AlloDocteurs.Africa, the first health service and information website in french-speaking Africa

17 Juin Média (part of the Newen group) produces several television shows, including the health programmes 'Le Magazine de la santé' for France 5 and 'Bonjour Santé' for Canal+ Afrique. With the success of the latter show, 17 Juin Média is looking to position itself in the digital sector and become a key player in the African health market. SQLI assisted the production company with this ambition.Une plateforme inédite
 

A unique platform

17 Juin Média has pursued its ambition with the creation of a platform that has three main objectives:

• Become a daily news media;
• Provide a range of health services for the general public;
• Provide a showcase for stakeholders in the African health sector (professionals, health institutions and startups).

The purpose of the website AlloDocteurs.Africa is to inform, raise awareness and encourage action among populations to tackle health issues. 17 Juin Média wants to reach the 120 million French-speakers living in 27 countries and territories.

A mobile first project in line with local specificities

In order to take account of the specificities of the African market, where mobile use is growing fast, the SQLI team suggested a 'mobile first' approach. The challenge was to design a platform and architecture that address the technical and economic constraints of occasionally limited Internet access, and plan for uses that require low bandwidth.

"From the outset, we designed the website to suit a continent where slow connections can be found alongside the best 4G networks. In terms of the back office, to enable our journalists to contribute content in all situations, and in terms of the users, so that they have a website version that suits their available bandwidth," adds Olivier Levard, chief editor of 17 Juin Média, who is in charge of the project.  

In order to guarantee the website's performance, specific choices were made:

• Avoid pre-loading of content;
• Limit the size of images and videos;
• Favour the use of brief textual content with links to find out more;
• Offer a geolocation version of the website: according to the country it is being accessed from, local information appears and complements regional and continental articles.

Firstly, SQLI carried out the design and development of the platform and its back office. The foundation is based on:

• The eZPlatform 2.5 CMS
• The Symfony 3.4 PHP framework
• hosting at Platform.sh. 
   

SQLI's mission continued with the development and deployment of an SEO strategy in order to build awareness of the website: acquisition, loyalty and monetization. Beyond the visitor acquisition mechanism, the SQLI team implemented traffic measurement tools. In addition to assessing content performance, the selected KPIs will form the basis for monetization. Currently, the platform is referenced by Google News and AlloDocteurs.Africa's social network pages are followed by nearly one million Internet users in Africa.
 

A unifying and collaborative website

One of 17 Juin Média's requirements was that the website should also be created in Africa: "Thanks to SQLI, we carried out some of the development work in Morocco, including development of the mobile app. The website is hosted in the continent and our journalists contribute content on location there," explains Olivier Levard.

"The website was developed very rapidly indeed and we are delighted with the results," says 17 Juin Média. Elsewhere, we very much appreciated working with SQLI's teams, which are very attentive and engaged, and able to find solutions. Today, we have a unifying tool: we receive many articles from all over Africa on a daily basis, all within a single collaborative tool. "

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