Fonenode

You may have heard of the call button we launched in conjunction with Hotels.ng earlier today. The fonenode call button allows visitors to your website to call you directly without the need to install any software.

The website owner is billed for the calls at the rate of N15/min .

To install a call button on your site, all you need to do install a javascript code where you want the button to be

Here are the steps.

Register for a fonenode account on https://fonenode.com/

Login and go to the settings page under accounts

3.  Click on the call button tab

Update the number you want to receive the calls on. Make sure it is in the international format (Nigerian numbers only)

Update the code of your website as seen on this page https://fonenode.com/docs/button

Buy credit when your credit finishes.

If you have any questions or need help email us at [email protected], tweet @Fonenode or leave a comment here.

Businesses that have integrated the button include Hotels.ng and Simply Infants

Fonenode in conjunction with Hotels.ng – the largest hotel booking website in Nigeria have launched the first click to call button in Nigeria,if not Africa.

With the call button, visitors browsing the Hotels.ng website via supported browsers (Latest Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer) can call the call centre of Hotels.ng without the need to download any software or make any payment.

We expect this to significantly increase lead generation for Hotels.ng and as a result, have direct positive impact on their revenue.

To try the click to call button,

1.       Visit http://hotels.ng

2.       At the top right corner click the dropdown and then click the Call us for free button

3.       You will see a pop up button. Wait about 10 seconds for it to load then click it.

Speak to the customer support agent and book your Hotel.

For quite a lot of people, they simply want to know what Fonenode can do for them now. Telephony API is simply technical jargon.

One of the low hanging fruit applications of Fonenode is a way to verify a phone number entered in your website or mobile app. It might be important for the registration of your website or to secure a transaction.

Most people are aware of OTP by Quickteller or the call that you get when you sign up for WhatsApp. Something like Fonenode is used for it.

So we built a live demo (http://demo.fonenode.com/otp/) you can try out to see Fonenode in practical action. Put your number in the international format without the plus sign (234802XXXXX). The code used can be found here.

So you no longer need to go for long meetings with telcos to do you your number verification, that can be sorted easily from the comfort of your home.

Logo So we finally got a logo done. We hope you like it. That symbol is a node and we chose blue because it is a soothing colour. No complicated reason behind the choice.

SSL We also got an SSL certificate for our website and API. You can now be certain that any interaction you or your application is having with our website is fully encrypted.  Our API docs and Fonenode code repo have been updated to reflect this change

Challenges

Payments have been manual (bank transfers!!!) but we are working hard to get a good payment option that works for everyone in the long term

It has not been easy communicating the use of Fonenode to non-developers but we are working on improving that. However, if you have a website and would like to know how Fonenode may be useful to you, please drop us a line [email protected]

Per Second Billing We are aware that per second billing is a fairer pricing scheme. We are working with our partners to convert our cost from per min to per second so we can transfer that flexibility you. Please be patient. Of course, if you have any questions our contact details are here Other: We have been amazed at the response we have got so far and we’re closing in on 100 registered developers most of who have finished their free credits.

There are also some really interesting applications and usecases coming up. We cannot wait to share them with you.

TL;DR – We launched  Fonenode, a telephony API for Nigeria. If you are a developer, you can sign up here. http://fonenode.com/signup . I know the title sounds a bit cheesy but bear with me a little. First of all, let me begin by responding to the question “why would telephony require an API?"

Just like email, your telephone (the phone part) is another method of communication. Software applications should be able to interface easily with it. For instance, what if you wanted to verify numbers that were registered on your website by calling the number and  telling them a verification digit combination? Perhaps you built an application that sends email notification to parents when it is time to vaccinate their kids but you wanted to also call their phones since they may not have email addresses or may not be literate? What of if you ran a call centre and you wanted to use a computer (without the need for external hardware) to  track received calls so you know who received what, when and for how long. The above are three of countless use cases where you would need a telephony API to integrate with web applications. Before today, although it was possible to integrate your applications with Nigerian networks, it would have required countless of physical meetings with the networks and an insane amount of money required as deposit. That's if you were finally even allowed to integrate with them. Today, we have launched Fonenode to help sort that out.  With N2000 ($13) to buy credit, and staying anywhere in the world, your app can communicate with the 100 million phone lines in Nigeria.  We want you to focus on building stuff and not having meetings or making huge capital expenditures just because you have an idea you want to test. We are giving N150 free credit (about 10 mins) to the first 50 developers that sign up.   Check out demo apps and code samples at https://github.com/fonenode

Sample code for number verification can be found here: https://github.com/fonenode/number_verification_php If you have any questions, just send an email to [email protected]

May a thousand innovative use cases bloom.