The dpivision.com Ltd Weblog

By Gene Crawford, unmatchedstyle

CannyBill.com design project discussion with the client Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine and the designer Andy Clarke (@Malarkey) of stuffandnonsense.co.uk and creator of Hard Boiled Web Design.

We started off discussing the reasons behind why Wladimir chose Andy to be the designer for the new CannyBill and why Andy wanted to dig into this project. The main reasons behind the relationship aside from good mutual respect was the fact that Andy was allowed to do this project open to the public.

Here’s a nice quote by Andy from his blog wrapping up the CannyBill project:

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.

We discussed the Prices and plans page design a bit, really delving into this question Andy brought up on his blog:

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.

I happen to agree with Andy here, that it’s not so much about the design pattern itself as it is doing what’s appropriate for the website/project. In this case, the CannyBill audience is very similar to the 37signals products audience that riffing on the way they’ve done the basecamp pricing and plans page is rather appropriate. Personally i’ve always researched design patterns and I get into that aspect of web design very deeply. However, I can’t say that i’ve really considered them based on the familiarity the target audience has with a specific type of design pattern, like the pricing and plans style of page.

When the subject of copy writing was touched on, specifically the work Relly Annett-Baker (@RellyAB) has done for CannyBill. I asked what it was like working with a copy writer, in this case a freelance copy writer.

Andy’s approach is that you need the copy before you can really do a great job at the design and markup. So often he says that he’ll dig into creating some of the copy himself when he needs it, for several reasons. Just so he has it to work with when designing. I’ve always said that a designer who can write has a killer skill set. Andy also talks about the micro copy and the importance of paying attention to it as you design.

My bad jokes aside, this was a really wonderful discussion, one you don’t get very often with both the designer and client at the same time. Many thanks to Wladimir and Andy for taking some time out to talk with me.

The final product of the project, CannyBill.com:

We are pleased to announce some great new features for CannyBill. Custom form fields for options, the ability to send out invoices x-days before the due date and two brand new payment gateways!

Custom Form Fields

Within CannyBill you could already create custom options for your packages which consisted of a radio button or check box. Well now we’ve added the possibility for you to add custom input boxes too. These can be used for any additional information you wish to capture e.g. ‘Where did you hear about us?’ to custom data collection of your choice.

Admin -> Packages -> Create new option

Send invoice out x-days before the due date

We’ve added a great little feature which enables you to specify how many days before the invoice due date do you want to send the invoice out. This is especially useful for renewable invoices giving your customers advance notice when a payment will be due.

Admin -> Settings -> Invoice settings

SecurePay Payment Gateways

We’ve added two new payment gateways to CannyBill. Please note that although they are both called SecurePay, they are two totally different companies and have nothing in common.

SecurePay – http://www.securepay.com/
SecurePay Australia – http://www.securepay.com.au/

You can set these up by going to:

Admin -> Settings -> Payment gateways

We are delighted that CannyBill has been invited to join the SingleHop Tandem reseller program (more info will be posted shortly) and very excited about their latest data canter expansion. We look forward to working with SingleHop and integrating with their revolutionary API.

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider SingleHop (www.singlehop.com) announced on Wednesday it will implement a five-year, $7 million program to expand its data centers in the Chicago market, according to a report by Data Center Knowledge.

The announcement comes just 11 months after SingleHop moved into 10,000 square feet of space in a $2.5 million agreement with ServerCentral, at the data center in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, a Chicago suburb near O’Hare International Airport.

The expansion doubles the company’s worldwide network capacity, as well as its footprint at the Elk Grove facility where its second data center is located.

“Our current data center has provided our clients with exceptional service and 100 percent uptime since we opened late in May of 2009,” says Zak Boca, president and CEO of SingleHop. “To continue our aggressive 2010 expansions, we have doubled our capacity both in data center space as well as in bandwidth. The technological advancements of this location, combined with our stellar networking engineering, have proven to be a winning combination that can support and benefit current and future clients with the most advanced and stable hosting environment possible.”

SingleHop now has three locations in the Chicago area.

Tell us a little about your company?

Love It Love It Love It is a colourful boutique for colourful babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers. The clothes you’ll find here are all designed to let kids get on with being kids. They’re jam-packed with character and joy, whilst also being practical for parents.

There are gorgeous and funky creations from fabulous hand picked brands such as Danefae, Duns Sweden, Glug Collection, Green Baby, Lipfish, Positively Organic, Red Thread, Sophie4Sophie and Zee Spot.

Why did you choose Tradingeye as your ecommerce platform?

Tradingeye was recommended to us by a Komodo.  I wanted the site to be built with the creativity that I knew Komodo could deliver, using a system that is user friendly. The usability of Tradingeye impressed me right from the start and the online demos were very helpful, setting it apart from the competition.

Could you please let us know about your project?

Love It Love It Love It is a boutique for clothes to fit kids aged 0-5. The main theme of the clothes we sell is that they are brightly coloured, comfortable and full of character. This is great for the kids because they’re stimulating but allow freedom of movement, and for the parents because the clothes are easy to care for, and last for ages. The requirement for the site design was that it should be friendly, colourful and stylish.

Do you have any future plans for the site?

At the moment the site only sells clothes. The range will be expanded for next season, and the core range will be added to with home decor, bedding and own brand clothes in time.

We’ve added a bit of German flavour to our latest tool to help businesses with their billing.

Continuing with our quest to go global, we have made CannyBill available to our friends on the continent by launching a German language pack.

CannyBill is an online invoicing and billing system, which has been custom built for businesses and freelancers.

The pioneering package cuts down admin time in half by giving you a simple, robust billing system that integrates with your current process.

www.cannybill.com/german.php