TERMS OF REFERENCE – WEB DEVELOPER

Background

The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) is a leading Africa-based, African-led, international research institution headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, with a regional office in Dakar, Senegal. Our researchers are contributing to the body of evidence about the critical issues in population health and wellbeing impeding Africa’s development in order to provide strong direction and recommendations to policy- and decision-makers at all levels. Our priority research areas are Human Development, Health and Well-Being, Data Science and Evaluation, and Population Dynamics and Urbanization in Africa. In addition to the research component, APHRC has other programmatic areas in Research and Related Capacity Strengthening, Policy Engagement and Communications and International programs.

Scope of work

APHRC is looking for an experienced firm/company/organization to carry out a review, audit and redesign of the APHRC website to align to its new strategic plan, increase speed of access, improve data security and mobile responsiveness as well as search engine optimization.

The consultant will:

• Conduct an audit on the APHRC website, compile a report of findings, and proposed changes for the assignment.
• Conduct a market research on the ranking of competitor’s vs APHRC and make the necessary changes for better ranking.
• Design a modern, simple, clean and polished new website with high-resolution images/videos.
• Design a visually appealing landing page that displays more dynamic content such as new blogs, catchy project updates, latest publications, and recent achievements, and social media activities in a more intuitive manner.
• Design the new website in accordance with APHRC’s brand guidelines including color pantones.
• The new website should support tools such as AI enhanced chat functionality for real-time support.
• The new design should be device and browser compatible.
• Reorganize our research outputs e.g. publications, projects, blogs, documents etc. into an easily searchable and high search engine optimized library with relevant metadata, author information, related funders and partners.
• Work with experienced copywriters to develop, update, and refresh the website content according to APHRC’s tone and personality, as well as aligning with the new APHRC strategic plan 2022 – 2026.
• Integration of QR coded staff profiles in the website back end to allow printing of scan-able business cards with links to staff profiles in the front-end.
• Improve the security of the website and ensure protection from cyber attacks.
• Update the website to the latest content management system and ensure compatibility of all third party plugins, custom templates and add-ons.
• Develop additional WordPress plugins and custom pages to meet the requirements of the website.
• Examine the website XML sitemaps and update the sitemaps on all search engines.
• Assess the website’s crawlability by all search engines and ensure better ranking.
• Find and fix duplicate content, broken links and update the new links on all sitemaps.
• Check if the website is using the right redirects, canonical tags, and robots.txt.
• Compare and contrast the use of meta-data, keywords placement and backlinks from similar sites and ensure APHRC website stands out from the rest through good selection of Meta tags and keywords.
• Review and update all breadcrumbs and ensure correct usage and alignment.
• Review our google analytics reports and AdSense; and use the data to make search engine optimization and design adjustments as recommended.
• Cross Website linking.

Qualifications and Experience

• The applicant must be a firm/company/organization with years of experience in the web design and development space with a good portfolio of similar tasks.
• Selected team members should have a degree or diploma in related disciplines e.g. Software Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering or any relevant field.
• Vast experience in developing websites using content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc.
• Experience in the use of tools such as Google search console, GTMetrix, Google Page Speed Insights and Alexa to conduct website analysis, measure website traffic and performance, and also identify and fix issues.
• Understanding of Linux web hosting environments.
• Excellent skills in use of web developer tools to inspect HTML, PHP and CSS supported pages and make necessary edits to the web pages as recommended.
• Ability to analyze and critique requirements and make recommendations on possible
  solution designs.
• Ability to complete work independently, incorporate client feedback, and deliver on time.
• Excellent troubleshooting and communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to develop a dynamic website by sharing previous work done.

How to apply

Respond with your cover letter, a proposal, detailed CV of the staff who will undertake the task and 5 links to a portfolio of similar work to consultancies@aphrc.org  and copy  procurement@aphrc.org by 27^th October 2023. Please use “Website Developer” as the subject title of your email. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Applications should be should be addressed to:

The Human Resources Officer

African Population and Health Research Center, Inc

APHRC Campus, Manga Close, off Kirawa Road, Kitisuru

P.O. Box 10787-GPO, Nairobi

Website: www.aphrc.org

Special Notice

APHRC is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. All employment decisions are made based on qualifications and organizational needs. Reasonable accommodation may be provided to applicants with disabilities upon request to support their participation in the recruitment process.