In our many years of experience in working with end users, we are still amazed at how differently each person uses a program or website. Every so often, we receive a bug report that we cannot reproduce, only to find out that in the series of steps to reproduce the bug, we clicked enter while the user entered the tab key. When sending us feedback, help us help you by recording the exact steps you took when you found the bug — down to the tabs and clicks!

As a small business owner, I understand how much more difficult it is to find new customers than it is to retain existing customers. And in my opinion, customer service is the best way to keep customers. Sometimes that may mean going above and beyond what seems reasonable at the time.

Nordtrom’s is always the perfect example of going above and beyond and I can personally cite another great example of their service. I purchased a pair of sandals several months ago and wore them around my house to make sure they were comfortable. When they passed that test, I wore them to make some sales calls and was disappointed to have a blister on every single toe when I got home. While, I never had to test out Norstrom’s customer service in my many years of shopping, I could not get past the blisters. They refunded my money without a receipt, no questions asked. I will continue to shop at Nordtrom’s.

On the other hand, last night I returned to one of my favorite local pubs, Pogue Mahones in Parker, Colorado with a gift card in hand. After dinner and drinks with my husband and friends, I happily enclosed the gift card for payment. The waitress returned the card to me saying the pub was under new ownership and would no longer accept the gift card. Amazingly, the waitress *got* how inappropriate it was, but the new owner would not budge on his decision. The end result? He chose to lose 4 previously loyal customers over about $20 (an estimate of his cost) in beer.

While I definitely agree that we can be a lot more responsible with our environment, I often wonder  about the motivation of green items. Every where I look these days, either someone is talking about green or there is a green item for sale. Green articles are all over printed media which seems a little counter productive to me. Then there are green grocery bags and water bottles. When I see a $20 price tag on a reusable water bottle it makes me wonder how much it cost the manufacturer to make that water bottle, if they are using green production methods and if they REALLY want the masses to use them, could the cost be much lower?

All that being said, I recently came across a furniture store here in the Denver area called NINES - REMADE IN THE USA. This small shop takes great modern classic furniture and refinishes it. I was in the market for office furniture and was dumbfounded at the asking prices for particle board and wood veneers. That is until I found NINES. You can either purchase a piece of furniture off of their showroom floor or find a piece of furniture prior to being finished and select the finish you desire. I paid the same price for high quality furniture in the exact finish that I wanted that I would have paid for a much lesser quality piece at Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn or West Elm.

I will bring my reusable grocery bags (that I got for free), drink from my tap in my good old plastic cup and definitely shop at NINES again!

Another great article on Entrepreneur.com asks the question, “Why did you build this business? Think about the difference you were trying to make.” When we built Darby Inventory, we wanted to create a product that was full featured, but simple to use while keeping the price low.

Beyond that, we want our users to be really excited about our product. We want them to be excited about it because it saves them time over manual processes or overly complicated software. We want them to be excited for new releases because they know there will be cool new features. We want them to be excited about it because they know we will provide excellent customer service.

We want to build a community around our product where our users have a say in the development of new features. That is the difference we are trying to make with Darby Inventory. My business partner has told me on a couple of occasions that people do not talk about Inventory Software at the dinner table — I want to prove him wrong!

This past week, I have been re-designing the website for my Home Staging and Furniture Leasing business, Pineapple Interiors. As a part of the re-design, I decided to get in touch with some clients for updated testimonials. The testimonials I received are fantastic, but I found myself asking if testimonials were old school. Do they still work? It didn’t take but a minute to find a great article on testimonials and how to properly use them. The article covers How to Choose the Right Testimonial, Getting Great Testimonials — Even if You Haven’t Sold Anything Yet, and Strategies for Using Testimonials Effectively. Check out Entrepreneur.com to find out what makes a good testimonial, where to put them on your website and more! After reading this article, I will be looking at our testimonials in a whole new light and making sure they are effective in promoting our business, establishing trust in our product and that they relate to our customers.

There’s a phrase in software called Premature Optimization.

It’s when you worry about the details before you have any of the broad strokes in place… and we’re all guilty of it.

I have the tendency to try to build elaborate plans and get excited about the tiny features we’re building for our customers before I even write a line of code. Being enthusiastic about your product or service is great but make sure you are making your plans a reality before you worry about the finishing touches.

So many plans change from day to day. We find out that some features won’t work or that some product enhancements don’t actually enhance at all. However, many times we don’t realize this until we’ve already started building the feature. If we had planned out the details of the feature then we would have wasted hours or days that could have been spent on useful features.

The solution to Premature Optimization is to get your hands dirty. Cancel your meetings, shred your planning documents and make something.  It doesn’t have to be perfect but just make something.

How have you gotten past Premature Optimization?

I always thought we were in a great industry — we provide great software as a service for small businesses. But today I saw that Inc.com ran a list of the best industries to start a business and number 4 is “Software as a Service”!

Twitter is great for mini-inspiration that comes in randomly throughout the day.  I just saw a message written by @tsfalls that said:

“if your users think everything you do is awesome, then your users suck; and you probably suck too.”

Good software gets written because someone is trying to fix a problem they have.  Great software gets written when many people come together to share their own perspective on a problem.

We all have one or two customers that always want one more feature or one more change to an order.  As much as those people can drive us nuts, they help make our businesses great.

As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.  But if you never have a squeaky wheel then nobody’s riding your bike.

Admittedly, I can be a bit of a geek. I get really excited for new technology that can help my business or personal life. There are two things that I am excited about this week. First is the iPhone 3.0 software upgrade that will be available on June 17th. I absolutely love my iPhone but there are some things that I have really been waiting for including MMS texting ability and copy and paste functionality. For those of you that have been holding off on purchasing an iPhone, I think now is the time. Check out the guided tour at the Apple website and geek out with me!

Another great tool that I am hoping to take full advantage of is a service called PSD to HTML. There are quite a few companies now that will convert Adobe Photoshop files into HTML files. My graphic designer, Erin Conigliaro at e-design, is fantastic and I want her to design, not write code. PSD to HTML Services can take design files and turn them into the web pages that I need, all for very reasonable prices. Vandelay Design has compiled a nice list of companies that offer this service on their blog.

I purchased a book today called, “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing“, after seeing it recommended by Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss. On Amazon, I was surprised to see that it only had four stars after the glowing recommendation but the recommendation bumped it up to five stars for me.

I glossed over other books Amazon recommended for me and found that nearly every book had a four- or five-star rating.  At first I thought the ratings were rigged or slanted but then I realized that I had read many of the recommended books and they were great.

I thought of my other recent purchases too: a Roku, an iPod Touch and an Altec Lansing speaker dock.  They’re all products that I not only love but I rave about them to other people too.

They’re all five-star products.  I’m a five-star snob.

If I come across a product that is only four stars then I debate purchasing it and if it has three stars, well… it’s out of the question.  There are just too many great products these days to settle for less.

So what happens when you have to choose between great products?  Where do we go from here?  Do we add another star?

I’d argue that it’s our niche that tips the scale.  A recommendation from someone in my social circle not only gives me confidence about my purchase but also pulls me closer into a niche.  It makes me feel like I am a part of a club.

As marketers we need to make it easy for customers in our core niche to connect to others and spread the word.

What else will there be that differentiates between great products and services?