Big Blog

You often see big news about major new products on this blog and on our website. Launching new stuff is only a part of what we do at Skype. Another, often invisible but in the long run the more important part is improving what we already have, based on what you tell us.

Here’s a small example about a fix that we just put out there regarding how you buy SkypeIn. We have this concept of “reserved number” — that is, a SkypeIn number that you don’t currently own but that’s reserved to you. That may happen when you just click around when buying things on [Your Account](http://www.skype.com/go/myaccount) (when you select a number, you must initiate the payment in 30 minutes), or when you have a number that you owned previously, but you didn’t renew it so it “expires”, so to speak, but we still keep it with you for 90 days just in case if you want to change your mind and still extend it. Whew…

So anyway, you have these reserved numbers associated with you. But they were hard to find because their list was below the country selection, which in layout terms means “(very much) below the fold”, and nobody ever scrolled down so nobody ever saw those. And you told us, “dear Skype, this stuff is really confusing and hard to use. How about making it easier.” We looked at it and weren’t really sure why it was placed where it was, but what the heck, let’s just make it easier then.

And so now we display these reserved numbers right above the country flags so they’re really really hard to miss. More clarity in the purchasing process means more happy Skypers and less support load for Skype. Everybody wins. (Click on the picture to see the bigger version.)