Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 75
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.
😲WTF: Doom running in a PDF
Ok, this is really a WTF moment. I remember buying DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D in the US via post. I put some USD in an envelope and shipped it to ID software. Got back floppy disks with the game. Had to install them on my desktop tower to play (hoping all floppy’s were intact).
Now today Doom just runs in a PDF file 😲
Details:
https://doompdf.pages.dev/doom.pdf
https://github.com/ading2210/doompdf?tab=readme-ov-file#readme
🌎Deceptive Design Patterns across the globe extensive book (free)
If you -like me- are interested in UX design and differences between countries, it’s worth to follow Vitali Friedman. He writes real good content on UX and design.
Just recently he shared an e-book writen by Harry Brignull, (online free, paid physical and paid huge slide deck for tutors) and with examples of UX design and deceptive design patterns.
I think there was lots of effort in writing this book. Really well done. You can use it either to make your online precense honest and transparent or use it to discover deceptive design patterns that might work 😊. Anyway useful content for every marketer, product manger, user experience responsible or CRO-er.
Some of the cases described, I think, cannot do so much harm, I even used a couple of them at a previous job, but some of the cases describd are really harmful. Worth a read!
Guess what happened. The users in group A who weren’t shown the ticket fees upfront spent about 21% more money and were 14.1% more likely to complete a purchase. That’s huge.
So, now imagine what it would be like to run a business and know that one simple design decision would get your customers to spend 21% more. It’s a no brainer – of course you would. One of the only things that would stop you is the threat of legal consequences that would cost more than the profit you’d get from it.
Extensive library of different legal design pattern (US/Europe): https://www.deceptive.design/laws
International hall of shame: https://www.deceptive.design/hall-of-shame
The e-book: https://www.deceptive.design/book/contents/get-started
Vitali Friedman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalyfriedman/
🇨🇳 Just saying, great UX we can learn something from it



Recently during my holiday in China, I was traveling with a friend by car. I immediatly was attracted to the UX of the car navigation system, a Chinese car, I forgot the brand, I am not so much into cars.
My mandarin is very limited, only “beer order level”, so not “navigation style level” and still, the interface was so clear, much clearer than I ever saw in Europe, that I understood nearly everything.
Next to that they have lot’s of great features like for example the fact that you can see at your navigation system, when traffic lights go red or green, it shows a countdown timer! Awesome isn’t it?
🤖OpenAI has some national policy ideas
I like to read on strategy in general, and I share this article on AI strategy. This article is not on business level but on country level. Politico explains the thoughts and possibilities on how AI can help boost the economy of regions that are now often left behind.
It’s about how you have to think beyond data centers. It’s a blueprint from OpenAI with special AI economic zones on various industries and topics. Very interesting and motivating to read about it and I think also interesting for everyone interested in global marketing and e-commerce to see in which direction countries or regions are going.
…If you’re going to build a data center or some type of ecosystem in Detroit, it should be organized and built around how it would become the leading player in thinking about transportation and automobiles. There’s so much data, information and expertise there…
…The “rest of the country” is often connected to the tech industry more as a power source than a talent pool, and Lehane suggested that energy might be a starting point for local AI-centric tech economies. “Those sections of the country … have a really unique opportunity to think about, okay, let’s make sure we’re not just building energy centers, let’s think about how these energy centers can help us grow and support broader [tech] ecosystems.”
Very curious how it all will play out. As we see below it might not be good for the EU (there are exceptions in Europe (hi E-stonia, hi Switzerland), especially Germany as other continents and countries embrace AI much more and faster and thus will be more productive.
See also my earlier post on China on this topic:
https://www.crossborderalex.com/p/global-digital-marketing-and-retail-ed73

🇫🇷 RATP app sucks big time
Pfff, I am in Paris, writing this and I make use of the RATP app to access the subway in Paris. The #1 thing you want such an app to do is to do a good job opening the gates, and yet there it fails miserably.
I bought a day pass (without an account, possible from within the app) and almost every time I needed to go through a gate, I get this screen as shown above. Despite having a connection it simply does not work.
The gates opening via the app works via NFC, but my guess is they want to do a real time check and therefore it is not possible to do it on a slow or absent connection. I really don’t understand why. I am in a fucking underground system, not always connections are reliable there.
Just implement a secure offline storage for NFC tickets The app can synchronize with the central database once the user regains internet access.
Besides this some other remarks:
It also lacks often proper translation, you cannot change language from within the app (and you get confirmation emails in another language then you use the app with)
The app crashses regularly.
I saw lots of Chinese tourists and yet it is impossible to pay with Alipay or WeChat pay.
Its ver confusing it gives zones and it looks like given the translation you can choose zones before purchasing but it is actually not possible.
It installs another app “Mes Tickets Navigo” that is essential to get it (non) working in the RATP app, which is not good in terms of user experience and I think also not needed.
Retry installation button does not work, nothing happens.
I cannot imagine why this miserable working NFC based system has been chosen. You can test and monitor this constantly in various ways and see it gives problems. There are best practices of this from other countries (hello London, Tokyo) that have it working the right way.
I am not the only one with this issue, I read, there are many complaints. From what I heard they rushed finishing the app for the olympics leaving many bugs, but hey, thats been a while now! Go fix it.
So you see there is still a lot of work to do for international e-commerce enthusiasts and international e-commerce SaaS services.
Details: https://www.ratp.fr/en
🇯🇵 Japan: app chat concept get a call to read your text
I am always amazed app concepts come and go all the time and some stand out, like this one in Japan. It introduces features that were previously not even considered for a text app.
The idea is simple: this is Jiffcy, the text "call" app that is popular among Gen Z in Japan: instead of other apps that make you wait for people to read your texts, it initiates a call that must be picked up, and chat messages appear as typed on screen.
Of course you have to see this in the japanese context of being non intrusive that sometimes goes a long way, but still curious if these features make their way (back) in other apps.
It also learns to constantly map features and even if they seem odd at first, think of use cases and test them.
Details: https://apps.apple.com/be/app/jiffcy-text-calling-app/id6443536642
https://newsdig.tbs.co.jp/articles/-/1680073?page=2
🎣B2B Leadgen —> combine powers
One of my favorite blogs is search engine land, for years already a stable factor of reliable search engine news. Sometimes they move beyond that and this article is worth realizing. How the power of combining platforms can work in lead generation.
This is a good example of being where your customers are.
With this approach, you would leverage LinkedIn Ads audience targeting criteria such as job title, company, company size, industry, and member skills to create awareness campaigns.
If you were to send that traffic to your website, you could then retarget that traffic via Google Ads.
This tactic is great for aligning and reinforcing messaging.
For example, if the original LinkedIn ad promoted an ebook download and a user clicked the ad without downloading, you could either provide a complementary offering via the Google retargeting campaign or serve them the ebook offering again.
Details: https://searchengineland.com/combine-google-ads-linkedin-ads-b2b-campaigns-450869
🇫🇷 Galeries Lafayette: Yard wine cave and experience center



While in Paris the last weekend, I visited Galaries Lafayette on the famous Champs Elysees (note: not with the RATP NFC ticket, bought a seperate paper one😂). I am not such a wine guy, but I was impressed by their wine experience center. An area is designed to offer visitors an immersive wine-tasting experience within the department store. It looked like a combined wine cellar and bar. Worth a visit!
⚠️ChatGPT Operators they are here mind the impact
I usually do not post links that everyone could have read easily, but I now make an excemption. ChatGPT operators are live in the US -Europe can take a while😔-, and these operators can browse the web and take actions for you. Think of use cases like:
Ordering dinner ingredients based on a picture and a recipe at different stores
Planning a weekend trip based on hidden gems off Reddit, my budget and interests
Booking a one-way flight from Zurich to Vienna using the Booking integration (!) note Booking already integrates!
Finding the best/cheapest health insurance coverage in Switzerland
Let the operator order the best deals across all wholesalers for your restaurant…weekly.
I think very important to realize and -I have written it before- adapt your strategy so you can take advantage of this development and not get stuck behind. Because this will disrupt! You can try it with VPN and subscribtion (switch to US)
Via: https://x.com/rowancheung
That’s it for this edition.
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