

Probably one of the hardest things anyone can do is try and learn something new. Congrats to anyone who tries.

David Lindquist

It is not every day I see someone local come through on the Django Community Aggregator, so I just had to comment.

I live right down the street from Samz, and have been watching with anticipation since the "Coming Soon" sign first went up months ago. I am ashamed to say I have not yet visited, as I really want to encourage these types of small businesses in the neighborhood. I always seem to be in a hurry to get home when I pass by. A lousy excuse, I know.

The site looks great. Nice work!

Django Aware