A client is asking us advise for creating a website in an African country of low bandwidth. You might find below advise interesting.

Certain measures should be taken to secure visibility to all types of visitors with even the worst possible connections. Therefor we recommend:

Technical measures for the site

• must be designed for small monitors, as many web surfers in that region surf the net on (old) laptops and old monitors - that means a fixed width of 700-800 pixels
• should not use much flash or other advanced graphic coding for important parts of the site - rather the site should be written in plain HTML
• should use simple and standard font types, colours and HTML tags to avoid errors in older software display
• there should not be heavy or big images or graphical work on the site
• if any videos they should be hosted via YouTube in low resolution, not directly at web server in high resolution
• must be tested in Internet Explorer as main browser, as this is what people use
• have automated back-up of website
• have polite down-time message giving basic info when site can't display properly
• have the website hosted in secure country site - but not too far geographically from main target group, as this slows the tempo

And there are other considerations to have in mind.
Since many users have experience with websites from Nigerian and other African countries as being hosts for unreliable or scamming websites, it would be very important to radiate reliability from the website - both for African, Western or Asian visitors to the site. Therefor we recommend:

Content related measures

• make the site look very professional and corporate
• have lots of links only to other trusted sites
• display the company as member of respected associations
• display any certifications or other official proves of the company, its owners, its employees, projects etc.
• display clearly how much the company lives up to all types of international industry standards
• display business links to European partner companies if possible
• have very transparent contact and about us texts
• display VAT number and other official registration and contact info