If a customer can’t find an item, there’s a pretty good chance they won’t be purchasing that item. Sure, some people will go out of their way to ask a sales rep for help, but I doubt that even 25% of shoppers fall into this category. Accordingly, simple logic dictates that when a product is harder to find, you’ll sell less of it.

Now instead of thinking about a single item, consider what happens when you make hundreds of items nearly impossible to find. How might this happen? Well, my local CVS pulled it off handily. They decided to do some sort of wacky inventory replenishment over the weekend, and blocked at least 10% of the shelf space with giant product containers. Like magic, all the merchandise that they obstructed was suddenly out of reach for all but the most determined shoppers.

Surely they did this big inventory project during the off hours, right? 6 am on Sunday or overnight on the weekdays? Nope. It was mid-morning on a Saturday, and this particular location is quite busy all weekend long due to the many residential buildings nearby, and the summer festivals taking place just down the street.

Hopefully someone at the store will notice the drop in sales during the obstructed view period and apply some common sense here. In particular, a retailer should do everything in their power to keep the merchandise in clear view, without arbitrary obstacles getting in the way. And if periodic inventory replenishment or other tasks require that big boxes or crates be placed in the aisles, at least try to get it done outside business hours, or during the quiet times when customers are in short supply. Otherwise, the store will surely end up paying the price in the form of lost sales and frustrated customers.

Despite the unseasonably hot weather on Saturday, I decided to take a detour on the way back home from some errands to check out the construction site for a new location of my favorite breakfast place. From what I could see through the windows, they have a long way to go before it opens. The space was pretty raw, with bare concrete floors and nothing even resembling a seating area.

What really caught my attention, though, was the signage on the windows — or the lack thereof. The only messaging I could see included the restaurant name and the phrase “Coming Soon”. This seems like a missed opportunity. If someone is reading the sign, why not use that chance to tell them what type of restaurant it is and where they can find the other nearby locations? You can even provide a map of the other sites, complete with estimated walking or driving time.

In a perfect world, there would be no need for this informational signage, since the restaurant would already be open for business. But in practice, nothing ever opens according to the original schedule. And while you can’t generate any sales from a venue that isn’t open yet, you can at least use the real estate to encourage people to visit your existing sites and pick up some extra revenue in the process.

On the way to the grocery store, I often pass a particular restaurant space that seems to change hands every year. First, it was some nondescript expensive restaurant, then a slightly less expensive eco-conscious concept, and now it’s an upscale sushi place. And I doubt the location is the problem, since it’s close to numerous hotels and gets a lot of foot traffic.

So what’s the issue here? A few possibilities come to mind:

– The rent is too high

– The inside of the space is uninviting

– The restaurant tenants don’t know how to attract customers and keep them coming back

Interestingly, at least two and perhaps all three of these factors are within the landlord’s control. They could lower the rent, renovate the interior, and even refer the tenant to marketing firms who know how to build a following for a restaurant. Sure, this is way more effort than the typical landlord wants to put in. But every time a tenant goes out of business, it means lost rent and more costs paid for buildout and real estate commissions.

Returning to my original example, I can only hope the landlord or restaurant tenant #3 get their act together soon. Otherwise, I fully expect the fourth restaurant in as many years to be opening in that space by next spring.

I’m involved with a few committees in my building, and I’ve noticed something interesting during the recent meetings. When there’s a piece of text that needs to be refined, the task usually gets assigned to one of the most experienced group members. And each time, someone else in the group quietly scoffs at the work to be done and calls it “wordsmithing”, e.g. “Dave, can you wordsmith this paragraph and email it to us?”

Something about this use of the word has always bothered me. Maybe it’s the tone that people adopt when they’re saying it. Or perhaps it’s the word itself, which conjures up images of a purely mechanical process instead of a creative one. Either way, there’s something very demeaning about asking a person to “just wordsmith it”.

If you’ve done a substantial amount of writing or design work in your career, you surely know that taking a piece of raw text and turning into a compelling message is no small task. It takes skill, patience and creativity. What should we call this process? There are many options that fit: refining, clarifying, enhancing, etc. Even if they’re a little boring, these phrases are true to the work being completed. They speak to the positive results that will be achieved, rather than getting mired in a vague description of the process itself.

With this in mind, I recommend that people remove “wordsmithing” from their vocabulary — or at least stop using it in the context that I described above. I’ve never seen anyone jump for joy after being asked to wordsmith a piece of text, and there are much better ways to describe the value that a talented writer, editor or designer brings to a project.

As of today, there are basically zero breakfast restaurants within 2-3 blocks of where I live. In the spring or fall, this isn’t much of a problem: the weather is mild, and it’s nice to take a long walk on a Saturday or Sunday morning. But in the summer or winter, distance rules. Anything that’s more than 5 minutes away just isn’t worth braving the hot or cold for.

Actually, I should clarify this a bit. When I say there are no breakfast restaurants nearby, I am purposely excluding several options that are located inside hotels. Why? Because they’re insanely overpriced. Case in point: I heard some nice things about a simple breakfast place in one of the hotels near me. There was virtually no info about it online, so I called them up. The price for their standard breakfast? Something like $25 per person. Chicago isn’t exactly the cheapest place in the world for dining out, but that restaurant’s prices are still about twice what a normal restaurant would charge.

It’s no secret that hotel restaurants charge inflated prices to capitalize on business travelers (who presumably are on an expense account) and tourists (who don’t know any better). But they’re missing out on a big chunk of local residents who might eat there regularly, if only the prices were lower. In fact, there’s really no reason they can’t segment their customers and offer an option for each group.

Here’s how it would work: just offer a local resident discount that brings the price back down to earth for people who live or work nearby. You could even limit this to the slow season when hotel occupancy is weak. And while the average revenue per person might be lower, these additional customers would help increase total revenues and profits. Perhaps more importantly, the more varied customer base would go a long way towards smoothing out the peaks and valleys that occur when you rely solely on hotel guests to fill your tables.

During my last few trips, I booked all of the hotel rooms with the same hotel chain, and racked up a decent number of reward points along the way. So when I needed to book a new trip, the first thing I did was go to the loyalty program site, choose the appropriate hotel, and check what I could get with my points.

What I found was disappointing. I didn’t have enough points for a free night, or a partial discount, or even an advance room upgrade. So I called their customer support number, and spoke to some friendly but ultimately unhelpful people. They confirmed what I already suspected: there were no discounts or upgrades of any kind available for my stay. The best I could do was book the same rate available to non-loyalty program members. In other words, I would receive nothing for my loyalty.

With this in mind, I did what any logical consumer would do, and started looking at other hotel chains. Sure enough, I found a much nicer hotel at a better price from one of the first chain’s competitors. By failing to give me anything for my loyalty, the first chain encouraged me to look elsewhere — which I wouldn’t have done if they had made me feel valued at all.

The takeaway here is rather obvious: if you run a loyalty program, always have an offer available to members that is better than what you give to the general public. It doesn’t have to be a big offer, either. For instance, a hotel might offer a modest discount like $5-10 off the best online rate, or a coupon for free breakfast. Customers want to feel valued, and a little bit of recognition can go a long way. But if you treat loyal customers exactly the same as people who have never bought from you before, you’re basically telling people that their loyalty with you is worth nothing — and they’ll be far more likely to take their business elsewhere.

I recently needed to update my credit card info on several websites. I expected this process to be easy: find the existing card, click the Edit button, enter the new info, and click Save. However, the experience was anything but simple, and even the bigger e-commerce sites seem to have problems with this seemingly straightforward task. Based on my own adventures updating credit card info, here are 3 tips for websites who want to get this right:

– Let customers change all the info, and not just the expiration date. This means letting people edit the card number, expiration date, security code, name on the card, billing address, and so on.

– Ask customers if they want the new card info to apply to orders that have already been placed, but haven’t been shipped or charged yet.

– Ask customers if they would like the new card info to replace the old info for recurring or subscription orders. Believe it or not, there are big sites that make you update this separately for every single recurring order.

Granted, this all seems like common sense. But from what I’ve seen, very few e-commerce sites are putting any effort into the tools they provide for updating credit card info. That’s just sad, since virtually every long-term customer will need to update their credit card at some point along the way. By adopting the simple guidelines I’ve outlined above, websites would make it far easier for users to manage their card info, while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction during this potentially frustrating process.

While reviewing the terms for a new vendor contract, I needed to print several documents from the vendor’s website. The documents were provided in simple HTML form, which I generally prefer to something like PDF. But when I tried to print them, I ran into a problem. No matter how I scaled the page, the right edge of the text was always cut off.

I’ve seen this problem before, and it can take many forms: text is cut off, only one page is visible, etc. Typically, it results from sloppy work with frames or CSS. Sometimes you can work around the issue, but in the most severe cases, the only solution is to copy and paste the online version into a text document.

Companies need to do a better job with this. In particular, if you’re posting a long document online, make sure to test how it prints in the popular web browsers. And if those tests show there’s a problem, you should coordinate with your web design team to add a printer-friendly CSS stylesheet to the page. Even if customers aren’t complaining about the issue today, a poorly-formatted contract or user’s guide can quickly get them all riled up — turning otherwise cheery customers into an angry mess faster than you can say “PC Load Letter.”

Let’s say you sign up for a subscription that automatically renews every month, or maybe every 6 months or a year. While placing the initial order, you enter a discount code for 10% off. Should that same discount apply to each recurring order that follows the original one? There are several ways to handle this:

– Discount automatically applies to every order in the subscription, so you get the benefit of the same discount for all the subsequent orders.

– Discount only applies to the first order, but you can re-enter the discount code prior to each subsequent order if you remember to do so.

– Discount only applies to the first order, and there’s no way to re-enter a discount code — even if it’s a different one — prior to future orders in the subscription.

I can think of arguments for and against each of these approaches, and it’s anyone guess as to which one tends to maximize revenues. But if you’re faced with creating this type of discount policy for your own customer base, keep one thing in mind. Customers who sign up for recurring subscriptions are likely to be some of the most loyal and profitable buyers you’ll encounter. When you put arbitrary rules in place that diminish the value of the subscription features, you might save a few bucks on discount code redemptions — but you’ll probably drive away valuable customers in the process.

What’s the most important status indicator on a portable electronic device? Since the product can’t run without battery power, I would argue that the low battery light should get top billing. Yet when I look at some of the gadgets around the house — including such diverse items as a wireless mouse and one of Apple’s cheaper iPod models — it’s clear that many manufacturers are happy to bury the battery status in a confusing multipurpose indicator.

On paper, this design makes sense. Instead of including separate lights for the battery charge, wireless or network activity, and other info, they consolidate all of these readouts into a single multipurpose status light. Depending on the nature of the issue, the light might blink quickly or slowly, or create a blinking pattern like morse code. The only trouble is, consumers have an awfully hard time deciphering these cryptic blinking patterns. The end result is that the status indicator becomes useless in most scenarios.

Here’s a hybrid approach that would work a lot better. Take the one or two most important status conditions, such as low battery or no signal, and give them dedicated lights with an easy-to-read icon next to them. Then, consolidate the more obscure stuff into a multipurpose indicator light. That way, users can diagnose the most common issues right away, while keeping the simple design and lower production costs that drove product manufacturers to multifunction status lights in the first place.