Alex Baar | International Digital Marketing | E-commerce

I am currently traveling around the Philippines, great country, very nice people. As always I pay attention to retail and digital commerce as it is my hobby. I will describe a few experiences/pictures from what took my attention during my travel. If you are in a hurry, then just watch the video, I made on retail and commerce in the Philippines, if you are not in a hurry, read the complete post for more details: You can watch the same video at " rumble ", if you prefer that platform. Brandnames Philippines love to play around with brand names, like the pictures you see below. You can spend an entire day enjoying funny brand names if you like.    Yes, a real spabucks, SPAfoot!     And there we have Walter Mart, I guess that's has been the inspiration of the founder of Wall Mart.    "John Lemon". Where you can buy everything Lennon :)   Super apps in Asia are awesome The super apps that are used in most of SE Asia and China, also work very smoothly he...

Paying with Bitcoin (Zeus wallet) in Boracay via Umbrel: A Guide I am currently at Boracay Island, a.k.a. Bitcoin island. A remote spot in the Philippines where  " pouch.ph " has managed to -currently- get over 250 vendors to accept lightning payments, an awesome achievement. Now, I am a big fan of the lightning network and Bitcoin: It corresponds with freedom (most important). It empowers small and medium enterprises. It makes it possible everyone in the world gets a "bank account". It makes cross border transactions very very cheap.c It will greatly enhance the payment user experience, because the network is open.  Competition -between wallets- will be especially on the user interface level. This creates better experiences for all. Both the monetary and the technical part are highly interesting and solves many problems and I encourage everyone to dive into that. Imagine that not only banks or large financial institutions create payment apps, but everyone can cre...

Why I am so enthousiastic on this user centric payment and monetary system When I lived and worked in Shanghai a few years ago, one of the things I missed a lot when returning home was the ease of payments. Everything could be done via my mobile phone in such an easy way that it soon became fun to pay something.  It made me realize this payment innovation that China had is something that boosted their economy and made it very easy for those without a bank, people who for example sell on a market stall or even homeless people to get a digital wallet to sent and receive money instantly. This all for a fraction of the costs in the Netherlands alone to get a payment infrastructure in your shop or market stall. It was made to be convenient, user-friendly and to make it easy to do business.  I like UX, I like apps, I like it when it is really made for the user, and it helps the user solving a problem or making something fun. Alipay and Wechat pay the payment providers in China, did ...

I haven’t written for a while, it is simply because I am busy with both working and traveling. Still working in Shanghai and traveling around Asia. This weekend I was visiting Hangzhou and while waiting for the train I was brainstorming with myself for improvements at "ticket vending machines". Those ticket machines you see often in subway stations. The past weekend, I had to wait in so many lines to buy a “single journey” ticket at the subway ticketing machines, it made me realize that these machines probably have never been user tested and that there is not any analytics used to test and optimize them. For here I use an example of a ticket machine in Hangzhou, China as here is the headquarters of Alibaba , so they should be able and eager to develop solutions for the users of these machines in this city, but it is not limited to here, the UX of subway ticketing machines is dramatic all over the world. I always surprise myself about how horrible these systems are. Bu...

Usually I post screenshots and short summary's of books I read here at this blog, just for my own convenience, if I need to review something I can quickly find the things I need. Of course if I like these reads, others might also find it useful so that's also why I share it. Sometimes I make extensive summary's and sometimes just some "picture screenshots". Currently I am reading the book "Kloteklanten 3.0" roughly translated as 'Damn those customers 3.0" written by Egbert Jan van Bel, the author also lectures at Beeckestijn Business School and he has inspired me a lot when I attended his classes a few years ago. Don't be fooled by the title of the book. It is a real inspirational book about customer centricity. The subtitle of the book is: how to become the most customer friendly business of the Netherlands. The book is in Dutch, and as I usually write in English at this blog, I will roughly translate some pages since this is a good...

Since january 2018, I live and work now in Shanghai, China. Of course I had traveled to China a lot before, but now living here, makes you really experience life in China. I am really happy I got the opportunity to work here for a great company. I am learning so many new things, enjoying China and I let myself be amazed everyday by the technology and transportation advantage they have here. It is so impressive, they are way ahead of Europe and even the US. Here in China, I really experience how technology and design thinking can make life much more easier. Alipay Take a look at Alipay, an app, I use almost every day and this app makes life so much more easy for me.I will explain some functions I use regularly. Screenshot of my Alipay app In the Netherlands (or Europe) we are used paying with "debit cards'' or sometimes a credit card. Here in China, I also have a debit bank card. But I used it only once and that was for connecting my bank account to Alipay...