Dele Farotimi is a legal practitioner, a seasoned activist and member of Citizens’ Rally against Oppression. He was called to the Nigerian bar in the year 1999. Dele Farotimi attended the Lagos State University (LASU) and was President of the Student Union in 1993. This leadership opportunity ingrained in him the desire for social change.
We were referred to Mr Farotimi's assistant, Feyisayo by a long time friend of the house. After a few phone calls that totalled less than 10 minutes, we had a clear idea of what was required of us.
Website Requirements
– Allows for easy publishing of articles, books, photographs, personal writings, videos, news and audio materials on the website
– Allows for free download and purchase of published books by the public, both locally and internationally
– Allows for share of content from the website to social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook Messenger.
– A link on the site that allows visitors to like his Facebook page and follow on Twitter
– Indicate the number of views on published multimedia contents
– Allows for visitors comments and user registration
– Allows visitors subscribe to feeds
– A Whatsapp link that allows for easy user engagement and communication
– A website that is both desktop and mobile friendly
– Ensures good security.
The vision was clear, the mission was how to set it all up in less than 10 days. We set out to prioritise what needed to be done quickly to get his book ready for downloading in 7 days.
How we got the job done for Mr Dele Farotimi
Day 1. Domain name registration, web hosting subscription, logo development. We settled with Dreamhost.com because of their unlimited email capacity. We also discussed some potential logos and settled on the one below
Day 2. Installation of content management system that can be managed by us (RedBoxx) and his team after we are done with the setup. Yes, we offer a Website Management Service too.
Day 3. Setup of 2 Factor Authentication for security of the website with Google Recaptcha and then limiting the acceptable number of failed log in attempts.
Day 4. Installation of a mobile friendly user interface that's neat, consistent and easy to navigate for website visitors.
Day 5. Setup of basic content that website visitors can view to understand who Mr Farotimi is and what his website is about. – About Dele
Day 7. Setup of Homepage. The homepage of a website determines how valuable a website is to the viewers/visitors and ultimately the owner(s). Visuals are key to creating this value and also capturing the interest of website visitors. We focused on using decent quality images all around DeleFarotimi.com on all the articles on the site and setup those content on his home page ensuring each category listed above is well represented.
Day 8. Setup of Book Publishing page for Mr Farotimi's book, Do Not Die In Their War
Day 9. Test of look and feel of the home page and book download page. At this point we figured the book download page needed some more information and hence added info about the book itself and the author. Our reason for doing this was to ensure that if anyone lands directly on the download page for the book, they should be able to get a quick summary of the book.
Day 10. Inclusion of clear references to the available book on the homepage of the site and also across other pages.
This in itself is not actually a bad thing to occur but the image was out of proportion and didnt properly display the icon. Our task is to make our clients first and foremost look good and then right after look better than their competition. Seeing this preview of the shared page ultimately kicked us into phase 2 of the project – SEO for the entire website. This is where we will determine what shows to the public as previews of each page when they are shared and also indicate other things that will help the website be ready for searching. Our first goal was to quickly setup the homepage and the book download pages.
The updated preview of the home page is now as below which I believe is way better in terms of building a brand for Mr Farotimi and that's our goal right there.
You saw me slightly say we have entered phase 2 of the project above. If you head to the home page of the site now, you probably will believe the site is completely done. However, based on our level of operations it isnt done yet. There are still 2 more phases left to ensure the project is properly done. That's what we do at RedBoxx, we deliver top quality work consistently.
