What we learned about episode 05 of #thealignment: unlocking your next million users

Last week, we had the pleasure of seeing four incredible individuals debate the best way to unlock your next million users abroad. This is our widest-ever lens on #thealignment, and it's a testament to our guests that they were able to wrestle with the subject matter and produce extremely valuable insight.

They were:

Nataly Kelly , Chief Growth Officer at Rebrandly

Alessandra Binazzi , Lead Consultant at Global Sights

Diego Felix D. , Product Director at Mastercard

David McNamee , Enterprise Solutions Architect at Phrase

And finally James Atkin , our very own CS manager

Here's some of what we learned:

1. Your product is born global. Act like it?

Today products and websites are now “born global” rather than self-consciously launched in new markets. If you have a website, if you're launched in a global market, you fall into this category.?

Your strategy has to change to match – and our first guest, Nataly Kelly, Chief Growth Officer at Rebrandly, offered some strategic thinking about how.?

“Intensification” is the presence of “intensifying” your existing presence in a given market. The approach relies on looking and listening?– identifying why your product might be working for different groups of users and not others, and doubling down on those factors.?

Nataly also suggested that everything down to org structure should be affected by the implications of “born global” products.

“One way you can fix natural biases and diversify your perception of user value is to change who you hire on your own team,” argued Nataly. By having more diverse teams, you’ll be better equipped to identify, empathize with, and serve, your non-domestic users.

(You can buy Nataly Kelly's book here)?

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2. Pick markets to deliver on really well?

The “look-and-listen” part of intensification is something all the panellists agreed on.

?? Nataly Kallyt cautioned about businesses responding to market pull signals without thinking their product experience all the way through for local users.

?? Diego Santos, Director of Product in payments at Mastercard, talked about achieving “critical mass” in different markets; and how it can be important to target that critical mass as a strategic objective.?

?? James Atkin, Senior CS manager at Global App Testing, talked about how testing and focus should not be applied equally. “It’s often much cheaper to retain a monopoly than it is to get a toehold in a random market. So not only does each additional percent of market growth have an exponential impact or effect on your ability to hold that market.”

The implications of this, explained James, is that businesses working with GAT run their testing strategies very differently in different parts of the world. Some businesses test “extensively” to a minimum quality standard everywhere; but many businesses also test “intensively” to try to get to a higher standard of UX in key markets, drive a seriously competitive product, and deliver local advantage.

(Read other QA techniques James suggested to drive global growth opportunities.)?

3. Competition is increasing, so make it easy or lose users

One of the themes we heard throughout episode #05 is that as we globalize, competition increases. It's easier for everybody else to reach global audiences, too. So you have to have zero tolerance for friction or difficulty just to be able to compete.

One “basic” way that businesses fall down is failing to make it easy for users, argued Alessandra Binazzi. You need to be inclusive, offer local services, and empathize with local users in order to execute well.

Alessandra used the examples of ASICS A/B testing local payment options to reveal user preferences as an example of doing this right. 83% of consumers have abandoned cart due to an arduous sign-up or login processes, particularly within APAC, according to Auth0 and YouGov?– ensure your product is easy to use on every level.

4. Find a local network for your product?

One way to think about your next million users is to think about local network effects, argued Diego Santos, Product Director at Mastercard.

In product teams, when trying to drive adoption, businesses often focus on “killer features”. But these are expensive to produce and market.

One cheaper and more effective way to drive local adoption is to think about existing local networks and piggyback onto them. The “critical mass” referred to earlier is so often a “network effect”, the effect by which a product or service becomes more valuable as it accrues more users in a given market. Identifying a suitable network as a distribution channel can enable you to quickly extend your own presence.

Diego gave some examples. In Saudi Arabia, mastercard partnered with a local card network called Mada, quickly establishing 25 million users and generating the local network effect they needed to compete as a card network. Similarly, Disney Plus partnered with O2 in the UK in order to give O2 users access to Disney Plus and kickstart the channel.?Today, Disney Plus has more UK subscribers than Netflix.?

Products don't exist without a market context: and understanding that context is a crucial part of local success.

5. It's possible to improve your translation quality for local users through tooling

David McNamee, an Enterprise Solutions Architect at Phrase, spoke about how local product experiences are likely to improve with AI tooling breakthroughs.?Asked how tooling could help generate the next million users, David said:?

“It’s about providing quality… whether it’s quality assurance which is committed faster because LLMs are an interesting judge of translation quality, or in some cases, they do a better job of traditional translation than traditional tools”? – the quality experience of individual users will be higher, argued David.

It seems likely that with more powerful and sophisticated tooling, the cost of localizing a product or content will come down. That therefore, between standardized and personalized product experiences, the needle will move in favour of localization.?

Final thought

Iteration has been shown to build better software products wherever you are. But iteration is about responsiveness and fidelity to customer needs. The question becomes “iteration for whom?”

AI is bringing down the cost of software and translation production; and global delivery is becoming easier meaning that products are born global in the first place. So as the cycle of software production gets faster, the real challenge is getting closer to your global users.

For Global App Testing, that's what the crowdtesting approach is all about. But we're curious about how other businesses have done it.

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