Getting Paperight 1.0 live was a huge milestone for us. While the build in the end – from scratch, without a base CMS, over only two months – was fast and smooth, this was only possible because we put every ounce of learning and planning I’d done for the site over the previous three years into its design and planning. It’s a very simple thing now, but that is deliberate simplicity.

I had one key principle for the site: all our choices had to favour making the site as fast and light as possible.

I had one key principle for the site: all our choices had to favour making the site as fast and light as possible. Outlets have slow connections and busy shop floors. This informed decisions like our simple prepaid accounts (the outlet manager can top up an account in advance very quickly); account balances and licence fees had to be shown in the user’s currency, no matter where they are in the world; the interface had to be clean with large figures and buttons, for quick, simple use at the point-of-sale.

I worked very closely with the team at Realm Digital on this. Realm were an expensive choice, and I’m pleased that our decision to use them paid off in fantastic service, great design, and real dedication to the time-frames and to the business model itself. Lead developer Shaine Gordon has described technically how the site’s built on our blog.

In addition to ongoing refinements, we’re now planning a second round of development for Paperight 1.1.