DAG Reklaam

How things started out

Already when applying for the designer job at DAG I mentioned that building websites is my specialty.

I built the website on free time next to my main responsibilities. The first month was spent mapping the company needs by talking to the management and sales team. Additionally I got to know the products and solutions they offer and met the "average" client. According to that info I got the structure for the website down.

While I was dealing with the structure, I also made quick prototypes to get the style of the page down. Although the company size is over average, than the digital brand was left in a shabby state.

To satisfy the creative director, I had to make some changes to my usual process. Instead of designing for a full HD display I had to hand off prototypes in 4K format and only then I could design for the average office worker.

Development

If the design was solid I could start with development. As my stack I decided for Strapi CMS and Next.js front-end. For contact form I used Twilio free tier (there is a lesson here, but more about that later) and for analytics I used Umami.

Thanks to the previously written down stucture it was an easy job to prepare all the components and their fields in Strapi. I filled these with template content and started work in Next.js. I used Postman to optimize all the requests to the back-end.

The biggest hurdle I had to overcome was the low resolution of my office monitor. It was color accurate, but the resolution was way below full HD and so to really test my progress I had to go around office asking people to see the developer instance.

As a bonus, I could get lot's of good feedback from my coworkers.

Twilio free tier was ended

Every morning I checked Umami. I had coded some primary error logging into it and through that I could track what file formats the contact form needed, how well the Google search propagation went, but one morning I saw an error that letters aren't coming through any more. It turned out that Twilio had ended it's free tier and so I rewrote the email logic into Strapi. Error quickly detected, fixed and a new skill unlocked!

Additional development

Üks päev sadas minu kabinetti sisse projektijuht, säramas nagu päike, ja pitchis mulle idee: mis oleks, kui toodete all olev galerii võimaldaks ka enne ja pärast funktsionaalsust. Küsisin, mille jaoks ta seda kasutaks ja sain vastuseks, et seda oleks autode kleebiste peal hea kasutada. Ega mul tegelikult väga mingit muud võimalust polnud, kui et asi ära teha. Umbes pool päeva hiljem sai galeriisse panna ühe pildi kohale ka kaks pilti.

One day a project manager rushed into my office, shining like morning sun. He pitched an idea to me: what if we could add a before/after slider into the product gallery? I asked about the benefit and the need, but he had already made up his mind. About half a day later one could add two images into the place of one and user could swipe between before and after.

Google Ads

Company salesman called me and told me that he couldn't turn on the Smart Ad feature in Google. I did a quick dive into Googles documentation and found out that for that to work one need Google Analytics. Of course that also meant a need for a cookie banner, privacy policy and as the integration of Google Ads and Google Analytics events was complicated I took the full responsibility to do it all.

When everything was tested and working I handed it back to the sales team with some pointers on how to do things.