If you’ve been following the weather lately, you may have heard about the huge snowfall in the pacific northwest. I had the bad luck of scheduling a short vacation for that very period, which made the travel challenging, to say the least.

While I was sitting at the airport in Chicago and waiting for my outbound flight, I checked a local news website in the destination city. The headline was rather ominous –“Airport Closed” — and the text of the story didn’t say much more than that. Great, I figured, I’m going to have to reschedule. But when I checked the airport’s official website, I learned that the closure was only temporary. They were working on de-icing the runway, and sure enough, we ended up leaving nearly on time.

What’s wrong with this picture? The local news source published a cut and dry statement that the airport was closed, without any context of why it was closed and how long the closure would last. Without that information, the reader is forced to assume the worst: that the airport is closed for the entire day, maybe longer.

In situations like this — where you’re reporting on a major story that directly impacts some portion of your readers — the right approach is to put yourself in the readers’ shoes. Ask yourself what you’d want to know if you saw the proposed headline, and then make sure the headline or the story itself answers those pressing questions. By providing this information upfront, you’ll avoid causing undue panic and stress for readers. At the same time, you’ll be increasing the overall depth and quality of your reporting, which ultimately draws in new readers and fosters greater loyalty among the readers you already have.

The battery in one of my electronic devices started acting weird recently, so I looked up the problem online. As I quickly learned, a lot of other people were experiencing the same issue. The general recommendation was to bring the battery into the brand’s local store and ask for a free replacement, since the issue reportedly arises from a defective battery design.

I proceeded to call my local store to explain the issue. They wanted me to come in and show it to a technician. I asked very specifically if the store offers free replacements for this type of battery problem, and they said it was decided on a case by case basis. So I made an appointment and brought it in.

When I got to the store, I received a very different story. No fewer than three employees told me that the store policy is never to replace this type of battery for free. They insisted that there are no exceptions, since it’s the “official policy”. That’s all fine and good, but why couldn’t they just tell me that over the phone?

Clearly, this was a pointless in-store interaction that wasted my time and theirs. The takeaway here is obvious: don’t make customers come into the store to ask a question that you already know the answer to. Instead, focus on conveying that information in the quickest way possible, such as on the phone or through your website. By doing so, you’ll avoid wasting everyone’s time, while freeing up store personnel to help answer those questions that truly can’t be addressed through other channels.

As more and more companies jump into the online grocery delivery business, I’ve been curious to see if any of them deliver to my area. So I’ve gone through the following scenario several times lately:

– Read story or press release about new online grocery option

– Visit their website to see where they deliver

– Fail to find a list of their delivery areas

– Type my zipcode into the form

– Get a generic response along the lines of “Sorry, we’re not serving your area yet”

Obviously, this isn’t a good way to start the relationship with a prospective customer. For companies who serve a limited area, it means that a very high percentage of prospects are going to be disappointed by the very first interaction, and will be less likely to check back later.

What’s the solution? Just be upfront about where you deliver. Put a big link on your website for “Delivery areas” or “Where we deliver”. When people click on it, take them to a list of all the areas that you serve, or a map of those areas. Then, provide an address lookup form so that people who live in the general service area can verify that their address is supported.

Looking at this another way, most businesses are quite upfront about disclosing their hours of operation, payment methods, and other basic things that customers want to know. You don’t have to fill out a form or send them an email or call them on the phone to get access to this information, since that would be a waste of time and resources for everyone involved. Providing a list or a map of your delivery areas shouldn’t be any different.

After researching the hotel options for an upcoming trip, I knew exactly which hotel I wanted to stay at. The only thing left was to pick the right type of room. Even though the property only had about 50 rooms in total, they claimed to offer six different room types.

Once I read through the paragraph of text describing each room type, I determined which one met my requirements. But something bugged me about the process: why did this hotel, like so many others, inundate customers with such a long list of room types? Isn’t there a better way to present these options?

In my case, the room types were nearly identical, aside from the king versus queen bed and the optional kitchenette. The hotel probably could have reduced the selection from six types to three, and nobody would notice the difference.

Along these lines, there’s another way to make choosing a room easier for customers. Instead of presenting the room types in a list, and forcing customers to read a bunch of text about each one, just present the information in the form of a comparison chart. By highlighting how the rooms are the same and how they’re different, you’ll be giving customers everything they need to make a quick and accurate decision. So, even if a legacy booking system requires you to present a long list of room types, at least you can provide customers with a more efficient way of picking the right one — without asking them to wade through paragraphs of text about every room.

In the limited subset of stores and restaurants that I visited during the holidays, the Christmas music was anything but subtle. Every year, it seems, the music gets louder, and the selection of songs gets narrower. For whatever reason, the powers that be have decided that customers respond best to loud, repetitive holiday music.

This raises an interesting question: if the overall consumer environment during the holidays is becoming increasingly polarizing, why don’t retailers start designating a few “quiet” shopping days during the holiday season? On those dates, the Christmas music would be turned way down or replaced with non-holiday fare. And to make this a low-risk endeavor, they could test the quiet shopping day concept during a few of the traditionally weaker days on the calendar, with the promotional campaign limited to specific marketing channels.

For a certain subset of customers, the opportunity to shop and dine in relative peace would be a very attractive proposition. And for the businesses that allocate a few days towards making those customers happy, the incremental revenues should more than compensate for the perceived risk of deviating from the usual holiday soundtrack.

The new grocery store in my neighborhood is rather massive, with two floors and an incredible selection of products. So when I needed wrapping paper for the holidays, I figured I could stop by and find plenty of choices there. However, the only gift wrap I saw was a rather sad collection of wrapping paper near the checkout area.

Thinking that I must have walked right past the good stuff, I asked several staff members if they had anything besides the box up front. The employees said that was all they carried, and seemed puzzled that I was expecting them to have a bigger selection of wrapping supplies.

Here’s the thing: if you’re going to make an effort to carry seasonal items, it pays to do it right. For instance, instead of dedicating a modest amount of space to the same junky collection of gift wrap that people could find at any number of places, make the display a little bigger and include a better selection of wrapping supplies. In other words, if you’re known for offering a diverse selection of products in regular categories, then apply the same merchandising approach to the seasonal items. That way, you’ll give customers what they’re looking for, and generate more revenues in the process.

I always keep a relatively compact umbrella in my travel bag, though it takes up a fairly significant amount of space for something that I use so infrequently. So, I recently started looking for a smaller, lighter replacement. What I found is that a lot of different umbrellas are marketed with terms like these:

– Travel size

– Mini

– Micro

– Compact

– Lightweight

However, the vast majority of them are no smaller or lighter than the one I already have.

Granted, it’s possible that my current umbrella is already state of the art. More likely, though, is that the manufacturers’ notion of terms like “travel size” is a lot different than how consumers like me interpret those same terms. This probably leads to a lot of disappointed customers who were expecting a much smaller and lighter item than what they received.

What’s the solution? It’s quite simple, really: if you’re marketing something as “travel size”, make sure that the description of the product that you provide to retailers and on your website includes the dimensions and weight of the product. If you can couple this with a photo showing the product alongside a common object to help customers form a visual estimate of its size, that’s even better. But don’t fall into the trap of just calling something travel size without backing it up with some basic specifications, since that’s a recipe for unhappy customers and above-average return rates.

While working through my shopping list at a local store, I spotted a rather strange approach to product sampling. A particular tissue brand was apparently trying to get customers to touch and experience their new design. So, the product display contained a supply of tissues sticking out the front, along with a call to action about trying one.

There are several problems here. First, could there be anything grosser than asking shoppers to blow their nose? Who knows how many germs would end up dispersed throughout the store if the call to action was successful. Second, the display included a trash area where people could place the used product. The trash bin was crystal clear and mounted at eye level, leaving the dirty tissues for all to see.

When I encountered the display, the new tissues were gone and the trash area was filled with dirty ones. Accordingly, I would be more inclined to associate the advertised product with overflowing garbage than with anything remotely related to cleanliness and hygiene. So if you’re ever involved with designing a product sampling station that has a built-in trash repository, make sure that the trash area is opaque or well-hidden enough that it doesn’t steal the show from the actual product.

If you’ve ever looked through a series of pictures that were taken by your friends or family, chances are that some of those photos have the date printed in the corner. In many cases, the date stamp can be helpful, such as figuring out which trip the photo came from. However, it’s not always desirable to include the date when displaying the picture in an online album, printed photo book, and so on.

Obviously, you can just crop the picture and leave out the part where the date appears. However, that also means you’ll lose a potentially valuable piece of the foreground and background. There’s another solution here, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone try it.

In short, the sites that you let display and print photos could provide an option to cover up the date stamp with something else. For instance, you could put a solid color block with a title or caption there, or upload a small image to cover up the date. Either way, giving customers another option for removing date stamps seems like a smart move, and should increase their satisfaction with photo-related websites and printing services.

Over the weekend, my wife and I created a customized photo book as a holiday gift for some of our family members. The process was labor-intensive and frustrating, but we somehow managed to complete the book. There was only one step left: entering our billing and shipping information.

After we clicked the button to start the checkout process, a progress bar appeared. As most progress bars are known to do, it began by showing 0% complete. At least a minute went by, and nothing had changed: still 0%. We were getting worried that the site had crashed, and there was no indication of how to start the checkout process again. Finally, the bar began counting upward, and we were prompted to enter the appropriate info.

Clearly, it’s not ideal to leave the customer staring at a progress bar for minutes on end, especially if it’s stuck on 0% the whole time. Instead, make sure the progress bar is accompanied by some sort of other status indicator that stays in motion. Heck, a flashing line of text that says “Working…” or “Please wait…” is better than nothing. Of course, the optimal solution is to ensure that your site responds so quickly that progress bars are irrelevant, but it always helps to have a backup plan to retain the customer’s trust and confidence during the transaction process.