Big retailers like Amazon have trained customers to expect free shipping, or at least a low-cost economy shipping option. When choosing shipping providers for your own company, should you go with the lowest-cost provider? Probably not, and I’ll explain why. In most cases, the cheapest shipping option will be the US Postal Service. But even […]

Suppose that you’re a typical online retailer, and your official policy is to ship orders in 24-48 hours. Sure, you try to get the product out the door as fast as you can, but you don’t guarantee any exact turnaround time for shipping a given order. Now, what if a customer says they really, really […]

For most customers, the whole point of a user forum is to provide a place where they can get questions answered and share tips with other users. There are several ways to make this happen: – Get so many customers using the forums on a regular basis that virtually every question gets answered by the […]

Earlier this week, the frame from my glasses snapped in two. Without a spare pair to use, I was forced to clumsily tape the frame back together while waiting for new glasses to arrive. My lack of proper planning aside, it’s really incredible how spectacularly a pair of eyeglasses can fail. In fact, I would […]

Let’s say you sell a product that consumers usually buy in batches of two. Your store starts with five in stock. Someone comes in and buys two units, leaving you with three. Then someone else shows up and takes two more. Now you’re down to one unit left, and it sits there untouched for months. […]

Whenever you add a feature or attribute to a product, there’s a good chance that the new addition creates an unintended consequence or cost. For example: – Smaller gadgets are easier to carry in your pocket, but also easier to lose. – Latex-based paint is water-soluble for quick clean up, but will show ugly streaks […]

Returning holiday gifts can be a real drag. I ran into this problem first hand when I needed to exchange a few items from a small, online-only retailer. Without the option of going to a local store, I contacted the website to ask what the options were. They didn’t have any method for processing returns […]

Earlier this week, I went to get the long-awaited vaccination for the swine flu. I’m already a registered patient at the doctor’s office that I used, so I figured the paperwork would be minimal. Sure enough, I just had to fill out one form with my name, date, etc. But when I brought it to […]

If you’ve ever tried searching for something on Flickr, you may have been inundated with dozens or even hundreds of photos that were taken by the same person. In my experience, this happens when someone takes a ton of pictures at a concert, trade show or company gathering, and then tags them all with the […]

I recently heard that something like 97% of bank robbers are caught within a week after the robbery. This makes me wonder: what percentage of would-be robbers are actually aware of this stat? If more of them knew how bad their odds are, would the number of robberies go down? I’d be very curious to […]