BIGFIELD DIGITAL

Project brief & work

AllBridesAid is a Nigerian wedding community where intending couples and other users can find trusted wedding vendors from all across the country, connect, and transact with them. The platform was founded by Dr. Chinyere Ochuba, who is a practicing Medical Doctor, wedding blogger, and fashion enthusiast. With a shift towards technology in the 21st century, AllBridesAid was born out of a need to help intending couples enjoy a hassle-free wedding planning process and ensure that Brides feel at ease while they tick their checklist and plan for a stylish and grand day.

The Task at Hand

Dr. Chinyere needed an agency with experience in web application development to create a digital platform to bridge the gap between intending couples and wedding vendors all cross Nigeria who offer products and services needed for the ‘big day’. She also wanted us to build a community where every user can interact with each other, get wedding inspiration and advice needed to implement a series of successful wedding activities including, proposal, engagement and the wedding party though a feature that works like social media. A wedding page was to be included in the web application to let intending couples share information about their wedding to their friends, family, and guests.

How We Helped

Our client had a basic idea of what she wanted but hadn’t mapped out all the functionalities which she’ll want the web application to contain. We loved Dr. Chinyere’s idea and wanted to help her make it a reality so our team of Web developers and project manager were in constant communication with the client via phone calls, WhatsApp Messenger, and Skype as we came up with an implementation process. We started out with Branding; we created a logo design, came up with the slogan, ‘Every Bride’s Pal’, and selected the brand colours. We went ahead to design a mock-up for the web application and built a Coming Soon page where people could sign-up with their email address and get notified when the project is launched.

Based on the client’s preference, we created a web application with separate login interface for the admin, vendors, and users. The robust application was created with various Tech Stack which includes HTML5/CSS3, JS, VueJs, Laravel, Pusher Realtime Channel, Communication, Mailgun Transactional Email Service, and it has various features, some of which are explained in details below.

• Ad Listing: This page shows all services and products offered by any registered Nigerian vendor on the platform. It contains their information, charges, and pictures of what they sell or services they render, as well as an option to message them.
• Real Weddings: A page to feature and showcase the wedding activities, pictures, and love stories of users on the platform.
• Blog: The web application contains a be-spoke custom made blog that houses articles on relationships, love, wedding preparation advice, and content intended to educate, entertain and inspire soon-to-be couples.
• Social Feeds: On this page, users in the community get to enjoy social media features like status updates, likes or comments on a post just like it’s done on the regular social media platforms like Instagram.
• My Planner: This contains a drop-down list of features like:
  • Checklist: Intending couples can view a list of activities to help them prepare for their wedding; by clicking on the checkbox, a tick appears to indicated that the task has successfully been completed.
  • Wishlist: This feature allows Brides to add items which they’ll want people to get for them as a wedding gift, they can also include where the item can be purchased, for example, Amazon.
  • Guestlist: For each event leading up to a user’s wedding day, they can add details of their invited guests and the system will automatically notify the guests that they have been invited to the ceremony.
  • My Website: This is one of the most interesting features because it allows intending couples to create their wedding website right within the platform without having to deal with a single line of code. On this wedding website, couples can allow people to see their wedding train, gallery, event location, proposal story, wedding hashtag, and every other information about their upcoming wedding.
  • Fav. Listing: If you have found some vendors you’ll want to work or interact with, you can simply add them to this page and easily chat with them whenever you need to.
• Messages: Phone numbers were intentionally excluded from the vendors profile because the platform is created to encourage interaction between every user on the platform. When a user finds a service they need, they are expected to directly send a message to the vendor and build up the relationship from that point through the real-time chat feature. Furthermore, if anyone puts up a question on their social feed or identifies that they need an advice, other users can reply in the comment section or send them a message.
• Notification: Just like social media, whenever a user within the community interacts with another user’s page by following or unfollowing them, liking or commenting on their post, or taking any action, they will receive a notification in the app and via email.

The platform was created in a way that all users can set up their profile information, add a profile image, update their status and even get help from the admin. From the Vendor’s Dashboard, they can view their follower, following and fund their wallet balance using Paystack (a secure payment gateway we have integrated into the site). The funds in their wallet will be used if they decide to run a promotion for their product or service to increase their visibility; promotions can be done with as low as #1000 for 7 days.

We also went ahead to create a separate admin interface where our client and her team can easily manage the users of their application, approve vendor’s listing, create and post articles on the blog to keep everyone engaged, educated, and entertained.