About a year ago, I went to the grocery store to buy coffee. They were out of the kind I usually get, so I chose another blend from the same company. Unfortunately, it tasted like crap, so I brought it back to the store. They refused to take it back, insisting that store policy prevents […]

If the design of your product provides built-in branding opportunities, be sure to take advantage of them. Whether you sell a physical product or provide an online service, there’s probably a place where your company’s logo appears. This logo makes it easy for potential buyers to identify your brand before purchasing. It also helps them […]

When designing a website, common sense dictates that you should display key information in plain text, rather than rendering it into an image. The rationale is simple: search engines can’t read words that are part of an image, and site visitors can’t do normal things like copying that text into a separate document for later […]

I understand why companies use “vanity” web addresses in their advertising. Typically, the goal is to provide an easy-to-remember URL, and then track exactly how many visitors responded to that campaign. But sometimes marketers forget that people actually have to remember the address before they can type it into their browser. To be successful, I […]

A few days ago, I went to a boutique theater that I haven’t visited in about a year. When I purchased the tickets, the cashier asked if I wanted to fill out a customer survey. I had some time to kill, so I agreed, expecting to get a brief questionnaire. The survey I received was […]

While shopping with my wife last weekend, I thought about some of the high-tech enhancements that people have proposed for dressing rooms. For example, at least one company has designed an interactive mirror that shows how different outfits might look. But then I realized that the most valuable enhancements are probably much simpler than that. […]

I bought some clothes at a well-known retailer over the weekend. They had a really big sale and did a great job promoting it inside the store. Afterwards, I noticed that my bag even had “Sale” written on it in huge letters. While this serves as a nice reminder to me about the event, they’re […]

Many websites and web-based applications have a “Tell a Friend” feature. The idea is to make it easy for people to share content or products that they enjoy, without the hassle of drafting a separate email and then copying in the info. However, most of the Tell a Friend features I’ve seen are buried at […]

I recently received an Amazon package that contained some small but heavy items. The box was partially open when it arrived. The cause was obvious: they didn’t use enough packing materials, so the contents bounced around wildly during shipping, nearly breaking through the tape that held the box closed. I’m sure Amazon has guidelines for […]

I had an appointment with my dentist yesterday. But right before I was supposed to leave, the dentist’s office called me to say they were running behind, and asked me to show up a little bit later than my original appointment time. Then, when I got there, I ended up waiting another 20 minutes past […]