Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 20
Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 20
Inspiration from across the world for retail enthusiasts, e-commerce professionals, marketing lovers and technology fans.
So much happened again around the world in e-commerce, digital marketing, hospitality, and AI. Too much to fit into one newsletter, but I have grabbed some highlights and entertaining topics.
🇱🇦 HOSPITALITY WITH A CAPITAL H
It is not a secret that I love Airports. It is also not a secret that I think Asian airports are among the best. But I never expected Luang Prabang Airport to have this kind of hospitality!
🇯🇵 Japan’s hospitality is hard work: a foreigner working in a Ryokan
I wrote earlier about hospitality in Japan, here. The hospitality in Japan is Amazing and as a customer, you feel special. I stumbled upon this article where an English guy, living in Japan and working in a traditional ryokan (traditional hotel), explains his experiences and talks about hospitality and cultural differences. A very nice read.
Absolutely. One thing I’ve noticed during my time in Japan, certainly at the ryokan, is that people tend to work in silos. If you’re at the front desk, then you only work there, and you shouldn’t do anything for any other teams. If you’re a cleaner, you should only do the cleaning. There isn’t very much crossover in between the different teams.
I’ve also been watching the general manager very closely because she deals with VIP guests. Most foreigners don’t realize how much knowledge about everything the general manager needs to have. She has to know how to serve kaiseki and welcoming etiquette. She has to know the entire history of the building and the details of all of the hanging scrolls in each room. She has to know all of the flowers in the garden and when they will bloom.
So, I will deliberately make a small, unoffensive mistake—placing a dish in a slightly different location, for example. This gives me a chance to say something like, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t do that quite right. Japanese cuisine can be complicated. English cuisine is simple.”
It reminded me again of my stay in a Ryokan where I (at that time) thought I looked like Steven Seagal 🤣
Details matter: https://kokoro-jp.com/interviews/3316/
🇳🇱 Site search relevance, a definition from Sligro (B2B)
I visited the WebWinkel Vakdagen conference and among others, I watched a presentation on site search. The company that presented this is Sligro, a B2B food wholesaler in the Netherlands and Belgium.
This picture I wanted to share this as it has a definition of on-site search that I think others can use as well.
Relevance is the practice of improving search results for users by satisfying their information needs in the context of a particular user experience while balancing how ranking impacts our business needs
Then the speaker breaks this down, and I roughly translate:
Welke zoekintenties zij hebben: which search intent they have
Finding/comparing products
Find shopping lists
Discover recipe's
Read a theme or inspiration
Answer customer service questions
Store Locator
Wie zijn onze gebruikers: who are our users
Restaurant owners, elderly homes, care centers, pubs.
The difference between buyers and decision-makers
Welke ervaringen bieden wij aan: which experiences do we offer
Before and after login
Available assortment
Different platforms
Different search bars
The idea is to offer this experience all in one interface.
🚢 Nomadcruise is heading for Japan
Back in 2019, I traveled to Brazil with the Nomadcruise. It’s a cruise ship with a conference for digital marketers, (wannabe) entrepreneurs, and people who are working or want to work remotely. How they say it: for freedom seekers.
This year they will travel to Japan by cruise. I just wanted to mention this as it is a great experience to meet people and to get inspired in global marketing and different cultures. There are countless nationalities on board of this conference.
The organization is very professional and you are totally free to join every activity or just a few. Everything is totally fine!
Details matter: https://www.nomadcruise.com/
✅Product Detail Page Checklist
We all know how important checking or validating product pages is.
I found a checklist to check product pages for SEO (of course directly related to customer experience) I love to save these checklists. You never know when you can use them either for yourself at work or just when you need to help someone.
Aleyda Solis created a GPT for analyzing PDP’s but that one is only accessible if you have a subscription to ChatGPT. If you don’t have that (or don’t want that) she also provided the source excel file. Worth a save!
Details matter: https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/the-ecommerce-product-page-seo-gpt-validator-and-sheet-checklist/
🗨️Consulting Fundamentals: skills, tools tips
A while ago I completed the Coursera course from John Kim on consultancy.
Recently he published a book that aligns with the course. I bought the book as a reference and was browsing through it the other day. I want to share these two pages on presentations and specifically PowerPoint titles. If we all use this tip, presentations can be much more efficient.
🤖Wow, robotics takes a big step with Mobile Aloha
Meet Mobile ALOHA a robot that -as the author writes- looks like the robot in the Jetsons cartoon series. A Robot that learns from human demonstration.
In the video below you see a robot do various human tasks including:
opening a beer, opening doors, and playing with pets. Check it out.
Imitation learning from human demonstrations has shown impressive performance in robotics. However, most results focus on table-top manipulation, lacking the mobility and dexterity necessary for generally useful tasks. In this work, we develop a system for imitating mobile manipulation tasks that are bimanual and require whole-body control. We first present Mobile ALOHA, a low-cost and whole-body teleoperation system for data collection.
That’s it for this edition,
Thank you for reading,
Alex