GBC has a new website

The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) has just launched a new website. I heard this from a friend, a few weeks ago and so this morning i decided to take a look.

My first stop was www.gbc.com.gh but nay, it was NCS’ rude ad saying:

THANKS FOR DOING BUSINESS WITH NCS

IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Dear Customer,

We write to thank you for doing business with NCS all these years. We believe that working closely with you to achieve your information technology needs has been helpful.We however regret to have discontinued your web-hosting service with NCS because of non-payment of fees for same.

Please do well to renew the web-hosting service ASAP. Below is the new prize guide for you perusal.

Note: Mr (and Mrs NCS), if I owe you, and you do this to my domain name, I will never pay.

Back to the issue. I then decided to use MSN Search to look for the new GBC website. The website that had what I wanted was modernghana.com Never heard of it though.

Well, this is the news item. GBC’s new website is at www.gbcghana.com

The website looks nice, but could be better. Some pages return 404 error meaning those pages are not available. This is not good for a national broadcaster.

Overall, the design is simple and nice. The web design firm is not displayed. It could also have been done internally.

Well, according to the news item:

Mr Yaw Owusu-Addo, Acting Director General of GBC, said the launch of the website formed part of ongoing processes to give the Corporation a facelift to remain a pioneer in the media industry.

He said the site would be upgraded to reach its optimum on the Internet to compete with other international media websites and provide the best services to its publics.

Mr Owusu-Addo expressed the hope that the website would open business opportunities for the Corporation through advertisement to enable GBC generate more revenue for internal development.

Mr Owusu-Addo,  have you looked at the website of your “competitors” before saying this? Have you seen the website of VOA, BBC, SABC, Deutch Welle,  RFI,  Radio  Netherlands etc?

My final verdict: the new website is much better than the poorly-designed and never-updated all one that had a news item about Jerry Rawlings as president of Ghana. The news item was on the homepage and published since 1996! It took the hue and cry of a Ghanaian newspaper to have the entire old website removed from www.gbc.com.gh

I can only hope that the regular update of the new website would be sustained.