As the saying goes, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. This suggests that first impressions aren’t always accurate. True or not, it doesn’t change the fact that people rely on first impressions more often than they’d like to admit.

Of course, it’s not hard to see why a book with great cover art will sell more copies than a more mundane design, and this relationship extends to virtually every situation where we have to make quick decisions about the quality of a product or a business. For instance, I bet most people would agree with each of the following statements:

– A retail store that employs friendly and helpful cashiers is more likely to have quality products and be fair about pricing.

– A dentist who cares enough to provide a bright and comfortable waiting room is more likely to care about the patient’s well-being, rather than just trying to maximize fee revenues.

– A company that invests the time to make the text on their website clear and compelling will tend to offer an easier purchasing process and excellent support after the sale.

In each case, notice how the assumptions we make aren’t directly related to the first impressions that we’re basing them on. We’re taking the available info from one area of observation, and extrapolating it to other areas. Does this mean customers are being arbitrary in their decision making? Hardly. To the contrary, they’re being practical, and using the information they gather from first impressions to make assumptions that — more often than not — end up being correct. So the next time you wonder if it’s worth sweating the “little stuff”, keep in mind that these small signals of quality may be exactly what customers are hoping to find.

My company is looking for a new staff member to join our tech support team, so I’ve been helping with various tasks like writing the job description and reviewing resumes. Overall, the pool of applicants has been extremely strong, which likely speaks to the attractiveness of the position along with the large number of qualified people who lost their jobs during the recent recession and are now looking for work.

However, this experience has also made me realize that most of the companies hiring today are leaving out some key information from their job postings. In particular, any sensible candidate will want to know:

– Who your company is and what you do. At a minimum, this means providing your company name and a link to your website.

– The actual salary range for the position. This means real numbers, not some bogus statement like “Salary dependent on experience.”

– What the company culture is like. This can be a direct statement mentioning things like your on-site game room and catered lunches, or something more subtle like the way you use humor in the job posting itself.

Remember, the process of hiring a new employee means that you’re asking people to tell you a whole lot of personal information about themselves. If you want to attract the best candidates, it makes sense to share the relevant details about the company and the position right in the job posting. By starting with an atmosphere of mutual trust and cooperation, you’re a lot more likely to get the kind of candidates you want. This reduces the time and effort required to find the right person, and might even increase the chance that they’ll stay with you in the long run.

Like many people, I use review sites like Yelp to help make decisions about local businesses. For instance, is this new restaurant actually any good, or does that doctor treat their patients well? However, a few recent experiences have reminded me that good reviews are no guarantee that a business will deliver on your expectations.

Let me put this another way. As a consumer, it’s easy to assume that a business is competent just because they have friendly staff and tend to get great reviews. However, a high star rating doesn’t necessarily mean the business is actually any good at what they do, beyond the superficial first impressions.

Sure, this is all common sense. But it certainly bears repeating in a time when customer reviews can make or break some types of local businesses. As consumers, it’s important to stay viligant and not blindly trust online reviews. In other words, try to make your own judgements about whether a given business or service provider can be relied upon. Even if 99% of reviewers think a business is great, you should use your own intuition to decide if that business is actually competent and trustworthy, or if they’re just using strong people skills to mask their incompetence.

Typically, a retailer’s private label brand is easy to spot, since it carries the same name as the store itself. But this isn’t always the case. Consider the following three approaches:

– Obvious store brand: The private label items are easy to identify, e.g. CVS brand products in a CVS store.

– Not-so-obvious store brand: The private label items have their own brand name, e.g. Archer Farms brand products in Target.

– Best of both worlds: Obvious and non-obvious private label brands are merchandised side by side.

Though I’ve rarely seen it used, I would venture to say that the third option is the most effective — especially if the obvious store brand is cheap and the non-obvious store brand is priced just below the premium, third-party brands. When you think about it, this is how companies like P&G and Unilever gain market share: they offer multiple brand names in each category. And the same approach should work wonders for retailers who are seeking to maximize sales of their in-house products. Use two or more brand names to take up shelf space and grab more mindshare among consumers, and you’ll generate higher revenues across your product portfolio.

When you make a purchase in a retail establishment, the typical protocol is to sign your name on the screen of the POS terminal or on a printed receipt. But in certain cases, no signature is required. I believe this comes into play when a merchant has opted in to a special program with American Express or other card companies, and the transaction is less than $20 or so.

However, I’ve noticed that these no signature transactions can be a little bit confusing. Even when I’m shopping at a store that I visit regularly, the no signature part always catches me by surprise. In most cases, I press the OK or Yes button on the screen, and then wait for the signature prompt that never arrives. When the cashier finally proclaims that “You don’t have to sign”, I feel a little silly for not realizing that my purchase was under the no signature threshold — whatever that might be.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who finds the no signature process to be a bit jarring. And a simple change on the POS terminals could eliminate any confusion. Here’s how it would work: at the exact point that the POS system would normally ask you to sign your name, the screen should say “No signature is required for this transaction.” This would provide a clear and obvious indication to the consumer that the transaction is done, and they’d be on their way more quickly — without any intervention by the cashier. Aside from making things easier for shoppers, this would shave off precious time from each no signature sale, thus improving productivity and reducing costs for the retailer.

Many of the office buildings near me have huge lobbies with only a few widely-spaced pieces of furniture. Sure, there might be a security desk and other functional areas in the lobby, but it’s not uncommon to see 50-75% of the lobby be totally empty. I’m guessing these lobbies were originally designed as a statement of corporate power, i.e. the company is so wealthy it can afford to pay for all that space and not even do anything with it.

Given the growing awareness of environmental and sustainability issues, I bet a lot of employees, customers and passers-by would interpret the typical empty lobby space as a show of greed and wastefulness. There’s just no logical reason to pay for rent or a mortgage or property taxes or air conditioning bills and then just let the space sit vacant. It’s an expensive statement, and sends the wrong message.

What’s the solution? I would convert those giant empty lobby areas into something that generates revenue and provides a valuable service to employees, customers or even the general public. Even if the area can’t be effectively subdivided into more traditional retail or restaurant space, you could probably put up mall-style retail kiosks. Think coffee, snacks, or newsstand offerings. Considering how many coffee and donut shops there are in big cities, I doubt it would be hard to find someone to rent the space and operate the food carts.

Regardless of the exact business model, it would be great to see this dead space put into productive use. Aside from the aesthetic and revenue benefits, converting unused, wasted space into something valuable would improve the quality of life for employees who work in the building, while making customers more inclined to visit as well.

While I was at Trader Joe’s over the weekend, I had a brief chat with the cashier about why the Chicago stores don’t offer local delivery. As a bit of background, their New York City stores have provided grocery delivery for years, but they’ve hesitated to extend the program to Chicago. In short, she said that management decided not to offer the service because the insurance costs for the delivery staff — stuff like worker’s compensation insurance and auto insurance — would exceed the revenue the service would bring in.

Whoever made this decision is thinking too narrowly about the return on investment (ROI) of providing grocery delivery. Sure, you can charge a base fee for each delivery, perhaps $5-20 depending on the size of the purchase. The Whole Foods a few blocks down the street from our Trader Joe’s charges $10-20 per delivery, I think. Let’s say the minimum cost of wages and insurance for a part-time delivery person is $2,000 per month. At face value, it seems like the store would need to do at least 100 deliveries a month at $20 each to make up the cost, or more than 3 per day. The management probably thought this goal was too high to reach, and decided the ROI wasn’t there.

Ah, but there’s more to ROI than just the direct and immediate returns you get on a project. First, it may take a few months before the volume and corresponding delivery fees ramp up to cover the costs. And by 3 or 6 or 9 months out, the fees alone could vastly exceed the cost. Second, customers who use the delivery service would probably make more frequent purchases, and spend more money each time. This means more revenue and gross margin on the actual products themselves, which is where the real ROI of a delivery service gets realized.

So the next time you’re faced with deciding if something is a smart investment for your business, be sure to think as broadly as possible about the revenues and costs of that investment. A project that seems to have questionable ROI in the first month or two when only direct fees are considered may actually turn out to be a surefire success a few months later, especially when you factor in the impact that the project will have on average spending amounts and long-term customer loyalty.

I get countless letters in the mail asking me to subscribe to one magazine or another, usually at a big discount from the cover price. But my past experience makes me hesitant to subscribe to magazines anymore. You see, many of the publications I used to subscribe to decided to sell my contact info to other magazines and random companies, which greatly increased the amount of junk mail I receive.

With print publications scrambling for revenue, I’m sure I’m not the only customer who suffers from this problem. Basically, the industry has burned a whole segment of the market by sending unwanted letters and emails to subscribers, or selling their contact info.

Here’s an easy fix: magazines should introduce a new subscription option for a few dollars more per year. Call it something like a “private subscription”, and emphasize how the customer won’t receive any communications besides the magazine itself — and their contact info will never be sold or shared. Even if the magazine offering this option was never involved with those activities in the first place, I bet the private subscription option would encourage a certain segment of jaded ex-readers to give magazines another try.

Several of the residential buildings in my area like to promote themselves as being pet-friendly. Typically, this means the building has a dedicated area where dogs can, um, do their business. What amuses me the most, though, is the way they describe these canine rest areas. Instead of naming the area based on actual usage, it’s usually called a “dog run” or a “dog park”.

Dog park? If it’s big enough, that might be accurate. But a dog run? How many dogs are actually doing anything that resembles running in these small spaces? Not many. Granted, calling it a “dog relief area” isn’t very enticing. But the existing euphemisms are so over-the-top that they lose much of their descriptive value anyway.

What’s the answer here? Building marketers should start by including the size of the dog area in their communications. For instance, you might say “Half-acre dog park” or “30’x10′ dog run”. Sure, the goofy names are still an issue. But at least the sizes will keep potential residents from being misled, freeing their minds to ponder what their pets might do with the available space.

One of the hotels near me has been constructing an outdoor seating area for their restaurant. At first glance, this is no surprise: probably 75% of the restaurants in Chicago offer outdoor seating during the warmer months. But this particular implementation leaves much to be desired, since the seating area is incredibly cramped, and is located mere inches from a busy street. The proximity to the roadway poses several problems:

– Noise from passing cars makes conversation difficult.

– Bad smells from the vehicle exhaust distort the perceived flavors of the food.

– A careless driver could easily swerve a few inches off the road and hit the seating area, turning a minor error into one that causes serious property damage and physical injury.

This makes me wonder: are restaurants really so desperate to offer outdoor seating that they’ll compromise their normal standards of quality to make it happen? Do they really care so little about the brand experience that they’ll herd customers into a seating area that’s noisy, smelly and maybe even dangerous? Sadly, if tourists and even locals are willing to reward this behavior by eating at such questionable establishments, the economics dictate that shoddy outdoor seating is probably here to stay.