The design & development process

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  Initial sketching and ideas

  We like to avoid commiting to an idea too early. That's why it's always helpful starting a design on a whiteboard. It's quick and disposable when you need to make changes and we often find that standing in front of the board makes the ideas flow better than being hunched over a computer or notepad.

  One of our aims when designing this site was making a switch from "the old way" of designing to embrace a more flexible, content first workflow and to experiment with responsive design on a complex and visually rich site.

  Read about our design process
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  Agile work tickets

  We now use the wonderful Trello for project management but for this project we kept it simple and manage our jobs using a Kanban system where we move tickets along to a regular release date once a week or fortnight.

  Cutting Edge Knives is a bootstrapped business so time and resource must be used efficiently. Keeping things simple allows us to do that.

  

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  Designing and protoyping in code

  Exploring ideas in code proved to be a great way to actually quickly rule out our first 2 ideas for the site. We spent a day quickly experimenting with a Javascripted user interface and unlike working with static visuals it became clear very quickly we were going down a path that would have led to bugs, confusion and a lot of wasted time.

  It allowed us to test our ideas and ultimately settle on something stable but still distinctive.

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  Start selling early

  We took time to experiment with several layouts and combined with whiteboard sketches, HTML prototyping and quick release cycles we were able to have a functional version of the site up and running in less than a week because we only sell a small range of products, we were able to build HTML templates and take payments with PayPal quickly.

  Selling product early was key, while our early designs didn't have the refinement it was important that sales start rolling in quickly from day one.

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  Refinements and improvement

  Cutting Edge Knives has had some wonderful feedback from both the design community and most importantly, our customers who are searching for and buying our products. Once a site is up and running, it's easier to refine and improve on.

  We place a great emphasis on customer service and great user experience and the feedback and sales figures hopefully indicate we're doing something right! Not only that, we're growing a great reputation for our honest copywriting style and no-nonsense product reviews.

  What we've learnt from starting a business