Am I friendly enough to you?

"Earning some cash by selling my spare time to others online? Sounds great".

Yes, that is a great idea, and we believe in it strongly. That is why we do our best to create MinuteBox and realise this dream. We have taken care of all the details to make sure the billing process is well integrated. Using our bidding system you can easily settle a price and time for a chat session with one of our experts. Our chat application runs with any standard browser and requires no installation.

Enough? No.

I feel creating a website is a bit like making a movie. Maybe you have a good story to tell, but you need to make the movie easy to understand. Otherwise, it would be another self-indulgent piece of "art" which your audience may not appreciate.

With this in mind, we have come to question what our own audience thinks of MinuteBox.

We are proud of what we have done with MinuteBox, but it seems it may not yet be enough. What hurdles are stopping people using it? Thanks to my friend, Cathy (a pretty and smart girl), we have realised that MinuteBox is simply not user-friendly enough.

After considering her comments, I started to read books about web usability. As a non-technical person, that is a new world to me. I now realise that we have made some assumptions in our design which make the Minutebox experience less comfortable for our users. They do not want to have to think hard to use our website; if they find it difficult, they will simply leave.

It is now time to make MinuteBox friendly and welcoming to our users. Making friends with Minutebox should be effortless. Finding the benefits of MinuteBox should not be like digging at rocks to find gems. It should be a well-presented cuisine, served up for your enjoyment.

We have found a user interface expert who shares our vision, and will be helping to update our design to make MinuteBox all it should be for its users. We are all working hard on these changes, and will keep you updated.

We feel enthusiastic about the new and improved MinuteBox, and hope it will excite you also when you get a chance to see it.

"Naked Conversations" with users

Our blog has been quiet for a while. In all honesty, this is my fault; there are lots of things going on at MinuteBox. Also, I have been unsure of how to keep our users updated via a blog. Why is that? I am still new to the idea of blogging, particularly blogging for a company rather than personally. This must make me sound like an unevolved ape from a different century! But please bare with me - this ape is learning!

I understand perfectly that blogging is one of the important means of communication with customers/users in the 21st century. As far as MinuteBox is concerned, we are always keen to get feedback from users, with the aim of improving our service. Establishing good communication with users by blogging is a must to us.

We despearately want to know what our users want from Minutebox. However, I am just not so sure what is the right approach to write a blog that will interest them. Of course, I do not want to bore you with every trivial detail at MinuteBox! However, I do hope to keep you all well informed on what we are trying to achieve. I also want to give you the opportunity to have your voice heard, if you do not agree at our plans.

I have begun to read books whose aim is to teach an ape like me how to blog. I have come across a very useful book: Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble/Shel Israel. An important lesson I have learned is that blogs are a powerful and free tool for companies to advocate their services and products. If you think you can create a fake, "character blog" as part of your marketing campaign to fool blog readers, the blogsphere will show you who is the fool right away. The best approach is to have "naked" (frank, honest and open) conversations with your readers/users/customers.

Many of you might think that it is an such obvious thing. However, it is a simple but significant lesson to me. MinuteBox is young and new. In our Beta stage, the website is not perfect. We are trying our best to change this situation, but we are not yet there; we still have a long way to go. I feel I have misjudged in expecting we could improve MinuteBox to the high standard you expect, before showing our customers.

Don't get me wrong. We are very proud of what we have done with MinuteBox already. However, as 0ur users, you should be the judge. I now realise it is impossible for us to improve MinuteBox to meet your high standards, without your valuable input.

I think it is time for us to strip MinuteBox, expose its mysteries, and reveal its every aspect. You are our companions in this journey, and we want to share everything with you.