Sometimes the most mundane products are hotbeds for marketing innovation. Take trash bags, for instance. Nobody pays much attention to them, and you only really think about them when you run out of bags or something goes wrong, like a bag tearing apart. Well, I recently stocked up on Glad trash bags for the kitchen, and I was quite impressed with their package design. In short, it accomplishes two things:

1.) Increased conversion rates: There’s a handy chart on the side of the box, which depicts the bag you’re buying and compares it to the other sizes they sell — including a picture of what the trash can itself looks like. Clearly, this is there to convince people they’re buying the right bag size, and thus increases the percentage of consumers who go from picking up the box to actually buying it.

2.) Driving future purchases: On the other side of the box, there’s a panel designed to tell people about other products that Glad offers. While this might lead to some additional purchases during the initial shopping trip, the real value is played out over time. Consumers see the messaging about the other products whenever they look at the box they purchased, making them more likely to buy Glad products when they need those other types of items.

Could Glad’s package design be improved even more? Well, I’d like to see a coupon right on the box for the other products they’re promoting. But other than that, it’s quite ideal, and shows how a well-designed package can help increase revenues now and in the future.

My router broke over the weekend. After some trial and error, I determined the problem was the power adapter that plugs into the wall outlet. Since you can’t buy the power adapters separately, I was forced to buy a whole new router. So, I walked over to Staples and picked up a seemingly identical replacement model.

Unfortunately, the new power supply didn’t work, regardless of whether I tried it with my old router or the brand new one that came in the same box. I ended up going back to Staples, swapping out the new router I just bought for the only remaining unit they had in stock, and heading back home. Luckily, the second new unit had a working power supply, and my problem was solved.

Is this a rare problem? I doubt it. Power supplies and power adapters are notoriously problematic, and most companies seem to buy them from the lowest-cost supplier. And from my personal and professional experience, I can attest that a lot of power supplies are simply dead on arrival. They never worked, and no amount of troubleshooting is going to change that.

What’s the solution? As a technology vendor, you need to suck it up and test every single item before you ship it. In fact, that’s what we do at WireSpring. Before we ship a media player computer to a customer, we test the unit and all the parts that come with it. And sure enough, we find that a surprising number of parts — especially power supplies — are DOA. But since we do the testing before shipping anything to our customers, we catch the problems and correct them before our customers ever encounter an issue.

Is testing every unit overkill? If you’re a cheap and short-sighted vendor, you might think so. But for those of us who actually care about customers receiving a working, trouble-free product, testing 100% of your inventory prior to shipment is essential. It’s easy to convince yourself that choosing high-quality suppliers means you don’t have to test things. But in reality, a typical supplier probably only spot checks 5-10% of their shipments. Ultimately, if you want to ensure a consistently great experience when customers open up the box, then it’s your responsibility to test every single product before it leaves your hands.

Several weeks ago, I returned a few holiday gifts and asked the retailer to exchange them for different products. The company was a little behind the times with their return process, so I had to enclose a letter explaining what I was returning and which products I wanted them to send me in exchange. However, instead of getting a package with the new products, I got a $20 check in the mail. The products were worth considerably more than that, so I had no choice but to call the company and ask what happened.

As it turns out, they sent me separate mailings, one with the new items and one with the check. The check just happened to arrive first, leading to my confusion. Granted, not every exchange will involve a partial refund, but I’m sure a fair number of them do. In these cases, there are several ways to make things clearer to the customer.

Since the customer is probably expecting to receive the products they asked for instead of a piece of paper, you need to explain what’s going on. In particular, if you’re sending a partial refund check as part of an exchange, make sure the check stub or memo field allows the check to tell a story on its own. For instance, you might print the following on the stub: “Your new items are on the way, and this check covers the remaining credit balance.” Or even better, just put the check in the same package as the new items.

Sure, this seems like common sense. But if my experience is any indication, companies that send out mysterious refund checks probably waste a lot of money answering questions about them. By taking away the mystery and confusion from the return process, you’ll spend less time and money handling those transactions, and customers will be a lot happier with the process.

Earlier this week, my wife and I each tried to check the status of the same online order. In her case, the website said the order was in process, but didn’t provide any more details. But when I tried it about 30 seconds later, the tracking system showed there was an issue with one of the items and they had to manufacture and ship a new one.

How did we get different results for the same order on the same website at the same time? She was logged into the site, while I wasn’t. It turns out that the retailer provides different information in each case, and surprisingly, the logged-in view actually contains fewer details about the order.

Letting people track their orders online is a great thing, and I can certainly understand why a retailer would want to provide more details to logged-in customers. However, it’s important to make sure that all the order status tools provide consistent information, regardless of whether a customer is signed in to their account, talking to your call center, etc.

If your policies require you to limit the info you provide in a certain channel, just say so — and tell people how they can obtain more details (e.g. by logging in with the account they used to place the order). Otherwise, customers will get different order status results depending on which channel they choose, and they’ll lose confidence in your buying process as a whole.

Here in Chicago, the Corner Bakery restaurant chain is fairly ubiquitous. They serve things like coffee, desserts, soups and sandwiches, and seem to attract a steady stream of customers. During the weekend, I walked by one of their larger locations, which takes up almost the whole first floor of a building. I’ve passed this location many times before, but I never thought about how they attract so many customers. Now, I think I understand part of the secret.

In short, Corner Bakery stencils the windows of every location with a long list of all the food and drinks they offer. I’m paraphasing a bit, but I believe it goes something like this:

“Coffee – Espresso – Soup – Sandwiches – Cookies – Desserts” (and so on)

Basically, they’ve listed every menu item right on the window. Walk by once, and perhaps you’ll notice one or two things. But walk by multiple times, and you really start to notice the huge variety of things they offer. As a customer acquisition strategy, I bet this is some of the cheapest and most effective advertising they could possibly do. And judging by how busy the locations tend to get, putting the product list right on the window seems like a brilliant idea, indeed.

Lately, I’ve seen some rather odd loyalty programs. Normally, you’d just sign up for free and start earning points. This is the model that airline frequent flyer programs made popular and it seems quite logical: you reward your best customers, and those who don’t spend enough with you don’t get anything in return. However, two programs I’ve seen lately are a bit different:

– A retailer charges you to buy some sort of “green bag” token, and then you get a discount whenever you bring your own bags. Use your own bag without buying the token, and you don’t get any discount.

– A restaurant charges you to join their loyalty club, and you don’t earn the fees back until several meals later. Dine there a lot without paying the fee and, you guessed it, you’ll earn nothing in return.

I’m sure these companies have their reasons for requiring a fee to join the loyalty club. It probably keeps out the lower value customers and limits the club to the biggest spenders. But I bet a lot of potentially valuable customers fail to join, to the detriment of the customers and the businesses alike.

From what I recall, Best Buy had a similar situation a while back. They used to charge for their frequent shopper club, and after they dropped the membership fees entirely, the number of people who joined the program skyrocketed. That’s no surprise: people like free. But more interestingly, the incremental revenues from the new loyalty members vastly exceeded the loss in membership fees from making the program free.

This approach can be extended to virtually any company that’s charging for their loyalty program. Rather than charge an upfront fee, either require that people achieve a certain level of spending before they can join, or let anyone join but delay their rewards until they pass the threshold from average customer to great customer. Give this a try, and I bet customers will feel more valued and shop with you more often — leading to a whole lot more revenue from your loyalty initiative.

While shopping for an insurance policy over the weekend, I started with a basic set of requirements: strong financial strength, ability to get a quote online, etc. After narrowing down the field to five or six companies, I opened up their online quote pages and took a look at what they were asking and how they presented it. From just glancing at the first one or two screens of the quoting process, it was obvious which companies had paid the most attention to the user experience.

Based on the quality of their user interfaces, I selected the three insurance companies who appeared to offer the easiest quoting and buying process. Was this a conscious decision? To some extent, yes: I pay a lot of attention to design, and firmly believe that products that look easier to use tend to deliver a better experience.

What about people who’ve never read a single article about UX or interface design? The same heuristics hold: we make a quick assessment of products based on past experience, and that subconscious feeling can greatly influence what we do next. In other words, the first impression of a company or product often determines if we’ll give that company a chance at earning our business.

In my case, I tried to get a quote from each of the three companies. The first one confused me with certain questions, so I moved on to number two. The second company’s site didn’t work in Firefox, so I found myself at number three. Luckily, the third company’s website worked really well, and I was able to buy the policy online. Interestingly, that final site was the one that I felt had the best design at the very beginning, but I tried the others first since I liked certain aspects of those companies better. Given that I ended up with the site that made the best first impression from a user interface perspective, maybe I should trust my design instincts even more next time.

As I was looking through a list of tech support cases that I had opened within a particular web application, I noticed something strange. Most of the cases had the status of “expired”. What exactly does that mean? Maybe these cases were:

– Abandoned by the customer
– Ignored by the vendor’s tech support team
– Related to a time-sensitive issue where the window of opportunity has passed

Actually, none of these descriptions was correct. It turns out the vendor uses the term “expired” to refer to cases that have been closed for more than 15 days. Apparently, they won’t accept any follow up on the case after that. You can’t reopen it, and if more questions arise, you have to create a separate case. That’s all fine and good, but it makes me wonder: Wouldn’t the word “closed” be a lot simpler and more intuitive?

The combination of seeing a Chili’s commercial and buying some new glasses in the span of a few days jogged something in my memory. Many months ago, I was at an optometrist’s office and saw some truly bizarre frames for sale. Among them: a Chili’s-branded frame, which looked exactly like the others but with the big red chili pepper logo that the chain is known for.

Really? A casual dining chain lending its brand to prescription eyewear? What could the relationship between these products possibly be? Let me go out on a limb and say there isn’t one. It’s just plain silly, and provides a great example of brand extensions that have gone too far.

Yes, Chili’s reminds me of cheap dining out and some respectable fajitas and quesadillas. But that doesn’t mean I’m any more likely to buy their eyeglasses over a generic option. Without some logical tie between what the brand is known for and the type of product that’s licensing their name, these type of brand extensions are good for entertainment value only.

On Sunday, I went to the convenient (but incredibly overpriced) grocery store nearby to pick up a few random things. I only shop there a few times a year, because the prices for most things are outrageous, and the customer service is rather poor. During my recent visit, I was amazed by the high prices of several items. In particular, a pound of butter was over $6, and so was a half-pound container of grated parmesan cheese.

Those prices are much higher than a few years ago, when the butter and grated cheese each cost $3-4. I had no intention of buying either product, but I did notice something interesting about them. Right next to the expensive, name-brand butter and cheese, the store had added a cheaper brand that I’ve never heard of, priced around $4.

What happened here? Why did they suddenly decide to add a cheaper option after years of price increases? My guess is that the name-brand suppliers kept jacking the price up, leading to a retail price of more than $6, which in turn caused many customers to stop buying those products. Instead of lowering their margins on the brand-name products, the store decided to get a cheaper option for more price sensitive-shoppers. Whether this strategy is working is anybody’s guess. But at least they’re making an effort to provide reasonably-priced options.

Will I be shopping there more often now? Not a chance. Trader Joe’s still kicks their ass on every product imaginable. Even the $4 off-brand products can’t touch the Trader Joe’s price of $2.79 for butter or grated cheese. But for the average shopper in my neighborhood, who I suspect pays about 2-3x more than I do for groceries, the lower-priced options in the local store will be a welcome change.