After my post about how badly designed and updated the Top Billing website is, I eventually have a reply from them. Well it isn’t a direct reply, I was actually CC’ed in the mail. One of their journalists came across the post, and forwarded the link until eventually “Philip Copeman” - the designer / webmaster of the site responded. Phillip does their website for free, which now makes perfect sense why the site is in the state it is in. Here is the email response I got.

From: Philip Copeman [mailto:*******pinksoft.co.za]
Sent: 12 November 2007 04:56 PM
To: Patience
Cc: Selwyn from TurboCASH; *****topbilling.com; ******@jasonbagley.com
Subject: Re: Fw: Bad crit about TB website

Yes I liked this one :

“Would you believe me if I told you that it used to be EVEN WORSE? I used to be a subscriber to their newsletter, and that was hideous too. It took about 6 months for me to actually succeed in unsubscribing (I tried, oh how I tried), and I had occasion to visit their site a couple of times in my seemingly never-ending quest to unsubscribe. I can’t even remember the specifics (I may have blocked it out due to it being so utterly horrible), but it was very ugly indeed. If I recall correctly, none of the links worked in Firefox (but we’re used to that, aren’t we?) and there was even less information than there is now.”

Imagine getting a comment like considering what you were previosuly paying!

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These comments are people crying out to contribute to the site. It is always terrible watching someone elses design, I also always think I could do better myself. Let us let them contribute. The typos and the spelling mistakes are part and parcel of Web 2.0 We shdou ldefinitely put back the user generatesd content. Thsi si the only ay to get really big on a community.

I could certainly help Jason with his Alexa rating of 1555000, he is so enthusiatic and looks really committed to it, but noone goes there. Its a simple fix to get the traffic Jason. Start with this - lets give Jason a chance to Blog on www.topbilling.com and link back to his site to show us how it should be done. Inbound links is the first step to getting traffic rankings. Good content is the second.

Patience wrote:
Remember how I felt about the website when I saw it before Liza’s improvements - here is an unbiased comment.
Liza - please can you make sure that production supply you with contact details for everything features on the programme - and please can you load these details - and please can you ask someone in production to email this guy the details of how to buy the waterpump.

I responded to the email by thanking them for actually getting back to me, and then I directed a few comments to Phillip. I rounded off my reply by offering Top Billing the opportunity to get in touch with some of SA’s top new media companies / consultants - us SA bloggers know who they are - and hopefully get Top Billing’s brand on the web to the same heights as their magazine and TV show.

Oh, the moral of the entire story is that I eventually got the contact details for the company that manufactures the waterpump that my Dad is looking for. So he is happy, and I’m on the floor laughing.