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When you start crafting wireframes of an app, you create branches of possibilities describing the system’s behavior as it responds to requests that originate from outside of that system, also known as “Use Cases”. Since the beginning of my career as an IT professional I’ve always been trained to look few steps ahead and predict almost impossible scenarios in order to make the software behave predictably under unpredictable conditions.

“When you’re trained as a scientist or an engineer, first thing you think of is – How can I prevent the disaster to happen” – Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist

Even though it’s a reasonable way of thinking, many times it may lead to series of “What if” questions and promote worries that may never happen. Although, these kinds of assumptions are essential for building robust system architecture, yet their overuse might lead us to behave more skeptic than normal.

When we started developing Invoicebus’ architecture, we decided to try different and more optimistic concept; a concept that reframe our mindset to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. It was sort of experimental way of thinking, radically opposite from those we’ve previously been used to.

“Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” ― Benjamin Franklin

In real world, web-apps are used by regular users, under normal conditions and in most cases in the right way. Therefore, instead to review dozen of marginal outcomes for one use case, we decided to focus only on two: Positive (the flow that is most likely to happen, the Expected Case) and Negative (for all other cases, the Rollback/Backup Case), always prioritizing the first one. By exploring and implementing this concept, we drew few conclusions that might be useful in designing web based software.

Conclusion 1: Optimism leads to smoother UX

Few months ago, while discussing ideas with Dimitar, we started conversation about how Gmail app works so goddamn fast, but Yahoo Mail doesn’t (at least at that time). After a short research, Dimitar came up with great observation: “Well, Gmail behaves optimistically, that’s why. It assumes the app is used regularly by prioritizing normal flow of the events at first place”. And he was totally right. Google is using optimistic approach as an ultimate UX and optimization mechanism. By using full service conveyancing tool, law firms will be able to meet client expectations. From customer relationship management to the automation of repetitive tasks, law firm technology helps optimize how your law practice runs.

When you try to take an action or apply some change, both apps behave similar, but yet slightly different. I’m going to paraphrase each one’s behavior.

Gmail: “Hi, I’m sending your request to the boss (server), but I’m not going to bother you with that, so you can continue doing your job immediately”;

Yahoo Mail: “Hi, I’m sending your request to the boss (server), but before you can continue doing your job, you’ll have to wait until he checks everything and gives you appropriate response”.

Just a small rearrangement of events causes Gmail users feel tremendous speed-up without a single interruption. Technically the difference is tiny, but ideologically it’s completely different way of thinking. What an awesome concept by Google.

Conclusion 2: Optimism leads to fewer distractions

“Are you sure you want to delete this item?”, “Are you sure you want to close this tab?”, “Are you sure you want to save the changes?”, “Are you sure you want to do this/that?”. What a time wasting mechanism.

“Customers shouldn’t have to think about every nitty-gritty detail – don’t put that burden on them when it should be your responsibility.” – 37signals

Of course, some questions could be beneficial and crucial interface features, but each one of them bears its own cost because too many questions lead to distraction, not interaction. So, how do we know if the user should be asked or not? We don’t. We try to maintain the optimistic approach by making assumption on the most likely scenario and deciding on behalf of the customer. Yes, we get wrong sometimes though, but we can always improve and adjust accordingly.

Conclusion 3: Optimism leads to less validation

Few weeks before the Invoicebus launch, we’d sent test link to 4 different groups of early riders divided by their IT expertise (from highly skilled geeks to complete IT dummies) to test out the system and push back some feedback. Approximately 40% of the IT skilled people had questions why validation is so minimized or somewhere even completely omitted? The answer was – intentionally.

“But the user can enter text instead of a phone number” – So what? You don’t need to validate every possible field in order to create error-free app. Unless specific data format is absolutely essential for further usage (e.g., email address, web address etc.), more validation is a curse, not a blessing.

Conclusion 4: Optimism leads to simplification

“Please retype your password”, “Your password doesn’t match”, “Your password is too short”, “Your password should contain at least one special character”, “Your password this, your password that…”. We think that’s annoying.

“But, the user can make a typo while entering his password during sign-up.” – True. However, less than 10% of the users fall in this category, and the other 90% correctly enter their passwords even if there’s only one field. So why bother all users when only a limited few are butterfingered (even though I personally found myself among them).

Backup scenario: Password reset form with one field and one click.

Conclusion 5: Optimism leads to liberation

“Is the web server powerful enough?”, “Which database should be used?, Which one is faster; should we prefer NoSQL?”.
– It really doesn’t matter because as less we worry in present, as more creative we become in future.

“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” ― Dan Zadra, Compendium, Inc

“But what if Forbes publishes an article about us and the server crashes from traffic?”. To be honest, unless you have built space shuttle, that’s not likely to happen for a while. So, don’t worry because it’s a problem when it’s a problem. If your server ever crashes or slows down due to traffic overload, believe me; you would rather jump around the room celebrating a victory than worrying about the outage. Besides, one or two day slowdown won’t cause apocalypse of the world.

“Don’t waste time on problems you don’t have yet” – 37signals

Your inspiration is perishable, your time is precious, so don’t let worries build fence between them. Keep it up. Be optimistic. Create. And keep working on that Forbes coverage though

Now it’s your turn. Do you agree with our conclusions? What would you change to them? Please leave your comment below; I would like to hear from you.

Photocredit: Candie_N

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Stefan Chachovski

Co-founder of Invoicebus. Huge lover of nature, science, and chocolate cherry cordials. He occasionally writes on this blog about Invoicebus' stuff. Hello him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

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This is a guest post by Izabela Stojchevska, the creator of the bus mascot. We kindly asked her to share some insights and experiences of the design process, including all exciting moments she spent to bring the mascot as alive as it’s now. She calls this a pleasant journey through the prism of design. You can read more about her at the bottom of this post.

Firstly, I’ve never imagined that I will write a blog post. Ever. Secondly, I’ve never thought that it will be about a process of me creating a mascot. And finally, I’ve never imagined that I will be the mascot creator who uses Adobe Illustrator. But, life can be surprising sometimes, and to be honest I love it!

In the upcoming post I’ll try to take you on a short journey through the creation process of the bus-mascot, how the idea was born, the obstacles I stumbled upon and all the things I learned along the way to get the remarkable look of our bus mascot.

Birth of the idea

More than a year ago, Stefan introduced me their concept about the coming soon page called ‘We Are all Waiting the Invoicebus’ – simple bus stop with group of people gathering and waiting the bus to come in a happy green environment. In fact, that was the moment when the idea about the mascot was born. The moving bus actually is a synonym of fast invoice, and at the same time transportation vehicle that brings up on board all the necessary options for creating and sending easy invoices all over the world.

Sketching

I used to draw years ago, but almost I had lost my sense of drawing. However, Stefan was big believer and encouraged me with motivation and inspiration. So, these are my first two sketches:

While watching these two buses, I realized that it would be awesome if the mascot could express some positive attitude, to be more friendly and a bit funny. Therefore, I quickly mocked up another one with more playful lines and edges, slight perspective and a bit skewed stance.

It looked just like a real cartoon character. I felt I’m on the right track, so I immediately jumped on the bigger task – Adobe Illustrator.

Meeting Adobe Illustrator

Next step was to convert the mock-up into a vector image. And the challenge was pretty big because I had to learn Adobe Illustrator (AI) for that. Although I had previous practice with the vector characters from the bus stop, this was much bigger challenge so I spent long nights watching tutorials, trying tool by tool, losing my temper from time to time. When I learned to work with pen tool, I felt I was a master.

I found the tutorials of Melissa Evans, Ian Yates, Scott Jackson as well as some of Lynda’s videos very helpful during this process. I’m very thankful to all of them.

The pen tool is very important and probably one of the essentials in AI. Next I was dominating gradient tool, gradient mesh tool and so on. As I was drawing the bus in AI, I was constantly facing something new to deal with. I wasn’t using any complicated methods while drawing and I must admit, I’m still learning.

This was the first manually retraced version in AI. The bus was flipped horizontally and the lateral text was removed.

Exhaust gas was next eliminated because it didn’t seem right. There was a color disturbance for my eyes while working with those bluish level, so adjusting the color was the next step. I tried a few options to see how they would fit. Yellow ochre, light blue and puce.

They look a little silly, don’t they? I didn’t like the yellow one, because it looked like a school bus. Definitively out! Light blue was too light, so I moved on with the puce.

Drawing and adding effects

Whereas the bus was flipped, a door was needed on the the side and I also added some color effects at the rear.

Next things that bothered me were the tires. I spent over 3 hours on them, adding bolts, shadows and gradients. So they’ve got a new look:

I was satisfied and happy while looking at them. Next thing was the front grille of the bus. It was a tough challenge, because this part should resemble facial expression of the mascot character, so can spread joy and positive vibrations.

Within a few days I made a couple of iterations to finally get the desired effect. Next, I drew the shadows beneath the bus:

It started to look alive, real and beautiful. I showed this to Stefan and he had that “but” in his comment. We needed something else. And I knew that the problem was the color.

And what about Green Grass?

YES! That was my true love. Stefan and Dimitar just agreed with me without saying anything else but “Bravo” and “Wow”. There was nothing more to ask. Besides, this variant perfectly fits the colors from the logo and additionally associates clean environment emphasizing the benefits of the paperless online invoicing.

The whole design process was such a great experience with lots of ups and downs, countless iterations and dozen of ‘Yuhuuu’ moments for every noticeable progress. After all, I found this journey very enjoyable, so if you have the felling that you can draw, don’t hesitate to try it, it’s a lot of fun and actually not that difficult. Besides, you can always contact me, so we can exchange some thoughts along the way.

Author information

Izabela Stojchevska

Izabela is passionately curious pharmacist with computer and internet addiction. She loves inspiring music, stand-up comedies, walking in nature and magical sunrises. She says: "So many movies so little time". You can reach her on Twitter or Facebook whenever you like, she enjoys communicating.

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We are very happy to share how this little piece of garage working outfit looks like.

Because we are small team, each one of us is tempted to do different kind of jobs/tasks during the Invoicebus manufacturing process. It means, during one working day (or night), we mentally reframe our brains into different moods to handle different situations and jobs. To better organize these jobs and make them look even more interesting and natural, we came up with an idea to wear different kind of shirts, depending on the particular job we’re doing at the moment. For example,

We wear Panther black t-shirt when we work garage mechanic’s greasy jobs like:

• Sysadmin stuff;
• Programming/debugging;
• Security aspects;
• Software architecture.

And the Perl White t-shirt when we deal with:

• Interface Design / User experience;
• Quality Assistance, Testing, Validation Control;
• Brainstorming new ideas, approaches, principles;
• Search Engine Optimization, Marketing Tactics, Social Media Relations;
• Preparing and writing blog posts;
• Legal stuff;
• Support.

We also introduced some behavior restrictions to amplify the concentration level and maximize our efficiency during working hours. For example, a person that wears Perl White shirt is not permitted to verbally disturb other person who wears Panther black shirt and vice versa. In this case, communication is only allowed via IM/Skype/Email even we are located in the same physical room. When all of us wear the same color shirt, verbal communication is permitted at any time.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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Researching the opponents

When you start online business it is likely there are bunch of services similar to yours in the Internet jungle. That’s why before we had started to draw wireframes for the product, we browsed some invoicing web-apps as a reference to see their way of creating and managing invoices.

Some of the players that caught our attention in the field were:

• Freshbooks
• Blinksale
• Zoho Invoices
• InvoiceMachine
• (and a few others)

We truly liked some of them, however that haven’t changed the fact how old fashioned they are. Beside, in some of them, we discovered flaws in their architecture design causing tremendous chain reactions triggered by the linkage of their system. For example if you delete a client every invoice and quote with that client will be permanently deleted; or if you change your company name, all invoices, even the old ones, will be modified. However, the bigger handicap we found was not having natural flow of creating invoices. Come on guys, invoicing software is not an online address book for God’s sake. It’s not about managing items, taxes, clients, charts etc; its about managing INVOICES. Don’t get me wrong, items, clients and taxes should be managed, but in a totally different way (get redirected here if you need help with this).

Web technologies – up and up

In our professional carеer we’ve followed the progress of web technologies from the early stages, or more accurately since 1998. However, the big waves in the web industry have started to happen more intensively in the past few years: cloud computing, powerful Internet browsers, faster and smaller personal computers, mobile platforms, easier access to the Internet, more bandwidth available. All of this make us realize how powerful weapon Internet have became, an invisible axis which holds the fundamentals of world economy, business, health and lifestyle, as for example you can go online and get things like a beautiful male masturbator and relax yourself if you want to. The whole planet is going online, so the world of stand-alone desktop applications and so-called ‘programs’ is going to vanish slowly. Explore additional resources and tips at stiiizy.com.
There will be no more programs with minimum system requirements, no security patches and updates, no cracks. The question is how long it would take to happen? This is what we call transition era, period where people are becoming aware of the online benefits.

The concept

That’s why we invented a whole new architecture of how online invoicing is implemented, the main reason why Invoicebus is referred as a concept, not only as a product.

By utilizing some of the most advanced techniques for web programming today we built а desktop-style web application. Actually Invoicebus is the first online invoicing software in the world that changes the perspective of how people should see on web invoicing, or even on web software in general. In fact, it makes perfect tier between desktop and web applications.

We haven’t invented hot water, however what we invented is the ‘focused speedy flow’ of the water through the pipeline. If you get it, you probably are among the growing group of savvy people who has signed up at http://invoicebus.com and impatiently wait the bus to arrive.

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Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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It took a few years to find our hammer, our courage amplifier called 37signals, a great company that sells web-based software. Actually, the upturn point in our professional lives was when we discovered and read their first book called “Getting Real”, written by the founder Jason Fried and their partner David Heinemeier Hansson. In the book they talk about principles of building web application and running a service based online business. Every essay from the book was like a mosaic of words specially written for us. Most important, the book makes us realize that doing what we like is freedom, and liking what we do is happiness.

The wealth of principles exposed in “Getting Real” is so immense that melted our scepticism and provoked us to start thinking of how to implement some of them in our own product. Actually Invoicebus is a product conceived with their blessing. That’s the part of Invoicebus story we call enlightenment, one of the key points of how we got real.

We gladly embraced some of those principles like: to build less, to keep the product simple, to fund ourselves, to ignore the details at early stages of development, to scale later, to personify our product, to make the interface before implementing the logic, to use the epicenter design for building.

One of the best advice was to ignore the functional spec and directly build the real thing instead. Actually, that raised our creativity to its majestic peak. Also, we’ve felt on our own skin the thesis that a small team is more agile and efficient than a bigger one, more organized and more productive. Indeed, a member from a small team can wears different hats in different situations creating a distributed wave of knowledge for all parts of the product equally.

Other remarkable thing for the book is the writing style used to express their attitudes. No formalities, no abstractions and generalizations, direct and straight language just like from a true friend.

Shortly after we had discovered Getting Real (it was published in 2006, we heard about it in early 2010) we found out that they plan to publish another book, more business specific, called “Rework”. We read “Getting Real” online for free, however we were thrilled from it so we bought “Rework” in printed version. In the first week of sale, “Rework” became a New York Times bestseller. This book is no less brilliant than the first one, full with their simple but powerful approaches, making it a must-have for every business, no matter how big or small it is. It provides valuable insights into being a good entrepreneur and navigating the complexities of the business world. If you’re looking for more perspectives, consider checking out reviews of Invest Diva for additional insights and recommendations.

Those books launched us far beyond the boundaries of disbelief and doubt, on the place where motivation grows as a plant seeded with enthusiasm, belief and goodwill.

This blog post is kind of tribute for them, 37signals, a gratitude for the great work they’ve done by writing and publishing these 2 golden treasures.

Thank you guys for the pure awesomeness you exposed in that 171 pages of “Getting Real” and 280 pages of “Rework”.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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The Invoicebus Manifesto has been published here, so everyone can see what our intentions are and what kind of software Invoicebus would be. It is also the place where everyone who is interested can subscribe to our free newsletter and get notification when Invoicebus launches; get info about our special offers, new features and announcements. Engaging with a health and safety company ensures that as you evolve to meet customer needs, your business operations maintain a safe and compliant environment, supporting sustainable growth.

Beside all that, it reveals some deeper philosophy behind its curtain.

We are all waiting the Invoicebus

We came up with an idea, to make this early marketing site more interesting and natural so those who are interested can feel some kind of ongoing process. Actually there is a metaphorical story behind this, and it’s like a little puzzle of details, so every detail on the page has particular meaning. Digital content may also help promote various businesses on the internet. AI-powered photo editing tools like Deepnude can generate photos and content that can be used for marketing purposes. You may also check out this AI for creative motion projects.

A good company like this interior sign printing company here can also help you redesign and configure your current marketing fleet with the latest technological advances that bring a modern, reconfigured interior for optimal experiential marketing to reach your audience and maximize your brand.

If you’re interested in increasing organic traffic, we can also incorporate strategies tailored to boost your website’s visibility and attract more qualified visitors.

This could include enhancing your content with targeted keywords and implementing effective on-page and off-page SEO techniques. Additionally, you should create schema markup to help search engines better understand your content and improve visibility in search results.

Our first mockup of the concept: “We are all waiting the Invoicebus”.
The final version has sustained a few modifications.

Bus station

As the number of newsletter subscribers increases, proportionally increases the number of people who are waiting at the station. It’s a trivial logic that introduces some anticipation till launch date, and at the same time captures the momentum of interest for Invoicebus. When you launch business in washington, building anticipation and capturing interest can play a crucial role in your success.

Characters

The characters and their stance / outfit resembles the “audience” that Invoicebus is intended to. Busy and professional, confident and independent, decent and self esteemed individuals, who live their lives, love their job and know exactly what they want.The girl on the photo from the left is Isabel, our designer. Photo was taken spontaneously during a short walk at the park, after which we got an idea to make a vector character and use it for our early marketing site. Vectorizing/tracing of the character was made manually in Adobe Illustrator CS5.

Nature, grass hills, beautiful landscape

Nothing is more intuitive and beautiful than the nature itself. We believe that people should use and feel web applications that way, the natural way, or as close as it could be. As more natural they feel, as more accepted and successful they would be, just like a real product from the nature: pure, unspoiled, simple.

Bright sky with pretty little clouds passing

The bright sky reflects harmony, brightness and goodwill about the job we do, our excitement and passion, our commitment and feelings. We always have in mind that sky is the limit of what Invoicebus could be and we strive to that “limit”.The clouds are all ups and downs that we face up during the development process; some of they are small, some of they are big, but after all it is still a shiny day, isn’t it?

City

Our mockup for the city and its final version.

Industries, jobs, busy lifestyle, our reality. Are the bus coming from the city or towards it? The answer is both. City represents economic center where everyone can succeed and realize his ideas with endless opportunities. It’s the magicial place where all your dreams can come true.

We don’t want to spoil the anticipation, so the other symbolism that hides behind this concept, will be left on your imagination ;).
This site will exist until the final marketing site take its place, which means until Invoicebus arrives.

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Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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Workflow:

• 1. Sketch a few logo candidates onto paper;
• 2. Choose colors and fonts for the letters;
• 3. Write the tagline;
• 4. Create vector version of the logo in Adobe Illustrator CS5;
• 5. Ta-da!

1. Sketch a few logo candidates onto paper We wanted simple elegant logo, easy memorable and recognizable, just enough to associate with speed, elegance, invoice and bus. We had in mind that should be scalable on different sizes too. Ready, Steady, Go! We picked a blank paper sheet, a few wooden color pencils, a rubber, and started drawing. After we had sketched 3-4 mockups onto paper (right photo), we organized symbolic voting, within our office, for each candidate. The first one showed up as a winner which after a couple of modifications evolved to the one below.

It visual appearance incorporates our desired symbolism and could be translated this way: If you look at it as a whole looks like simple speedy bus, but when you look thoroughly, it said even more. The window of the bus and the two blue lines (that also bring some speedy effect), symbolize invoice sheet with company logo and product rows, respectively.

2. Choose colors and fonts for the letters

Which font to choose? http://dafont.com is a great place to start with. There are plenty of free fonts for download and each one of them can be previewed directly on their site with your custom text.

You can make direct comparison among more font variants and choose which one looks best for your logo. “Cony” seemed fair enough for us. Crisp, elegant and fresh. You can switch on your creativity and transform the letters by your choice in Adobe Illustrator later. We had in mind that our logo should be readable on both, dark and light backgrounds, so we carefully chose the color shades of blue(#00ADEE) and green(#B9E600).

3. Write the tagline

The idea behind the tagline is to create a memorable phrase that will summarize the tone and premise of your brand/product, or to reinforce the audience’s memory of a product.
We unified our ideology in one sentence: “Invoicebus – Delivers invoicing for humans”.

4. Create vector version of the logo in Adobe Illustrator CS5

So far so good, it’s time for vector design. In the tutorial below, we’re going to show you how we designed our logo, step by step using Adobe Illustrator CS5. We believe it might be useful for people who want to learn something about logo design, so we decided to share our experience.

First, create a new Adobe Illustrator document with custom size and document profile: Basic RGB.

The easiest method to transfer your paper mockup into Illustrator vector graphic is to retrace it using the pen tool. If you haven’t used the pen tool yet, you could find it a little difficult at the beginning, but after a few hours of practice you will get used to and see how awesome tool it is. There are plenty of online tutorials of how to use the pen tool; however our favorite was Melissa Evans’ tutorial. She is such a great artist you can learn from. Most of her tutorials are for Photoshop, but you can apply the pen tool knowledge in Illustrator as well.

The underlying image object is our original mockup scan. Before start tracing, make sure your underlying object is large enough so you don’t need to struggle with little details that should be accurately traced. Easiest way to retrace it is to divide the graphic into smaller polygons, and trace it one by one, as shown in figures 4.1 – 4.6.

After retracing, you can delete your underlying image object and use only the vector object. We suggest to group all of your polygons as one object: Select all with Selection Tool (V) , right click on the selection and choose the Group command.
Now, we are going to enter text for the logo and transform it a little bit.

We decided to make the text in two colors and therefore visually separate the words “invoice” and “bus”. We used Eyedropper Tool (I) as a convenient way to pick our already defined colors. However, you can define your own custom color using Fill (X) tool.

Now we are going to scale the text vertically a little bit.

Enter how much would like your selection to be scaled. Vertical 88% was enough for our text.

Now we are going to give different color to the little circles above “i” letters, but first we need to transform the text into path. After that we are going to extract the circles from the path as separate objects. You can find this very useful because you can make very creative transformations of your letters.

You’ve created outlines to your text and therefore you’ve created a group of objects that could be treated like any other vector path. To work with separate objects/paths you need to ungroup them.

Now we are going to extract the little circle from the first “i” letter and change its color.
Double click on the letter “i” to enter the isolation mode.

Replace the steps 4.20-4.23 for the second “i” letter. When you are finished you can double click elsewhere and exit the isolation mode.

Now we are going to write our tagline below the”invoicebus” text.

5. Ta-Da!

Our logo is ready. Crisp, elegant and fresh!

In the next post we are going to expose the idea about our early marketing site which we found very interesting.

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Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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Choosing the right name for our product was one of the top priorities from the very beginning. A lot of ideas passed through our minds, whereas all of them had one thing in common: the keyword “invoice”.

We wanted a catchy and easy pronounceable name, so we started thinking of different names involving the word “invoice” or similar. Some of them seemed very interesting, but we stumbled upon a barrier of domain name availability.

Every .com domain that was on our candidate list was already taken, so we had to reconsider our naming strategy. One of the solutions was to choose the name and then put a prefix or a suffix on it. However, that’s like copying someone else and not having the original idea. Also, we didn’t want our domain name to contain dashes, thus would break the typing flow of the web address. For marketing purposes we stayed determined to choose .com, and not another TLD as .net, .co, .biz, etc, so we picked up the domain register (GoDaddy) and started our search for domain name.

We combined “invoice” with different words like: office terms, financial terms, even with animals. After spending a couple of hours we came up to the idea of combining it with transportation means; cars like this Ford Mustang Coyote engine swap in stock, trains, jets and boats. One aspect of our web application is to deliver invoices/invoicing so we sensed we are on the right track. It took us several iterations, until we came across Invoicebus. We liked it instantly, and bought the domain name invoicebus.com. Want to get your own car? Autozin takes the guesswork out of online car shopping. With their meticulous listings, user reviews, and detailed insights, you’re equipped to find the perfect match every time.

After choosing Invoicebus for our product name all other ideas came spontaneously. The name for our blog Invoicebus Garage has two meanings: first, bus is transportation vehicle and need a garage in which will be preserved and repaired; and second, most of the enthusiastic and creative developers & designers gather in garages and start their own companies.

The story and the design about our early marketing site (as we call it) will be told in future posts, so stayed tuned and don’t forget to subscribe for news.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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