The dpivision.com Ltd Weblog

We are extremely proud to announce the launch of our new CannyBill.com re-design. The site was built in HTML 5 and CSS 3 by author and speaker Andy Clarke with the copy by renowned writer Relly Annett-Baker.

The entire re-design process has been very well documented on Andy’s blog with 12 articles written from the research involved to browser testing.

A full recap on the re-design process can be found below:

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1308

CannyBill redesign goes live

It seems like months ago (it was) when I handed over my design templates for the redesign of CannyBill.  Since then, the canny chaps have been working hard to implement the design and Relly Annett-Baker has been working her strange magic on their copy. Yesterday the new CannyBill site went live.

CannyBill’s previous home page

It was a pleasure to work with a team of smart people who really get it. They encouraged me to push the design as far as I needed and went with me in using HTML5 and CSS3 extensively. As client‘s go, they are also some of the bravest in allowing their design process to be open to the public.

With the site live, I thought it time to recap all of the entries that made up that open design process.

CannyBill open redesign project

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1190

While open to the public redesign projects have lately been popularised by Mark Boulton Design’s work for Drupal and by Happy Cog‘s work for Mozilla, it’s rare to find a commercial company involved in an open project.

CannyBill redesign peer research

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1193

I have to confess that when I’m designing, I often don’t take too much notice of a company’s peers or competitors.

CannyBill design process, package contents

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1202

Liked most of my projects these days, I’m designing the next iteration of CannyBill‘s front of house site in a browser rather than making static visuals of page layouts. I know I’m in danger of sounding like a broken record, but I genuinely do find the process to be faster and better at scoping ideas and demonstrating them to clients. So I thought I’d share the start of this process and the files that I use.

Designing the CannyBill home page

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1203

After two weeks on the CannyBill redesign project (one of which I spent traveling to Chicago for An Event Apart), it time for deep breaths as I talk about my design of the home page for the new CannyBill front of house site and ask for your thoughts and suggestions.

Relly Annett-Baker guests on And All That Malarkey.

Bribes, ripped trousers and writing copy for CannyBill

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1204

Write now, I’m cooking with Chef-O-Matic

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1207

A fascinating look at Relly Annett-Baker‘s process of writing copy for CannyBill and finding its voice.

Prices and plans design patterns

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1209

When is it the right thing to do not to attempt to reinvent a well established, tried and tested design pattern or convention. This question has come up while I have been designing the CannyBill prices and plans page.

A top down look at the CannyBill redesign

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1210

With the first phase of the CannyBill redesign process drawing to a close, I would like to say a huge thank-you to the CannyBill team for encouraging a public, open design process and to everyone who has commented and tweeted their helpful suggestions.

CannyBill redesign browser testing screenshots

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andallthatmalarkey/sets/72157622528064392/

A complete set of browser screenshots on Flickr.

What does browser testing mean today?

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1214

Before we send over our design files to the chaps at CannyBill, first a run through of the browsers that we have tested in the new design and some musings about what browser testing actually means today, in the face of an ever more diversified browser and device landscape.

CannyBill makes Monday morning admin easier

Relly Annett-Baker on first draft copy for CannyBill.

http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1220

The redesigned CannyBill home page

Head over to CannyBill to see the final result for yourself and of course, your comments are still welcome.

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London May 14th 2010. Book your place from only £325.00+VAT.

Tell us a little about your company.

Redblugraphics.co.uk is an online resource providing event and exhibition branding products and useful information relating to the industry.  We sell a vast range of event and exhibition branding solutions, exhibition stands, portable displays, large format print, screen print and signage.

Why did you choose Tradingeye as your ecommerce platform?

Tradingeye was recommended to us by a creative design and developer we approached called Lunaria. We wanted Redblugraphics.co.uk to be a site we could manage ourselves once it was live and to be search engine friendly.  The usability of Tradingeye impressed me right from the start and the online demos were very helpful, setting it apart from the competition.  Also being based in Newcastle it made us feel very comfortable dealing with a company based locally.

Could you please let us know about your project?

I spent months researching the best system to use and decided to run with Lunaria.  The team there were fantastically helpful, David Eccles was forever answering queries at stupid o’clock which suited me well being busy running the business during the day.  From initial design it was just a matter of working out the departments and best practise for describing the products.

The most time consuming part was adding products into Tradingeye so the designers could work the visuals around the dynamic format of the website.

Although we decided we did not want to put the payment gateway in at the start I am sure we be adding this function in the near future.

Wordpress was also added for blogging and news.

Do you have any future plans for the site?

We’ll be adding many new products, we will tailor the content and add departments based upon google analytics data and comments from users.

Do you have anything else you would like to share?

First class system and we are delighted with the project.  I can’t thank Lunaria enough for their customer service which is “above and beyond” and the value they offer is fantastic.  I highly recommend Tradingeye to others.  There are a few small things that could be improved, an integrated fully functioning emarketing package like constant contact, a way to automatically globally add products into a department with price but I am sure Wlad and his team will be working on these in the future!

Tell us a little about your company.

Ruby Loves Red is an online gift store that focuses on the best handmade and printed products made by talented designers and crafts people. Owned by artist Sandra Cassidy (and designed and built by her web designer husband Danny Cassidy) the shop has been born out of a love for all things cute, quirky and original hence ‘Gifts With Character’.

Why did you choose Tradingeye as your ecommerce platform?

Site designer Danny Cassidy explains, “I was initially attracted to Tradingeye because its accessibility/compliance features. As a web designer I’m a big fan of content management systems that output well structured, clean HTML and Tradingeye seemed to do this very well. From a functionality point of view Tradingeye’s feature list offers incredible value for money. We also liked the idea of having a dedicated support team available if there should be any technical glitches along the way.”

Could you please let us know about your project?

Ruby Loves Red was originally developed as a blog at the start of 2009. After a while we added a simple Paypal shopping cart then quickly realised that if we wanted to grow the business then we would need an integrated shopping cart and that’s when we selected Tradingeye. From design concept to launch took around three months although a significant proportion of that time was spend collating content.

Do you have any future plans for the site?

It’s still early days for the site but we’re confident that the hard work we’ve put in from the social media and blogging side of things will translate into sales on the new site. We’re particularly keen to implement alternative ways displaying products on the home page, perhaps using Jquery. We’re also really excited about using Tradingeye’s reporting features as a way of obtaining valuable marketing information about customers and product lines.

Do you have anything else you would like to share?

Tradingeye packs some incredibly powerful features considering it’s a reasonably priced off the shelf package and we’re looking forward to exploring all its potential as our business grows and develops.

Mathew Patterson, Campaign Monitor

About Mathew Patterson

Coming from a web design background, Mat is well positioned to help designers get the most out of Campaign Monitor, and make sure it meets their needs. With only one ‘t’ in Mathew, he is also well positioned in vanity search results.