We were able to complete the edits and relaunch our primary delivery site (www.asimpleword.org) in January. The French translation of that site is nearing completion and should be ready for field testing by July of this year. Because we have been able to find “first response” teams in at least four Francophone West African countries, we anticipate that the launch of the French site should go without a hitch. However, we want to be assured that success does not become our downfall. If our aggressive advertising strategy for West Africa does drive users to our site, will the site be able to handle the demand?

To find out, we are about to engage in a capacity testing experiment. 

Nigeria is the largest country by population in all of Africa. Because the official language of Nigeria is English, it is also the largest English-speaking African country.

So, during the last week in May and the first two weeks in June, we plan to engage in a Facebook advertising campaign that will target Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos.

Lagos has 13 million people in the city proper, but the regional population adds up to five million more. We will use the Facebook platform to draw attention to the site and attract visitors to the site. Each post will link directly to content from the website. We are hoping to get up to 20,000  people to ‘like’ the ads and at least 5% of those people to visit the website. If the ads accomplish what we are hoping for, they should provide traffic to the site sufficient to test how the site responds to heavy use.

We hope to post the results of our experiment in the first week of July. 

Of course, we have an ulterior motive as well. This experiment will also allow us to minister to those who visit the site, connect with us via WhatsApp and email, or sign up for one of the 15 courses that are available online.

This is an ambitious experiment for us. We are hoping to learn many helpful lessons in the days ahead.