Launched a fitness site over a weekend.

it_user505227 - PeerSpot reviewer

Project Description

Launched a fitness site over a weekend that linked squarespace to Google apps and Amazon Web Services with Trello as a flow manager.  This client stared off with a very limited scope and a budget of basically zero so if it wasn't an interesting project it would have made no sense.  I crafted it with the most limited but still scalable resources that allowed them to manage their part but prepared for the time when the cash would allow for analytics.

The plan is to scale up as the cash flow increases, and although we went positive in 30 days but it's going to be about 6 months before it starts generating the cash necessary for an enterprise type solution.   This is part of a bigger plan to start doing analysis on failures instead of just successes.  I hypothesize that almost all fitness programs fail almost all users.  If that's the case then it would seem likely that changes need to be made but without enough data any changes are just stabs in the dark.   I believe using data is going to be able to increase success rates far beyond the current levels.  

Lessons Learned

I probably would have scoped it differently and really focused on building it using AWS/Wordpress and a site there rather than attempting to make it client manageable using Squarespace.  The google integrations to spreadsheets are nice from their perspective but with a budget it would have been far nicer to just have integrated the form data into a database and then used a display UI to convey the information better.    

Highlights

Ahead of schedule
Under budget

Difficulties

Steep learning curve
Hard to meet schedule

Products Used

Technical Skills Used

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Javascript
  • SQL
  • Amazon IAM
  • Amazon S3 with Versioning and Lifecycle
  • Amazon Route 53
  • Multifactor Authentication
  • Google Appscript
  • Colleyville32.881-97.155