If you pay any attention to health news, you may have followed the recent controversy over mercury levels in tuna and other fish. There are many sides to the story, but I find one aspect of it really surprising. Namely, it appears that the US government has been publishing stats about which types of fish have higher and lower mercury levels, even down to the individual varieties of tuna, for several years now. Yet the only way to get this data is to look it up yourself online.

Clearly, the government has put money into researching the mercury issue. So why don’t they recommend that manufacturers print the relevant stats on canned tuna and other products? Perhaps it could be an average based on all products of that type, with another data point based on testing that specific brand itself. I even saw a study from a TV station in California that had tested a bunch of canned tuna on their own. If a TV station can afford to do those calculations for a single story, surely a company that makes the product can run the same tests as part of their routine nutritional analysis.

Speaking of nutritional info, the US already requires food products to include a standardized label with calories, fat, and more. Adding things like mercury and other environmental contaminants to the labeling standard seems like a logical next step, though I can imagine that revising the standard takes time. As an interim solution, it seems like savvy manufacturers would want to add this information to their labels. After all, any consumer who is concerned about mercury levels would probably pick the product that provides that info, rather than choosing an alternative brand that refuses to acknowledge the issue at all.

Although spell check has become ubiquitous in everything from word processors to web browsers, it seems like the average person has become even sloppier when it comes to written communication. Since things move so quickly on the web, perhaps people figure that quantity is more important than quality, and a typo-laden document is better than no document at all. This may be true in some cases. But more often than not, a single well-placed typo can render your work totally worthless.

Let’s say that you’re creating an ad. It could be for a product or service you offer, or something like an apartment for rent. You’ll want to include keywords that describe the offering, so that prospective buyers can find it. This is pretty obvious, but lots of people forget to spell check their listings, rendering those keywords and descriptions worthless. People may be typing the right words into the search box, but they’ll never see your entry in the results.

But wait, doesn’t Google automatically suggest spelling corrections to people who are searching for something? Sure they do, but that only fixes typos on the prospective customer side of the equation. If your website spells the most common keywords wrong, you’re not giving search engines much incentive to direct people to your page. The situation is even worse on sites like Craigslist and other niche-oriented search engines. These sites often lack any sort of spelling correction. So a single typo in the city or state, for instance, can kill virtually all of the traffic to your post.

In a perfect world, every document would be 100% error-free. But given the limited resources that we all face, the occasional typo may slip through. Nevertheless, it pays to focus your efforts on making sure things like product names, features, and locations are spelled correctly. These pieces of text represent a critical link between your prospects and your offer, and if that link is broken, an otherwise promising campaign can turn into a total flop.

After seeing a product placement for GE’s Monogram appliances, it occurred to me that several different companies have adoped the “Monogram” label for their premium line. Aside from GE, there’s Banana Republic, and probably a few others. But what does the term “Monogram” actually mean to customers?

To me, “Monogram” indicates something that’s personalized to the buyer, like a monogrammed set of initials on a piece of clothing. However, I don’t think there’s any personalization or customization aspect to the products from GE and Banana Republic. So maybe it refers to the products bearing the time-tested brands of those companies. But doesn’t every product they sell carry the same logo and pedigree? Or, if it means that the product line is especially worthy of these venerable brands, where does that leave the rest of the non-premium products?

In all, labeling a premium line as “Monogram” seems rather misguided, since the term lacks concrete meaning for customers. If the goal is to differentiate these products from the lower-priced ones, terms like “Premium” or “Professional” might be better choices, although those terms are probably a bit overused too. When it comes down to it, customers should be able to tell why a certain product line commands a higher price, either by examining the product itself or reading about its attributes. If the naming convention doesn’t help further that goal, there’s really no point in slapping those additional labels on the product.

Last weekend, I walked by the site of the new Halsted Street Deli / Rainbow Cone near the Chicago Theater. On the window was a big sign saying “Closed for private event”. The restaurants hadn’t even opened yet, so I figured they were still working on things, and the grand opening would be a few weeks away.

Was I right about that opening date? Not even close. It turns out it was scheduled to open a couple of days after I passed by. Thus, I’m baffled as to why they put up that private event sign. If the restaurant had never opened, why would customers need to know it’s closed? Why not put up a sign advertising the grand opening date instead?

In fact, the restaurants would have been better off without the event sign. That way, customers would just assume it’s not ready yet, rather than wondering how some mystery event impacts the venue’s status. In cases like these, if you don’t have something relevant to tell prospective customers, it’s better to avoid saying anything at all.

I have some old stuff sitting around that I periodically try to sell on Craigslist. Each time I list it, a few people inquire and one maybe even offers to buy it. But when it comes time to get together and complete the transaction, they flake out. And we’re not talking about a lot of money either: around $25-30 at the most.

The items are too cheap to list on eBay, since the listing fees and hassle will surely eat up more than the selling price. And Freecycle doesn’t feel right: somebody should be willing to pay something for them, right? So I end up keeping them and the cycle starts anew.

Perhaps there’s an opportunity here for someone to help monetize these sort-of-marketable yet modestly-priced items that many of us have sitting in the closet. But more than likely that’s where they’ll stay: in a corner, collecting dust, until we finally give them away to anyone who will accept.

I saw a few articles recently about how Toyota is paying to plant roadside gardens in California. Although not overtly commercial, the gardens feature designs that reinforce the overall branding strategy for their new Prius model. This is a great idea, since it helps improve public spaces without turning them into the type of billboards that tend to draw the ire of local residents.

I would love to see this approach expanded to certain areas in Chicago. For instance, I know of one lot that’s been sitting empty for years, waiting for a hotel project that will probably never happen. The lot is surrounded by several office buildings, and the people who work there just see a dirt patch when they look down. This would be a great opportunity for a corporate sponsor to come in and turn the vacant lot into a garden. Even if the pattern of flowers and grass looked sort of like a well-known logo or other campaign element, it’s better than the pile of dirt that occupies the lot today.

Whenever I walk by the frozen pizza section at the grocery store, there’s a good chance I’ll see somebody trying to decide which pizza to buy. Typically, these people are looking at the nutritional info, probably to find the pizza with the fewest calories. And sometimes they get frustrated and walk away empty handed.

The store could easily help customers find popular product variants by highlighting them on the shelf. For instance, they might place a sign or sticker near the lowest-calorie pizza that says “Low-calorie favorite” or “Fewest calories per serving”. Other signage might focus on the options with the lowest fat, least sodium, and so on. By taking this editorial approach, the retailer would help more customers find what they’re looking for, and ultimately generate more sales in those product categories.

About six months ago, there was a bunch of news about how a huge grocery store would be opening a few blocks from my apartment. It’s no Trader Joe’s, but having another option for picking up hard-to-find items can’t hurt. However, after that initial flurry of press releases and articles and interviews, details on the grocery store are nowhere to be found.

Heck, even the website for the people who are developing the property is devoid of updated info. At this point, I’m guessing the project is on indefinite hold due to the economy, or it got cancelled altogether. This type of assumption is exactly what happens when you don’t give people an update: they’ll just assume the worst, and your brand suffers.

So if you’re working on a highly-visible project, or a less-visible one that was announced with a ton of fanfare, it pays to keep interested parties in the loop. Put up a simple website with status updates, or even just provide a forum where people can talk about the project and your team can chime in periodically. Just don’t let the conversation die out. Your chances of a successful launch in the future are much higher when you’ve got an eager fan base to draw from.

I needed to track a package within a particular web app, and was impressed at how easy it was to find the tracking number. But when I tried clicking on it, nothing happened. The tracking number wasn’t hyperlinked, nor was there a separate button to track the package itself. That’s just lame. If you’re going to provide tracking numbers in your app, it pays to link those up to actual tracking results.

Don’t want to fuss with the tools from UPS and FedEx? You could just point the link at a Google search using the tracking number alone, since Google automatically recognizes common tracking formats. I bet other search engines do the same thing. Making tracking numbers clickable shouldn’t require much work, and will make the shipping aspect of your application much more elegant.

I’ve seen some really terrible banner ads lately. Here are some of the offending design elements, though I hesitate to even use the word “design” in reference to such junk:

– Before and after pictures that obviously aren’t from the same person (that is, unless weight loss pills also give you a makeover and a golden tan)
– Script-style fonts that are impossible to read (not to mention looking really dated)
– A disclaimer box that takes up more than half the ad (and scrolls through several pages of fine print on its own)

Banner ads have been around for more than a decade, so you would think that a reasonable set of best practices would have been adopted by now. But I believe something different has happened. Due to the low value that many firms put on good creative and design, I bet these ads were put together by the lowest bidder — maybe a chop shop in a low-wage country. Heck, the people who made the ads might not even speak the language they’re writing in. That’s certainly a recipe for poor results.

When you think about it, many cities have visual style guidelines for billboards and other outdoor advertising. Magazines and newspapers surely exert some control over which types of ads they’ll accept. With the proliferation of ugly banner ads, maybe webmasters should pay closer attention to the ads that are gracing — or polluting — their sites.