Who wants to become a perfect website? Behind the scenes of the project for Dmitry Dibrov

The website of a public figure has a strange reputation: it is considered a poster. Photos, a biography, a list of titles, and that is all. But Dmitry Dibrov needed a different website. Not a showcase but a working tool: a place where people come with a proposal and from which that proposal quickly reaches the team.

We tell how we approached the task, which questions we solved and what of this will be useful to anyone making a personal brand website.

The task: a website that accepts invitations

A person of this scale gets proposals from all sides: organizers of holidays, producers, advertisers. While they look for the right contact on social networks, through acquaintances or agents, some of the proposals get lost. The website had to become one clear entry point.

That is why we formulated the task not as “make a beautiful website” but as “shorten the path from the idea of an invitation to a request in the team’s hands”. Everything else, the design, the texts and the structure, is subordinated to this path.

Three readers, three scenarios

The first thing we did was to find out who comes to the website and why. There turned out to be three groups with different expectations:

1. Scenario 1

   Holidays and events

   It is important for an organizer to understand the format of participation, not to read a biography. They need a short form: a date, a city, a type of event.

2. Scenario 2

   Shoots

   A producer needs dates, the format of the project and the contact of the person who makes the decision. Extra steps scare them off here.

3. Scenario 3

   Advertising collaborations

   It is important for a brand to see what a collaboration looks like in reality: the format of the integration, the contact and the terms of the request.

Requests for events, shoots and collaborations come right from the website. That is why each scenario must have its own clear path: a request goes straight to the right person, and the team does not have to find out what it is about at all.

How we built the structure

For a personal website we start from a short structure: not to bloat the site with sections nobody will open. The home page answers the question “who is this and what can be done with them”, the areas lead to requests, and everything else stays one click away.

A personal website works like a reception: in five seconds a visitor should understand whom they have come to and where to go next.

Code Republic

Here we followed the same principle as in the studio’s other projects: first we understand why people come, and only then do we draw the interface.

What matters for the website of a public figure

From this project and similar ones we have developed a short list of rules. It suits an artist, an expert and a business owner whose name is the main asset:

• One main goal. If there are three equally loud calls on a page, not one of them works.
• A request without registration. The shorter the form, the more requests.
• The mobile version is a priority. Proposals are more often opened from a phone, in a break between things.
• Speed. A heavy website with a video on the first screen loses visitors before they finish reading the headline.
• A live presentation. Photos and videos work better than any description, but they must not get in the way of the path to a request.

Technologies and speed

The website is built on Next.js: this lets us make fast pages and that very smooth interface expected from a media website.

• Next.js
• Responsive layout
• Request forms
• Analytics

What this project taught us

The main conclusion: a personal brand website has no “merely image” task. Even if nobody calls it a sales website, it sells: time, attention, participation. That is why its effectiveness should be counted in requests, not in views.

If you need a website for an expert, an artist or an entrepreneur, take a look at the project page and the “Website development” service. Tell us about your task and we will suggest a structure and estimate the timeline.