Their ads are back on TV!

How are your ears?

I am sure all involved have something better to do with time,.. most of us can’t seem to find enough of it!

The flame war will go on until you stop doing and saying stupid things.

Best of luck, now can the flame wars stop!

Firstly it should be noted that none of the people that wrote on that blog are in any way connected to me or Rapid Info. We actually only found out about the blog when I researched the stats for our site – via Google analytics tracking – which I am sure you know about.

Obviously there are two distinct sides of the story, those being the internet people you speak of and the other side being the South African consumers of internet. I never designed the site to meet the expectations of the internet world; I designed it to meet the expectations of the South African consumer market that is about 5 – 10 years behind the general internet market out there. This I am sure you would not disagree on as you should know the South African market.

Regarding the basics of usability, design and so on that rests in the eye of the beholder. You can’t please everyone and the site is not aimed at the high internet techno fundie user, as yourself, but rather at the 27 year old female who simply wants quick, useful information fast and does not want to keep looking at 2 million different things on offer but wants to go to one location where everything is readily available, concise yet detailed enough. We have had literally 100s of emails/phone calls/comments from people all around South Africa that say things such as “South Africa has needed this for a very long time” “brilliant site” “user friendly and informative” etc. It is obvious that these are the people I am aiming the campaign and the site at. Not you. As I stated earlier I am not here to please everyone in South Africa / the World – that would be very arrogant and foolish.

As for “I work in an environment of innovation,
new media, technology and so forth” (copied from your email to me) well we have had many people from that exact environment contact us to say they think the product is great and have also offered their services to us on how we can improve. Rapid Info is a living product as it constantly has to change and reinvent itself to meet the demands of the ever changing society we find ourselves in and many have offered to assist us in doing just that. The site is currently being converted to meet the demands for cell phone users (so they can use the site on their phone), downloads, shopping portals, blogging, rss feeds and many other things which people expect to find regarding a site in this day and age. We had to start somewhere and Rome was not built in a day.

We had extensive test groups carried out for the design, look and feel of the site for our direct target market and have custom built it to their expectations and requirements – it isn’t meant for everyone. It also will change over time as the South African market catches up to the general internet market out there so the design of it is not here to stay forever. As it is a new and introductory site we decided to go with what South Africans know and then ease them into what should be… i.e. what you see overseas plus web 2.0 / 3.0 etc.

All content is from reputable sources and has taken 6 months to do. We publish 90 articles every month and unfortunately mistakes will happen… For this we apologise. Not to mention the 300 PDFs on the site. We also seek to have original content hence certain rss feeds would be pointless.

Baby steps and foundations are needed first – running before we can walk is pointless. Not to mention that we had to get out there first before we could start with things like rss feeds. People are coming to us with their ideas and possible new developments and that is what we wanted. From September there will be a major change… and the South African market won’t be scared of it because they will trust Rapid Info as a brand to move along with it.

I have obviously come across this after getting my google reports and well like someone up there posted you can’t keep everyone happy. Not that, that was my intention. Point being I have done some research on who you are so I know what I am dealing with. I don’t take criticism to heart as that serves no purpose but I am interested to know exactly what you would do to the site so that it meets your standards? All fine and well to sit here and say how bad it is but how about meeting face to face with me and perhaps, educating me. I have never been an internet “geek” as you so call yourself so my site might not be the latest high tech design however I would be interested to hear from you what you would have done to the design.

As for the content well not everyone enjoys every book ever published and nor do writers seek to entertain the masses but rather their niche. My niche seems to enjoy the content. As for the spellig mistakes and grammatical errors my apologies. We are in the process of correcting them and thanks to those that take the time to make constructive criticism mistakes can be corrected faster.

I look forward to receiving your feedback… you have my email.