Title: What I Learned Building a Customer Portal for a Family Business
(subtitle: Notes from the L&J Exterminating build — balancing tech, usability, and long-term clarity)
When I started building a customer management portal for L&J Exterminating, the project wasn’t just about tech. It was about translating years of paper records into a system that my client’s mother could use with ease, from her phone, in the middle of a busy workday.
Here are a few takeaways from the process:
1. Start simple, even if the backend is complex.
I used Supabase as the backend database — powerful enough to handle growth, but flexible for low-code form inputs. The trick was making it invisible to the user. On the admin side, all she sees is a clean form: name, address, and service details.
2. Solve for duplicates early.
We learned the hard way that customers were being entered twice under slightly different names. A “duplicate detection” check (based on name + address) wasn’t just nice to have — it saved hours of confusion.
3. Design for the real user.
A portal isn’t useful if the person using it every day dreads logging in. That’s why we prioritized a mobile-friendly, frustration-free interface. For my client’s mother, that meant dropdowns that search as you type, and forms that highlight missing fields instead of showing vague “error” messages.
4. Keep records clear for the future.
Instead of burying service history in spreadsheets, we grouped records by year and added photo upload options that store externally (like Google Drive). This kept things organized, lightweight, and easier to maintain long-term.
At the end of the day, this wasn’t about building a shiny app. It was about creating a system that fits into the rhythm of real work, for real people. And that’s the kind of design lesson I want to carry into every project.
(Screenshots here: [before-and-after UI], [customer profile portal view])
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- On your withkimberlyd.com case study page → “Read more about my process on the blog.”
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