Through a series of otherwise normal events, I placed an order with Amazon and received a confirmation email, but then I noticed that the order was nowhere to be found in my order history. The confirmation message didn’t have an order number, either — perhaps because the order was generated through Amazon’s Subscribe & Save program. And without an order number, I had no way to contact customer service to ask what happened.

Amazon usually does a good job with presenting consistent and complete order information in all the relevant places, but I guess one or two templates slipped through the cracks. My own experience confirms what seems like an obvious solution: give customers their order number as quickly and consistently as possible. If you show a confirmation page, put the order number there. If you send confirmation emails, make sure the order number is included. Otherwise, for the small percentage of orders that don’t show up properly in your system, you’re leaving customers without any reference point to use when they contact you.

In general, the purpose of offering free samples in a retail store is to encourage customers to try the product, realize they like it, and buy it right then and there. Trader Joe’s has a sampling area in the back of the store for this exact purpose. But when I tried to get a small sample of the featured coffee, the dispenser struggled and wheezed, with barely any coffee to speak for it. The container was basically empty, and I had to ask a staff member for a fresh one.

It’s a little strange that they’d let the samples run out, when the whole point of having them is to provide an effortless way to try the product. When the dispenser or tray is empty, some people will ask for assistance. But the majority of people will probably just give up and move on, with no chance to try and buy the featured product.

If you want to get the greatest sales lift from your product sampling initiatives, make sure the products don’t run out. The exact technique isn’t important: maybe you’ll choose to accomplish this with extra-watchful employees or with a technical solution, such as a coffee dispenser that shows the fill level on the back. Either way, keeping your samples well-stocked maximizes the chance that people who are curious about the product will actually be able to try and buy it.

I recently ordered a “6 piece set” of storage containers, but when the package arrived, I was disappointed to find out that it only included 3 containers. The lids, it turns out, are considered 3 items on their own. I told the merchant about the problem and they made it right, but I still find this merchandising approach to be rather sneaky.

For example, any sensible person would feel cheated if they received the following:

– A “2 pack” of toothpaste with one tube and one cap
– A “3 piece” frame set consisting of one frame, one matte, and one glass front
– A “16 ounce” bag of tortilla chips containing 13 ounches of chips in a bag that weighs 3 ounces by itself

So, if you find yourself marketing a product with potentially confusing quantities or weights, do yourself and your customers a favor: make the contents of the package abundantly clear. Otherwise, you’ll have a bunch of customers complaining about how you ripped them off, and a lot of returns showing up on your doorstep.

After my previous doctor decided to relocate out of the city, I needed to locate a new primary care physician. Based on a very positive referral, I selected a doctor at a different practice. Prior to my appointment, I downloaded all the new patient forms from the doctor’s website and filled them out. But when I arrived at the office, they presented me with yet another batch of forms, all of which required me to hand write my name, address and more at the top.

Like any logical person, I asked the receptionist why they couldn’t just use the forms I brought with me. In a condescending tone, she said that the forms I printed already weren’t all of the ones they needed, and insisted that I fill them all out completely. So I wasted another fifteen minutes writing the same info yet again.

This process left me feeling a bit insulted. After all, I followed their instructions and came to the office with all the forms filled out. I did my part, but the doctor’s office didn’t do theirs. Would it have been so hard to just include those extra forms on the website? Of course not. They were just too lazy to be thorough about it. Because of this, I was much more annoyed than if they never asked me to fill out anything online in the first place.

The takeaway here is obvious: if you’re going to ask your customers to complete a task like showing up to an appointment with forms already filled out, make sure you hold up your end of the bargain and give them all the tools they need to get the task done. Otherwise, if they show up prepared and find that you want them to jump through even more hoops that you never told them about, you’ll end up with frustrated and angry customers who can’t understand why you even bothered to ask in the first place.

I have always preferred dark chocolate over milk chocolate and other variants, but I never really paid attention to things like the percentage of cacao in each bar. A few weeks ago, I decided to try my hand at chocolate snobbery, so I purchased several new types of dark chocolate at Trader Joe’s, including their house brands and some third-party ones. What’s most interesting about this exercise is the awareness it’s given me of how ubiquitous some brands of chocolate are in the retail channel, while others remain more exclusive.

To most people, brands like Godiva and Ghirardelli are probably considered premium or high-quality options. However, now that I’m paying attention to how common they are, my own perception of their quality is considerably lower. For instance, I’ve seen Ghirardelli in CVS and Border’s — in some cases, with an entire free-standing display dedicated to the brand. If you can buy the product virtually anywhere, it can’t be that special or high-quality, right?

I don’t have enough data to answer that question. From my own experience, it seems like increased distribution of the product makes it seem more ordinary, and thus lower-quality. This is especially true when the places selling the product aren’t exactly known for being purveyors of fine goods. For instance, selling gourmet chocolate in Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s makes a lot more sense than peddling it at CVS or Borders.

With all that said, if the increased distribution and exposure leads to a significant increase in sales — and that increase can be sustained in the long run even as snobbier customers defect to other brands — then getting the product into more stores is probably the right thing to do. However, ubiquity comes with a price: you can never go back to being the high-end brand that loyal customers seek out and are willing to pay a premium price to obtain.

I’m not really into gadgets, but I do follow the mobile phone market pretty closely. If you read the reviews of certain phone models, it’s amazing how many products suffer from poor battery life. Aside from the iPhone, with its non-removable battery, the battery life problem can usually be solved by just carrying another battery along. So why don’t the manufacturers whose phones are routinely panned for poor battery life just start including a spare?

The approach is simple: if you notice that magazines, blogs and customer reviews are complaining about your battery life, you should obviously try to address it in the long run by improving your hardware and software design. But in the short run, it probably pays to just bundle an extra battery with each new phone sold, and make spares available on the cheap to existing customers.

After all, a battery that lists for $30 probably only costs $5-10 to produce. If people are universally complaining about your battery life, a significant number of potential customers are probably seeing those complaints and deciding to buy something else. Assuming those new customers are worth more than $10 to you, including an extra battery with each phone should increase your sales volume considerably, and make customers a lot happier in the process.

I’ve seen a ton of ads for Palm lately, with their Pre and Pixi phone series showing up on billboards, buses and other out-of-home locations. From what I’ve read, Palm’s webOS software that powers these phones is more elegant and easier-to-use than anything else on the market, including the iPhone. But Palm has had a tough time getting consumers to understand the benefits, and the recent onslaught of outdoor ads probably isn’t helping.

Here’s the issue: it’s really hard to show that a product is easy to use when you’re working with a static ad spot, like a magazine ad or billboard. You basically have three options:

– Include screenshots of the interface. Unfortunately, everything looks pretty and shiny in a still image, so screenshots alone do little to differentiate the product.

– Design the ad itself to look clean, elegant and accessible. This gets the right message across, but isn’t very useful when your competitors are already taking advantage of the minimalist aesthetic.

– Interview actual customers who use your product and your top competitors’ products, and include the survey results and testimonials in the ad. Assuming you’re clear and transparent about the methodology, this may have the best chance of convincing people that your product really is easier to use.

Based on the ads I’ve seen, Palm is mainly going with the screenshots approach, which isn’t going to get them very far when people are already convinced that the iPhone has the best user interface. Meanwhile, if you look back at how Motorola and Verizon launched the Droid, they positioned it directly against the iPhone on a feature by feature basis, and generated fairly impressive sales numbers. Sure, hearing that actual customers like it better than the iPhone would probably be even more effective, but at least they made an effort to go beyond screenshots and force a comparison with the competing products.

I’ve seen a lot of articles where the author insists that the key to business success is not being afraid to make decisions. Whether the decision is big or small, the theory goes, you should assess the situation and make a swift and decisive judgement on how to proceed. Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, this line of thinking leaves out the other half of the equation.

What am I talking about? In short, even the swiftest decision requires some follow-through afterwards. Say that you decide to run a new ad campaign. You’ll need to write the copy, design the ad, negotiate a contract with the media owner, submit the ad, verify the proof, track responses, and so on. In fact, if you look at most projects, the time you spend making the decision to undertake the project is easily dwarfed by all the time and money it takes to implement it.

Although it’s trendy to say that making more decisions is the key to success, following through on the decisions that you’ve already made is probably a lot more productive than rushing to decide on the next big thing.

A few days ago, I was researching some marketing strategies and needed to find out the cost of joining a particular non-profit organization. According to their website, they charge an upfront membership fee and an annual maintenance fee after that. However, no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find any current info about how large these fees might be. In every place where you’d expect to find the pricing, it said the prices depended on your annual revenue levels and a few other things, and that you needed to fill out the membership form in order to get the actual price.

Obviously, this was a big red flag: you have to spend time filling out their seemingly daunting membership application before they tell how how much it’s going to cost to join. There’s no way I’m committing all that time to something until I know what the prices are. Next, I tried calling their phone number, only to be greeted by a message telling me to fill out the online form to get prices. Finally, I sent them an email and asked for the ballpark pricing for a few hypothetical revenue levels.

The response I received was incredibly lame. No matter how I asked the question, the only thing they would say was the following: “We’re a non-profit, so we don’t publish our pricing”. Oh, is that a new law: non-profit organizations can’t put their pricing on the web? I highly doubt it, since tons of museums, trade associations, and universities post their pricing right on their website. When I questioned their inane logic, they just spouted the same response again.

When you hide pricing, and refuse to provide even a ballpark estimate of what something costs, it frustrates your customers and prospects. And when you make up ridiculous reasons for why you can’t give people pricing, they’ll dislike you even more. In short, it’s best to publish a ballpark pricing estimate when you can. But if that’s not possible, at least try to have a good, honest explanation of why the prices have to be kept secret.

Chicago seems to have a lot of gourmet cupcake shops. At some point last year, one of them opened up near the Randolph and Wabash CTA station, which is a location I pass fairly often. However, I don’t think this particular purveyor of pricey cupcakes will be around for long. Here are some of the things they did wrong:

– The cupcakes are expensive — in the range of $3-6 each, if I remember correctly — but they don’t take American Express. If you’re selling a premium product, accepting AmEx is a must.

– They’re located next door to a McDonald’s — which doesn’t exactly attract the type of clientele who are likely to plop down big bucks for a single cupcake.

– The sidewalk outside the shop is constantly plagued by fairly aggressive beggars, suggesting nobody from the cupcake place actually spent much time scouting the area beforehand.

– The decor inside the cupcake shop is cold and uninspiring, with barely any seating.

Obviously, there’s no way to account for every variable ahead of time when you start a new business or open a new location for an existing one. But a little bit of common sense is all it takes to prevent most of the mistakes I described. In the case of the cupcake shop, I wish I could say that the cupcakes are so amazingly awesome that people will show up from far and wide to buy them, and overlook the flaws. However, the only time I actually went into the store, I didn’t have any cash on me. Since they don’t take AmEx, I never even got the opportunity to try the product. And with so many other strikes against them, I doubt I’ll be back.