Here in Chicago, we have dozens of outdoor concerts and festivals throughout the summer. Tourists love them, but they can be a real pain for those of us who live in downtown. Here are a few reasons why:

– You can hear the music (especially bass) from blocks away.
– The entire area around the event looks like hell for days or weeks afterwards.
– Places like restaurants and stores get insanely crowded during the event.

Could the people in charge of the concerts take steps to mitigate these issues? Sure. But I don’t think they care enough to bother. And by the time concerned citizens’ groups convince lawmakers to put new rules into place, the concert promoters have probably moved onto the next town anyway.

A few weeks ago, Trader Joe’s started selling their own brand of hand sanitizer. I asked the people at the customer service desk about it, and they said a lot of customers had requested hand sanitizer, and that it was selling well so far. In fact, I was one of the people who asked for it, but I doubted they’d take action so quickly. Anyways, I bought a bottle and it seems just as good as the other brands out there.

However, I don’t think customer requests alone are what made Trader Joe’s introduce the new product when they did. Rather, I believe that current events — namely, the Swine Flu hysteria — created a sense of urgency about proper hygiene. Countless articles suddenly started mentioning hand sanitizer as a good way to stay healthy, and I bet these caught the attention of the people in Trader Joe’s corporate. Coupled with customer requests, current events helped convince them to get the new product to market.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with tailoring your product mix to what’s on people’s minds. In fact, it’s a very logical strategy. I wonder how many other products end up languishing in the “maybe” pile for years, waiting for some external event to generate enough interest to get them over the hump.

When people fly into Chicago, it seems like most of them take a taxi from the airport to the city, or rent a car that will probably sit parked at the hotel for their entire trip. Since a cab will run you $30-50 or more and the train is about $3, I’m always baffled by this behavior. I can only guess that nobody told them about the reliable and speedy trains from Midway, and the generally passable trains from O’Hare, so they reverted to the familiar option of taking a taxi or renting a car.

Part of the problem is that people make their local transportation decisions well before they get on the plane. Once they arrive at the destination airport, they’re not going to take a chance with some unknown and potentially confusing transit option. So unless you’ve been to a particular city many times, you’ve probably never used the train system there.

The solution is to start marketing the train options to people during the trip planning and booking stages. For instance, the city of Chicago could strike a deal with Southwest Airlines to show train info and pricing on the confirmation page for people who just booked a flight to Chicago. This is similar to how Southwest shows hotel and rental car info right now. Or, the city could buy ads on popular travel portals like TripAdvisor to reach people who are in the trip planning stage. Regardless of the approach, I’m sure that cities could generate additional public transit usage and increase their fare revenues by helping travelers learn what’s available — and educating them about how much money they can save by avoiding taxis and rental cars.

In theory, targeting ads across multiple websites should lead to high conversion rates. For instance, say that someone goes to a hotel site and looks at room prices for a trip they’re considering. Then, they start seeing ads on unrelated websites promoting the same hotel chain, destination and time of year. Would this person be more likely to reserve a room at that chain? Maybe. But there’s also a good chance they’ll be creeped out from the experience, and purposely avoid that hotel chain when they do book a trip. Perhaps there’s a middle ground that makes both marketers and customers happy, but I bet the cost of crossing that invisible line is more significant than people think.

After thinking about the long lines at a nearby tourist attraction, I began to wonder: does the venue have an obligation to take care of those people while they wait to get inside? In other words, is there some rule — written or unwritten — that says they need to provide water on hot days, or protection from the sun? And how big of a line do they need to accomodate? This certainly isn’t my area of expertise. But I’m guessing that even if the law doesn’t stipulate what’s necessary, common sense and decency should provide a reasonable guide about how to treat those people that are queued up outside your business.

When I look at products that are sold in liquid form, at least half of them come in opaque bottles or containers. This gives the package designers more freedom, since you’re starting with a clean slate and don’t have to worry about the product itself showing through, or the impact of ambient light that passes from one side of the bottle to the other. But there’s a downside: consumers have no way of telling how much product is left in that bottle.

However, I saw a clever solution to this problem. The laundry detergent we buy comes in the typical white bottle that you can’t see into. But there’s a thin strip of clear plastic running down the side, so you can easily tell how much detergent is left. While it may add a few cents to the production cost, this approach strikes an excellent balance. Product marketers and designers can make the bottle look however they want, while consumers can see when it’s time to buy more — without any guesswork. I’m surprised this approach hasn’t been widely adopted, especially when coupled with a call-to-action on the bottle that encourages customers to buy the same brand again.

The only thing more annoying than getting the same error message over and over again is getting no error message at all. In other words, you’re trying to complete a certain task, everything looks normal, but you don’t get the results you expected. Maybe you click a button and nothing happens, or you send an email that never arrives — all without any indication that something went wrong.

As someone who works with software every day, I understand there may be complex technical reasons why error messages can’t always be displayed. Maybe it’s up to the browser or email server to return the error, and the people who designed those systems never bothered writing an error message for the particular error that took place. But no matter whose fault it is, you should always strive to give customers visible feedback when things don’t work properly. Otherwise, you leave them confused and wondering if they did something wrong. Their opinion of your product may suffer, even if your software had nothing to do with the error in the first place.

1. Raise prices.

2. Raise prices and tell customers they’re getting a better value (when they’re not).

3. Raise prices, tell customers they’re getting a better value, and try to twist the truth when they call you on it.

Come to think of it, this type of behavior is always a bad idea, no matter what the economy is doing. Yet a surprising number of companies act this way. It’s one thing to raise prices a little bit to keep pace with inflation. But hitting customers with big increases is going to make you a lot of enemies, while making it easier and cheaper for your competitors to grow their businesses using the clients you threw away.

Want to piss off your customers in a big way? Just tell them you’re increasing the monthly or annual recurring costs, and that everyone will have to pay the higher prices — including existing customers. 9 times out of 10, companies are smart about this. They grandfather in the increases, thus making long-time customers feel even more valued (since those customers keep the lower pricing). But there’s always that occasional company that ignores common sense and raises prices across the board. With such a shortsighted approach, they’re almost certain to cause enormous customer attrition.

When faced with the decision of where to apply a price increase, always put yourself in the customer’s shoes. People expect that recurring fees will remain reasonably constant over time, unless you can demonstrate that your underlying costs have changed significantly. Do yourself a favor and always grandfather in any increases in those monthly or annual fees. It’s just not worth the risk of driving away a big chunk of your customer base to maybe eke out a few more dollars from current clients.

Most of us probably take it for granted that cell phones have a “silent” mode for when we’re in a meeting. Similarly, we’re accustomed to being able to mute the sounds on our computer (or a specific program) when we’re on a call or don’t want to be bothered by chimes and beeps and alerts. These features arguably make for a more polite product, and have become widespread on computers, cell phones, and software programs.

However, relatively low-tech electronic products tend to lack a mute or silent feature. For instance, does your coffeemaker or microwave have a way to mute the sounds? Probably not. While the need for this level of control may be more dubious, it would certainly make the products more polite — and probably wouldn’t cost much, either.

The people who design the tried-and-true products for our homes and offices would do well to take a closer look at the high-tech gizmos that consumers use every day. In doing so, they would probably discover easy and cheap areas for enhancement — like a mute button — that customers never thought to ask for, but would be thrilled to find on their next purchase.