I’m usually quite critical of the flyers I receive in the mail, since they generally do a poor job of conveying the offer and making it easy to take action on it. However, one flyer I received a few days ago managed to do everything right.

In particular, the flyer included: 

– A separate coupon for each offer, with perforations that make the coupons easy to detach.

– The address of the nearest store location, printed on every one of the coupons.

– The operating hours for that location, also printed on every coupon.

Why is this such a smart thing to do? Among other things, the approach ensures that each of the coupons contains everything that a potential customer needs in order to take action. There’s no guesswork about where the store is, or when it’s open. With fewer unknowns to worry about and no chance of an orphaned coupon that’s missing key info, the campaign should convert a higher percentage of recipients, while subtly conveying that the company offers a hassle-free experience for its customers.

A few days ago, I saw a rather strange name flash by on our caller ID. The text simply said “Server Room”, without any indication of the caller’s name or their company name. Assuming their organization isn’t actually called “Server Room”, I’m guessing that their outbound caller ID is configured incorrectly. In other words, while an identifier like “Server Room” might be helpful when making internal calls within the same company, it’s not very useful to people outside of that organization.

Seeing this bizarre caller ID made me think about how we tested our own caller ID configuration after changing phone providers last year. In particular, we placed calls from the office phone system to:

– Our own office phone numbers, to make sure the caller ID looked correct when looping a phone call back on the same network.

– Outside phone numbers (such as an employee’s cell phone) to verify that the caller ID was accurate when calling third-party numbers.

As it turned out, there were several mistakes in how the phone company configured our caller ID. It took several hours of troubleshooting with their help desk to fix the problem. And I’m glad we invested the time to get it all resolved. Given how important it is for any company to project a consistent image to customers, vendors and employees, it’s well worth the effort to make sure your caller ID is showcasing your brand name — rather than working against you by causing confusion for the person on the other end of the line.

When you’re packing a box that’s going to be shipped somewhere, or designing a product package, there’s a very simple test to verify that you’ve done your job correctly. Shake the box, and listen whether the contents are moving around. If they move a lot, there’s a significant chance that they’ll be damaged in transit. If they barely move at all, the odds are good that things will remain intact during the journey.

Obviously, there are many other factors in play here. For instance, items that aren’t very fragile can bounce around quite a bit without risking damage. But it still amazes me that so few retailers, shipping companies, and package designers ever bother to shake their containers and see what happens. By using this simple test at various stages in the design and fulfillment process, inexpensive changes can be made — like adding more bubble wrap — to ensure that products still look great when they finally end up in the customer’s hands.

I’ve read several articles lately that mention how the federal and state governments “own” all the wild animals that live within their borders. On some level, this makes sense, since animals might be considered a natural resource that is subject to public or private ownership. However, there’s a key element missing from this equation: control. In other words, it’s hard to claim that you own something if you have no way of controlling it.

Does the government control birds and other wild animals? Hardly. Birds can just fly away whenever they feel like it, crossing state and national borders in the process. Needless to say, they don’t pass through customs. With such broad freedom of travel, it’s quite clear that wild birds — along with many other wild animals — can’t be subject to ownership claims, at least not from a practical perspective.

Perhaps there is a less obvious reason that various branches of government keep reminding the press that they own all the wildlife. Maybe an estimate of the number of animals in each region, multiplied by some wacky per-animal value, is used in accounting and asset calculations. Whatever the cause, the staff members who make statements regarding government ownership of wild animals should think a little bit about how absurd this premise is in the first place, and tone down their rhetoric accordingly.

Last week, I got a flyer in the mail from a new pizza place. The flyer was fairly well-designed, and tried to convey that the restaurant was authentic, locally-owned, and not touristy. That last point seemed especially important, since virtually every Chicago pizza place is a big time tourist trap, and a restaurant catering to locals would be attractive to those of us who do our best to avoid touristy venues.

However, there was one problem with the new restaurant’s proclamation that they aren’t a tourist trap. In particular, they’re located in a tourist-heavy part of town, just north of the Chicago river and west of Michigan Avenue. While the neighborhood might not be the number one zipcode for tourist action, it’s definitely top five in the area. And that attribute puts their location at odds with their marketing communications.

What’s the problem here? In short, it’s nearly impossible to put a restaurant in a location that’s thick with tourists and have it turn into anything but a tourist trap. Especially during the warmer months, tourists are all over the city, and they’re naturally going to wander into places that are near hotels and stores. And when those tourists make up a significant portion of your customers, you’ve basically become a tourist trap, whether you intended to be one or not.

The moral of the story is simple: while it’s great to have a clear idea of what your business is (or isn’t) about, be sure you keep those core principles in mind during the early going. Otherwise, you may find that your physical location, business name, or other decisions that are virtually impossible to undo will end up working against you from the moment that you open your doors.

While helping to put together some test equipment for the office, I needed to locate a good deal on four identical monitors that met certain specifications. I searched all the usual sites, and found a great price at one of our favorite vendors. However, when we went to complete the purchase, we hit a brick wall: we needed four units, but there was a limit of three per customer.

I understand that there are various reasons that a retailer may need to limit the per-customer purchases of a particular item. However, I was disappointed that the website in question wasn’t more upfront about this restriction. In particular, they should have stated the maximum purchase volume on the product detail page, rather than waiting until after the customer added it to their cart or tried to begin the checkout process.

Plus, they should have explained how the limit is measured and what customers can do when they need more than the limit. For instance, if it’s just a daily purchase maximum, then they could advise customers to buy the additional units the following day. Of course, this will be subject to whatever rules the manufacturer or other parties have in place regarding those restrictions, so the advice to those who need a larger volume may sometimes be “sorry, you’re out of luck”.

Whatever the business case that leads to per-customer purchase limits, it’s better for everyone when they’re disclosed upfront and in the clearest manner possible. That way, shoppers won’t be surprised by a big stop sign at the last moment in the buying process. And perhaps more importantly, customers can adjust their purchasing plans before investing a lot of time and energy in a product — or a particular sales channel — that can’t accomodate the quantity they need.

A couple of days ago, I needed to update my credit card info on a particular website. Finding the right page for this task was easy enough. And the interface looked straightforward, too: just the boxes you’d expect for the card number and expiration date, plus buttons for Save and Cancel.

However, one aspect of the website’s credit card screen puzzled me. The old card number was shown as a bunch of X’s followed by the last few digits of the actual account number, but there was no indication about what happens if you leave that field unchanged. In other words, if you only need to update the expiration date, can you leave the card number alone — X’s and all? Or, do you need to re-type the card number as well?

Although my card number wasn’t changing, I decided to play it safe and re-enter both the card number and the expiration date. This worked fine, but the lack of clarity in the original interface definitely bugged me. The solution is actually very easy to implement from a design point of view. Simply add a bit of text that explains what happens if you leave the field with the X’s alone, e.g. “If your card number is staying the same, leave this field unchanged.” That way, you’ll eliminate the need for customers to re-enter data that was already in place, reduce errors, and make the process of updating a credit card less confusing as a whole.

Last weekend, I went through an almost comical series of steps to refill a prescription:

– Step 1: Show up at the pharmacy to pick up the prescription — only to have the pharmacist tell me there are no refills left.

– Step 2: Go home, locate the new prescription slip that I squirreled away after a doctor visit, and bring it to the pharmacy. However, the pharmacist says there’s a very long wait, and encourages me to come back in a few hours to pick it up.

– Step 3: Return to the pharmacy and successfully pick up the prescription.

In total, this adventure took at least an hour longer than it should have. And it made me wonder: if the store already has an automated reminder system to call you when a prescription is ready, why can’t the same system let you know about problems with your order?

Right now, I imagine that the store relies on the pharmacists to flag orders that are stuck in pending status, and expects them to make individual calls to the customers about those issues. However, the most common problems — such as a prescription that is about to run out and needs to be renewed with a new paper slip or a call to the doctor — could easily be conveyed with an automated reminder. Ideally, such reminders would be delivered a week or two before the normal refill date, so that the customer can take the appropriate action to prevent any interruption in the prescription.

By using an automated reminder system to advise customers of problems in advance, a higher percentage of prescription orders should be fillable on the normal refill date. Aside from preventing interruptions to the pharmacy’s revenue stream, this approach means less hassle and fewer wasted trips for customers, thus improving their perception of the pharmacy as a whole.

Last week, I took a day trip to the Minneapolis area for a customer meeting. The meeting was in one of the suburbs located northwest of Minneapolis itself, and I normally would have taken a cab there from the airport. However, I noticed that the region’s relatively new light rail system covered about half of the distance between the airport and the customer’s office. So, I decided to ride the train as far as I could go, and then take a cab the rest of the way.

Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. I looked at the websites for each of the downtown Minneapolis stops, and none of them mentioned how or where you could catch a cab near the train station. Sure, there was info on bus and commuter train connections, but nothing about finishing a trip by cab. I ended up making a few phone calls and locating the nearest taxi line at a nearby hotel, but the process was far more difficult than it should have been.

Assuming the goal of any public transit system is to encourage ridership and grow fare revenue, then they should really be more proactive about helping potential riders plan out as many trips as possible. This includes providing relevant information about which stations are ideal for catching a cab, or even going a step further and arranging for a formal taxi line at some of the stations. This is especially important when introducing a new mass transit system to a population that’s never had one before, or rolling out a rail network that only spans a limited distance.

By helping riders see how they can use mass transit in combination with other transportation options, more people will ride the train. And as ridership increases and financial performance improves, more funding will be allocated to growing the rail system — which ultimately makes it possible to complete a larger percentage of trips using the train alone.

Whenever I arrive at an airport, I go through the same charade: locate any bottled water in my bag, throw it away, go through the security screening, and buy a new bottled water inside the terminal. Since airports aren’t exactly the cheapest places to purchase things — especially items that you’re prohibited from bringing along — it comes as no surprise that bottled water is an expensive commodity.

Typically, obtaining a new bottled water at an airport store will run you $2.50, $3, or even $4. People accept this as a travel tax of sorts, and probably don’t think too much about it. However, the sales tactic that I saw during a recent trip really caught my attention. The airport store had a sign proclaiming that $3.29 was a great value for bottled water, since it was less than the airline charges for bottled water if you buy it on the plane. Now, I’ve never tried buying water on a plane, but something about this price comparison just rubbed me the wrong way.

A few days later, I realized why the “value” pitch bothered me so much. Promoting a product based on low prices is a sketchy approach when all the available products have artificially inflated pricing. In the case of water in airports, the government rules prohibit people from bringing water along, so the only places you can buy it are the airport stores and on the plane itself. This isn’t exactly the recipe for a competitive marketplace, and the high pricing reflects that.

In this type of market, retailers need to be careful about any messaging that puts too much emphasis on how much the item costs. By emphasizing price — even if one product is a good deal in a relative sense — you’re just reminding customers of how much they’re being ripped off. No matter how thirsty they might be, nobody enjoys paying $3 for a small bottle of water that costs $0.99 outside the airport, and anything that makes people think too much about the raw deal they’re getting is bound to hurt sales.