My most recent grocery delivery came with an unfortunate surprise: a jar of salsa broke in transit, and ruined several other items that were in the same bag. The delivery person saw the issue right away, and told me that they would issue a credit for the damaged items.

That’s all fine and good, but what if I wanted a new set of identical items to replace them with? Apparently, that wasn’t an option. To process an exchange, I would have to accept the refund and then place a new order, complete with yet another delivery fee. That’s rather ridiculous, seeing as how the original issue was totally outside my control.

In situations like this, a little bit of common sense goes a long way. For instance, if a customer places a delivery order and some of the items arrive damaged, the logical thing to do is offer them a refund or an exchange of those items. And if the customer wants an exchange, you shouldn’t penalize them by charging another set of delivery fees, fuel surcharges, and so on.

Receiving broken products is frustrating enough. Waiving the delivery fee for the replacement items is a must if you want to salvage the situation and help restore the customer’s trust in your services.

The other day, I walked into the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions. As always, I stopped at the kiosk to scan my loyalty card and see which coupons it spit out. Usually, these coupons are mediocre, but one caught my eye: $2 off a multi-pack of the gum that I buy regularly.

Since the package of gum normally costs about $3, the $2 discount basically amounted to 67% off. This made me wonder: if they’re really trying to drum up interest in this product, why not make the coupon cover the entire cost of the product instead?

I’m sure there’s a lot of complex analysis that went into determining that the 67% discount was the best way to encourage customers to buy the product that day, and to purchase more of it during subsequent trips. At least in this particular case, I’m guessing that a substantial discount wins out over free because of the implied value of the item itself. 

In other words, if something is being given out for free, then people may only remember that it was free, with little sense of what the product is worth. But if it’s being offered at a substantial discount, paying even a nominal amount for the item creates an anchor point around what it should normally cost and what a great deal the customer received. This is a subtle distinction, but probably an important one when it comes to planning out a discount and promotional strategy for consumer products.

Although relatively few retail stores have more than one floor, that type of configuration is quite common in bigger cities. I can think of several examples here in Chicago, and they vary in terms of whether they use elevators, escalators or plain old staircases to help people reach the additional floors.

A recent experience emphasized some of the unique challenges of a multi-floor design. While my wife and I were walking up the stairs in a two floor grocer, a clueless employee was sweeping the staircase. We paid special attention to where the employee was working and chose the same route that other customers were using. Despite this, the idiotic staff member managed to hit my wife with the broom as she tried to pass by. Luckily, nobody was hurt, but the situation was clearly ripe for disaster.

The takeaways here are obvious. If you’re cleaning a busy staircase, don’t do it in the middle of the day. Put up suitable barricades or cones to indicate where it’s safe to walk. And always look in both directions to make sure that the path is clear of customers and other employees. I imagine there are broader safety guidelines that cover this type of thing, but if the inept sweeping we observed is any indication, the employees on the floor could use all the reminders they can get.

Despite the surprisingly large crowds, I decided to take a brief walk through the grand opening celebration for the new shopping center in my area. For whatever reason, the event organizers had set up the vendor booths, music and other festivities in a nearby park, rather than at the shopping center itself. This would have been fine, except for one little problem: it rained before the event, turning much of the grass into a muddy mess.

As I walked past various tents and tables, my desire to avoid spending the rest of the day cleaning mud off my shoes greatly exceeded my curiosity about the remaining exhibitors. I also saw that someone had put a flattened cardboard box on the grass as a makeshift standing area, so I clearly wasn’t the only person who noticed the issue.

Ironically, the same park has ample paved walkways that might have provided a better, mud-free location for the booths. And of course, the adjacent shopping center itself has paved areas out front, plus indoor space. Any of these locations would likely have been a more practical choice than placing a large event on a big patch of grass. So if you’re ever given the opportunity to plan an outdoor event like a grand opening, trade show or art fair, it’s probably a good idea to locate it somewhere where the ground won’t turn into mush if it happens to rain beforehand.

As I perused the aisles of a brand-new grocery store in my neighborhood, I was amazed at the number of free samples that were available. In each case, the store had a friendly staff member on hand to greet passers-by and offer a product sample, which I understand is a proven way to encourage people to try new items.

Despite the impressive logistics and presentation, I didn’t accept any of the free samples, since none of the items really appealed to me. But this made me wonder: is there an alternate approach that would encourage more sampling across a wider customer base?

In a perfect world, retailers would just pool up the product sampling budgets, and give shoppers coupons that could be redeemed for any item in the store. Of course, this wouldn’t make economic sense, since the brands that pay for sampling campaigns don’t want those funds going towards other products. But in special situations — like a grand opening or pre-holiday shopping period — I would be very curious to see how an open approach to product sampling influences consumer purchase decisions and total revenues for the retailer.

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to try out a nifty new diner that’s located about a block from my apartment. The reviews of the company’s other locations were really good, so I expected a pretty solid dining experience. Sure enough, the food, decor and service were all superb.

There was one really weird thing, though. The restaurant had a very strange set of ambient music playing, which seemingly combined elevator music with easy listening with instrumental covers of songs from decades ago. And the volume was quite loud. No matter how you slice it, the music made no sense for this type of venue.

I have a guess about what’s going on there. The diner is located in the lobby of a large corporate office building, and I’ve heard very similar music while walking through the other parts of that lobby. I bet that the ambient music — including the track selections and volume level — are controlled by the building itself. In other words, the restaurant’s landlord controls the tunes.

How accurate is my theory? I have no idea. But the takeaway is the same either way. If there’s something weird or unusual about your business, and you have no way to control that variable, then it’s best to just embrace it. Make the strange attribute a part of your overall brand message or at least acknowledge it in a light-hearted way. By doing so, you’ll let customers know that you’re making the best of an awkward situation, while reminding them that a little bit of bad luck — rather than your own bad taste — is what made things that way.

If you’ve used any travel websites lately, you may have noticed that most of these sites automatically remember your past searches — even if you leave the site and come back later. The same is true for an increasing number of online retailers and even entertainment sites. While this functionality can certainly be convenient, it has the potential to be a little bit creepy, too.

In particular, I’m talking about websites that remember a running history of your searches and other actions even when you’ve never registered or signed in to the site. Customers expect these sessions to be relatively anonymous, and any automated behavior to the contrary has the potential to make people uncomfortable.

How can you address this problem? Start by providing an option right on the website to turn off the activity history. Both Amazon and Southwest do a nice job with this. In addition, it’s helpful to show a welcome message to people who are returning to the site after a previous session. The message should summarize which activity has been pulled up from last time, and tell the customer how to disable the activity history if they want to.

By helping people better understand which data is being remembered from visit to visit and how they can turn it off, customers will be more likely to react favorably to this type of personalization. Instead of feeling creepy and intrusive, the functionality will be perceived as a value-added feature that helps people interact with the website using the method that suits them best.

While I was working on some research, I came across an enormous list of all the companies in a particular industry. The person running the website had obviously gone to great lengths to list every possible detail about the companies in his list, and the date on the top of the page indicated that the info was being updated very regularly. However, the sheer volume of text made the page difficult to navigate and read.

After reviewing a few of the entries, the problem was clear. The person maintaining the page kept adding new info, but rarely deleted the old stuff. For example, at least 25% of the companies were described as being out of business, but these entries appeared in the same giant list as the ones that were still active. Plus, some of the entries contained historical reviews and commentary going back almost 10 years, which could probably be scrapped in favor of the past 3-5 years of data.

In short, the author was doing a great job of collecting and documenting information, but didn’t spend the time to organize and curate it. Ironically, this approach means that every addition to the body of work makes it richer in detail, but less useful and valuable to readers. So whenever you’re thinking of adding new information to something you’ve already put together, make sure to allocate some time for cleanup and curation, too.

Common sense dictates that short and simple URLs are better than long and complex ones. A web address is worthless unless people can get to it, and short and simple URLs are easier to remember, easier to type, and probably more likely to remain the same over time. In contrast, longer and more complex URLs are often generated by content management systems, and even a small configuration error or software upgrade can wreak havoc on those types of web addresses over time.

The takeaways for web developers are fairly obvious: all else equal, create short and simple URLs and only choose content management software that’s consistent with this goal. But there’s a whole other group of people who should keep URL length and complexity in mind: bloggers, researchers, writers and anyone else who frequently links to or cites third-party websites in their work.

As a rule of thumb, the longer and more complicated a URL is, the uglier it’s going to look when written out, and the shorter a shelf life it’s going to have. This means that your readers are more likely to type it wrong or run into a broken link in the future. This might not be a big deal in the fluid environment of the web, but it’s definitely a problem when the URL is going to appear in a book or other permanent resource. Whenever you have the choice, going with the shortest and simplest URL from a given source will make things easier for your readers — both now and in the future.

Towards the end of a non-fiction book that I was reading, I glanced over the resource list that the author had compiled. The entries in the list were straightforward, and I have no doubt that many of them would be useful to readers who want to learn more about the topics covered in the book. However, there was one problem: the author listed his own company at the very top of the list.

What’s wrong with this approach? In short, unless you’re clearly the biggest player in an industry, it looks sketchy to put yourself at the top of a resource list. As the author, your readers expect you to be objective and to keep the self-promotion to a reasonable level. If you automatically catapult any mention of your company above everyone else, it makes people question the overall objectivity of the rest of your writing.

There’s a few ways to resolve this. For example, you could sort the resource list alphabetically, or by some other set of criteria, placing your own company wherever it logically belongs. Alternatively, you could put your company in a separate section before the list itself, and emphasize that you’re doing so for convenience, and not because you’re trying to suggest that your firm is better than everyone else.

By making sure that your resource list comes across as impartial and objective, you’ll retain the trust and confidence that you’ve built up with readers. In turn, they’ll be more likely to recommend your writing to others, and will be more motivated to contact you when they need your professional expertise.