KOSSA
KOSSA needed a public home for its youth football programmes across West Africa. We built a fast single-page launch site that captures enquiries from coaches, schools, investors and brand partners by interest area.
Built KOSSA's first public website, turning a strong brand identity into a live site that now captures enquiries from coaches, schools and brand partners across three continents.
What we were solving
KOSSA is a youth sports development organisation founded by Solon Capital Partners with Rising Academies. It runs two connected programmes. KOSSA Nxt Gen is an after-school football programme operating in several countries across West and Central Africa, with an ambition to reach a million young players across the continent. KOSSA Academies are selective residential institutions where teenagers train, study and live with daily support. Child safeguarding sits above everything else the organisation does.
The problem was visibility. An organisation with that scale of ambition, and backers of that calibre, had no public website. It had a polished 2024 brand guidelines document, a founder-written copy draft, and nothing at kossa.com. Governments, school programmes, investors, brand partners and coaches had no way to identify themselves or get in touch.
Success meant a credible, on-brand launch site that could go live quickly, explain the model in one scroll, and sort inbound interest into categories the small founding team could act on.
How we tackled it
Launch page first, not a full build
KOSSA did not need a ten-page site before it needed a presence. We scoped a single-page launch site: hero, what KOSSA is, the two programmes, safeguarding, founding partners, and a sign-up form. The trade-off is less content and fewer SEO surfaces. The gain was speed to launch and a page the founding team could keep accurate while the organisation itself was still forming.
The brand guidelines as source of truth
The brand work was already done, so we applied the 2024 KOSSA brand guidelines rather than reinventing them: tone of voice principles, colour, typography and pattern went onto the page as written. Content came from the founder's own draft, which we reworked with the client through two structured design rounds. One change mattered more than the rest. Safeguarding started as a line inside the programme content. During round two we pulled it out into its own section, because for a youth organisation it is a trust signal, not a feature.
A form that sorts leads before a human reads them
The single call to action is an interest form. Rather than a generic contact form, we built it around an area-of-interest dropdown (Government, School Program, Investor, Brand Partner, Tournaments, Media, Coach, Athlete, Other) with a free-text field for anything that does not fit. Submissions flow into a shared Google Sheet with a timestamp, so the team can filter a coach from a brand partner without any CRM overhead. We simplified the fields during the design rounds (email required, everything else optional) to keep the barrier low for users on mobile connections across West Africa.
What we delivered
KOSSA now has a public front door that matches the standard of its brand. Governments, investors, coaches and partners who had no way to reach the organisation a year ago can find it and understand the two programmes in one scroll. In the year since launch, the form has captured enquiries from coaches, school programmes, athletes and brand partners across Africa, North America and the Middle East, each one pre-sorted by interest area, so the founding team knows what kind of conversation it is before opening it.
What we learned
For an early-stage organisation, the launch site is a filter as much as a broadcast. One page cannot speak to governments, investors, coaches and teenage athletes equally. It can let each visitor self-identify. The form's dropdown was the most important decision in the project.
Existing brand guidelines cut weeks from a build if you treat them as constraints, not suggestions. Where a client's mission carries duty-of-care weight, page structure is a statement. Moving child safeguarding into its own section changed none of the words and all of the emphasis.
Impact & outcomes
Google Search impressions, average position 6.2, first year from launch
