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Sometimes all you have to do is shift it, reorder it, or move it to completely change the experience (and your business). A few fantastic examples here:

1> The salad bar
2> The car lot
3> The front desk
4> Check it out: Awkward Stock Photos

1> The salad bar

Tiny moves can make a big difference. When researchers from Cornell moved a middle school’s salad bar to a more prominent location in the lunchroom — a difference of about four feet — veggie sales rose more than 250%. By the end of the year, it even led to 6% more kids eating school lunches. What on your website, in your store, or in your brochure could you better feature with just a tiny move?

The lesson: Look for simple ways to better feature the stuff you really want your customers to focus on.

Learn more: PHYSORG.com

2> The car lot

Sometimes your store isn’t the best place to meet new customers. It might be time for a move (even if only temporary). Volvo did it by moving their sales lot to downtown London. They set up giant movie screens and hosted a retro drive-in — and provided the pre-parked cars. Moviegoers enjoyed “classic Yankee flicks” like Grease and Dirty Dancing — and they even had a team of roller-skating waitresses serving popcorn and cocktails.

The lesson: If you’re looking to meet new customers, sometimes it’s best to move the sales floor to wherever they are.

Learn more: Volvo’s Starlite Urban Drive-In

3> The front desk

Don’t be afraid to move things, to try different layouts, and to experiment with the experience you’re creating for your customers. Kaiser Permanente conducts elaborate simulations to figure out exactly how to architect their hospitals. In one testing, they found that simply moving the reception desk could make it much more inviting for patients — and much more efficient for the hospital.

The lesson: Move things, test them, improve the feng shui, break the feng shui — whatever it takes to make the experience fantastic for the customer.

Learn more: Fast Company

4> Check it out: Awkward Stock Photos

Not sure why you’d need a stock photo of a guy in oven mitts with a calculator or a dog with a doughnut on its head — but should you ever, know that it’s out there.

Check it out: Awkward Stock Photos

The Brookstone store at the airport offers to recharge your dead phone for free.

What a great offer!

1. Incredibly beneficial: Saves the butt of stressed travelers
2. Easy to do: A few chargers, a power strip, no real cost
3. Relevant: And, of course, they sell travel chargers

Go to Five Guys and order a burger and fries. You’ll get a great burger. 

And an obscene mound of fries. 

Fries overflowing, fries filling the bag. A crazy+awesome quantity of fries.

They have given you an instantly amazing experience.  Your first impression is that this is going to be special.  You’re talking to your friends about it before you’ve even taken a bite.

How can you blow someone’s mind the instant they open your package?

This gym. ZombieFit puts an insane spin on standard fitness classes:

What if you woke up tomorrow to find your city overridden with zombies, would you survive? This may seem childish, but by preparing for the impossible, you’ll be ready for the improbable.

The keys to surviving Z-day are simple: Be able to lift and throw heavy things, run fast and for long distances, and be able to navigate obstacles and urban environments in an efficient manner. By following the ZombieFit WODs (workout of the day) and practicing parkour, you will achieve increased fitness through the performance of functional movements at high intensity and find within yourself the internal discipline and mental fortitude necessary to become a traceur.

This is GOOD MARKETING. Differentiate. Be remarkable. Be worth talking about.

More about ZombieFit.

This boom box also charges the batteries for DeWalt power tools.

Once you have the radio, you’re going to keep buying the tools that match so you don’t need to worry about bringing a charger to the job site.

Great move by DeWalt. (They should give away the radios.)

Lesson: Think about how you can connect your customers to a system of products — not by forcing them, but by making it easier and beneficial to stick with you.

(Did you ever notice that iPod cords are just standard USB cables? Apple just changed one end of the plug and created an entire exclusive ecosystem around them.)

That question may be the most important question you can ask — and the business innovation of the decade. It comes from Fred Reichheld‘s Net Promoter Score concept and his book The Ultimate Question. You should read the book and start using it immediately.

Of course, I love it because it’s a word of mouth question. Measuring your success in terms of working for the referral takes a lot of complicated business goals and boils it down to one simple idea — is the customer so happy that they will refer us?

It’s a question that works for every department. The CEO knows that referrals are important, but so does the delivery guy. Each employee can succeed by defining their job in terms of the did I earn the referral today? objective.

You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to start asking this question and how quickly it aligns your company around what really matters: customers that love you so much that they sing your praises to their friends.

Here’s a great email I got from Rackspace:

Learn more from NetPromoter.com.

Welcome back to the Damn, I Wish I Thought of That! newsletter. This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.]

Focus is what builds brands and earns fans. The less distractions for you and your customers, the better for everyone. A few ways to do it:

1> With your selection
2> With your menu
3> With your talent
4> Check it out: Simply Noise

1> With your selection

Too much variety can confuse customers and cost you the sale. When Walmart Canada cut two of its five lines of peanut butter to free up shelf space, they actually sold more peanut butter. The results mirror a 2007 study by Bain & Co. which found that reducing the number of products you offer can increase sales by as much as 40 percent — all while reducing costs 10 to 35 percent. Take a look at what’s on your store shelves, you might find you can cut the selection (and some inventory headaches) and increase sales at the same time.

The lesson: When you focus your selection, your best products get more attention.

Learn more: Globe and Mail

2> With your menu

Restaurants are notorious for over-complicating their menus and featuring items they don’t do well. At New York’s I Trulli restaurant, owner Nicola Marzovilla keeps his menu focused — so much so that he refuses to offer a children’s menu, even though diners frequently request it. More than stubbornness, it’s out of his restaurant’s focus on family and nutrition. He’s more than willing to offer a smaller portion of something from the menu, but you won’t see chicken fingers, grilled cheese, or PB&J being served.

The lesson: Customers don’t always know what they’re looking for. Sometimes, it requires ignoring them to give them what they really want.

Learn more: New York Times

3> With your talent

The riches are in the niches. UK-based Red Photography will shoot a wide range of stuff, but they’re especially talented with cans and bottles. Instead of adding this to their offerings alongside location photography, food, and people, they created separate micro businesses “We Shoot Bottles” and “We Shoot Cans.” In terms of both branding and SEO, the specific focus gives them a big advantage over competitors who try to do everything.

The lesson: Focus on what you’re absolutely, fantastically, undeniably amazing at — and cut the rest.

Learn more: We Shoot Bottles and We Shoot Cans

4> Check it out: Simply Noise

If you need some noise to drown out your co-worker’s hacking cough — but can’t work to music — try Simply Noise. It’s no Pandora or Grooveshark, but it’s great at what it promises: All static, all the time.

Check it out: Simply Noise

Reviews on your website build customer trust and increase sales. We’d all rather buy from companies and products that are well-recommended.

How do you get more reviews? Just ask.

Send a reminder email asking for reviews after each order. Take a look at this great example that Costco sent me:

1. Give a clear call to action: “Write a review!”
2. Show the benefit: “Reviews help us provide you and all Costco members with better products and service.”
3. Make it easy: Instructions are right in the email.

(Disclosure: Costco is a client and their reviews are powered by Bazaarvoice, where I’m an advisor.)

I called a cab in a new town, which is a do-it-and-forget-it experience for most people.

So how does the cab company get me to remember them?

They didn’t just email the order confirmation. They focused on earning the next sale.

The email had coupons and an invitation to install their app on my phone. Great move — once I install it, they are likely to be the only cab company that I have handy for the next order.

How can you change your post-sale follow-up to get a customer to remember your name?

It’s expensive and a pain in the butt.

We just had a meeting at McDonald’s headquarters — with a natural forest outside the window.

Very nice, and a lot less work.

What could you STOP doing and get a better result?

And they all feel pretty much the same when you start doing them.

Entrepreneurs — remember Benjamin Franklin’s advice:

Never confuse motion with action.

(If you’re having trouble with this, read Rework by Jason Fried, with amazing illustrations by Mike Rohde.)

There has been a revolution in consumer electronics.

But it’s so small you didn’t notice.

That’s an off switch on a Cisco Valet Wi-Fi hub.

Every day all your techno junk is burning power when you’re not using it. "Vampire Power" — what you use on standby mode — wastes up to 13% of all US power consumption.

But there was no way to turn it all off when you leave the office, without lots of unplugging and lost settings. Until they added the simple switch.

(What is the tiniest thing can you add to your product to make a big difference?)