Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 53
Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 53
Inspiration from across the world for retail enthusiasts, e-commerce professionals, marketing lovers and technology fans. Welcome back! I summarized some great links again, I stumbled upon this week.
🇹🇭 🏴Thailand launches digital crypto asset sandbox incl. visa
Step by step, Thailand is becoming an important -creative-crypto hub in South East Asia. Thailand's new digital crypto sandbox regulation is like a "safe playground" for crypto businesses to try out new ideas without facing strict rules right away. The government created this sandbox to help companies experiment with blockchain technology and digital assets. It's designed to encourage innovation while still ensuring some basic protections for consumers and the financial system.
Did you know Thailand is already #10 on the global list of crypo friendly nations?
I think good for businesses and innovation, will probably attract people to places like the Bangkok True Digital Park.
Let’s hope one day they are also allowing BTC payments outside the sandbox, just like is possible in Boracay, Philippines.
While allowing crypto transactions and payments, Thai regulators also initiated some strict regulations in order to protect investors’ rights and safety, while also maintaining financial stability in the country. In recent months, Thailand’s financial authorities have been shifting to a more crypto-friendly regulatory approach, approving multiple important initiatives in order to develop the landscape.
The sandbox covers both types of tokens and six roles:
Digital Asset Exchange
Digital Asset Broker
Digital Asset Dealer
Digital Asset Fund Manager
Digital Asset Advisor
Digital Asset Custodial Wallet Provider
https://www.blockhead.co/2024/08/13/thailand-introduces-sandbox-for-crypto-service-testing/
https://cryptoforinnovation.org/three-reasons-why-crypto-is-growing-in-thailand/
It’s nice to see this competition between area’s, meanwhile Dubai allows now salary payments in crypto. Curious what Thailand will come up with next.
🛎️Product Managers attention: do not engage in feature wars
Understand your users, instead of copying your competitor’s features. I agree, and do understand your users deeply, for international companies on a country or even regional level. Having said that, I do think you need to have your basics right, on par with your competitors or the expectations of your users—benchmarking against trendsetters like Amazon or Coolblue, even outside your industry."
🇺🇸 Product Management: How prioritizing customer outcomes drives continuous innovation
Wow, this is a great article. It’s about the development of Amazon Prime. It explains Amazon’s data driven and customer centric approach, something many companies can still learn from. I hope one day, Amazon also puts a strong focus at it’s third party sellers because their experience is less optimal 😂, having said that, lots of things to learn from this article for many organisations. Check it out.
Whereas most companies would have a big annual planning process culminating in a big roadmap of a bunch of features that the leaders hoped would generate the necessary results, at Amazon, they start with the desired customer experience that their data shows them is important, and the entire approach to product is about experimenting and discovering a solution that can deliver the necessary outcome.
All of this comes from strong product leaders and strong product teams, obsessing over customers, having a clear product vision and data-driven product strategy, the willingness and skills to test ideas with experiments, then leverage what you have learned into real business outcomes.
Remarkably, the first productized version of the Amazon Prime product was built in roughly three months.
There were four main reasons for this:
the leadership decided to immediately put a dedicated, empowered product team behind the Prime program;
the leadership also made it very clear that this was one of a small number of critical focus areas;
due to the many prior experiments related to shipping, much of the supporting infrastructure was already in place, and could be leveraged for this new offering; and
the new Prime PRFAQ clarified what was important and what was not, aligning people, and helping them understand the motivation and strategic context, and plan their work accordingly.
https://www.svpg.com/product-model-at-amazon/
🌎Most visited e-commerce websites in the world: marketplaces in front
As I write on global e-commerce news, this list cannot be left out. At similarweb you can easily check rankings for global websites real time. Amazon remains very strong with multiple domains in the Top 10. Temu took over the second spot from E-bay. Ozon, the Russian Amazon is doing quite well also.
https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/e-commerce-and-shopping/
🌎Semrush refresher: list of Top of The Funnel Content
Someone at SemRush is publishing some useful content lately. This is just a list where you can pick types of content that (most likely) work. Just a refresher for everyone active in digital marketing and e-commerce:
•TOFU: attracts attention
•MOFU: generates leads
•BOFU: drives conversions
Details: https://www.semrush.com/blog/content-marketing-funnel/
🇳🇱 QR codes journeys in Europe: net niet/almost..not
Now, yesterday I ended up in a beach (that I was not intended to go to), but I ended up in Dutch beach “Zuiderstrand”. There I see this pole:
It gives a free sample of sun cream to use directly on the beach, just hold your hands in the pole and it dispence some sun cream for free. Nice idea! When I see QR-codes, I always try to test and see how the customer journey goes. Mostly it is very poor. I cannot say from this one, it is very poor, but it can be improved.
After you scan the QR code, you end up here:
Then I always think, what would the average customer wants from this landingpage:
Get this sun cream , as fast as possible. So the page lacks a discount and the possibility to get the sun cream directly at the beach bar where I took the picture. The text says the product is only available at the pharmacy, but it also has direct selling via marketplace bol.com so that pharmacy story seems a bit outdated.
There is not an option to send yourself a reminder, for example a reminder with a location where to buy the sunscream the next day, I would like something like that so I do not forget it and I have the location in my mailbox or whatsapp.
There is no discount, some coupon that encourages people to order with their online partners.
When you scan the QR you have used the dispenser, why not ask for reviews, place them also on this page, show the good quality of the product. In fact you can later use these reviews displayed on the pole.
Technically the QR code just goes to a landingpage, no UTM or any recognition available. I think that can also be improved so you can actually learn about the usage, and if you make each pole with a seperate QR you can also localise the landingpage experience, maybe do a deal with the beach bar as well.
QR code experience in Europe remains poor, compared to China with their mini program system. But it can be improved with suggestions as I wrote above.
🇺🇸 Linas’s Newsletter: Paypal introducing fast lane checkout
Linas has some great articles in his newsletter. I suggest to read it, checkout the link below. Especially the information on “Paypal’s fast lane checktout”. Now I am not a big fan of paypal after their 2022 policy misinformation fail, and I cancelled my account back then. But the coming “fast lane checkout” is actually something nice.
The introduction of Fastlane comes in response to consumer preferences. Studies show that a significant percentage of shoppers prefer guest checkout options to avoid creating accounts on e-commerce sites. PayPal's solution caters to this preference.
🇪🇺 New app store: Altstore for sideloading iOs apps in European Union
For Android its already possible for a long time to use alternative app stores, like F-Droid, I use myself. But for Apple this was not possible, until now in the European Union. I think interest might grow overtime for this service, but for short term it might help app development teams for example with:
Bypass Apple's review process:
AltStore allows you to distribute new builds directly to testers without going through Apple’s App Store review process or Testflights restrictive possibilities.
Testing Features not allowed by Apple:
Altstore allows to test features and functionalities that would typically be rejected by Apple, such as emulation, system-level modifications, or experimental APIs, giving more freedom in the development process.
Details:
https://routenote.com/blog/spotify-criticises-apples-app-store-changes-dma/
That’s it for this edition. Thank you for liking and sharing!
Greetings