Richard Mills

When it comes to the portals, I admit I am a bit of a “super fan” 🤩 Which is why I am so excited about our latest feature that integrates the powerhouse of Rightmove, the UK's No. 1 property data, directly into our products. This collaboration supercharges our data & research tools with the latest on-market listings and area insights, providing our members with even deeper comprehensive views of every property, plot or official title in the country. The team have again worked their magic to combine technical title and risk data with real-time trend analytics, to create something that's not only incredibly powerful but also simple use and beautifully visualised. 😻 Thank you to all the team for this work, your relentlessness and energy is inspiring. You are smashing it! Come have a play and see how it can transform your research. Even better, join our community and start using Addland for your business or investment! Platform, Reports, Data. Addland Rightmove #propertydata #research #proptech #portals #marketinsights

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Last night at ProductTank London we heard from 4 different speakers on the topic of Product Culture. My key takeaway is this... 'Good' product culture lacks definition. You might read about the importance of product culture, or ask about it when interviewing. You may even try to evaluate how good or bad the product culture is at your company. But here's the bottom line: product culture 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 something that you'll usually find written down, like you would a strategy, a roadmap, or a vision. Hearing someone describe it will inherently be biased. Product culture is the shared values, beliefs, behaviours, and practices that shape a team, org, or company's identity. It changes when you change your beliefs, behaviours, and practices. Not satisfied with the product culture at your company? You're more empowered to change it than you might think. How have you gone about improving product culture at your company?

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When i was reading the “PM Burnout Report” i indeed payed the most attention to the part Petra is talking about So today, If you’re a Head of Product or a Product Lead, take a moment to reflect: • Are your Product Managers clear on their roles? • Do they have a well-defined scope of work? • Are their efforts recognized and appreciated? • Do they have a clear growth plan with set goals? If you have got at least one “no”, you might need to do a better job Burnout can stem from various factors, but as a leader, it’s your responsibility to prioritize your team’s well-being. When you take care of your team, they can take care of the product.

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Been a brilliant few weeks meeting UserTesting Customers across Europe. With purse strings tightening, the sessions with Product Leaders, Designers and UX Researchers have focussed on fast, efficient, value driven product delivery as part of a Continuous Experimentation Culture. My highlights have been: - UX Researchers are having to do more with less, and are keen to empower others to maximise their impact - Designers feel more restricted in the current climate and want to find ways to drive design innovation - Product leadership are more open to different approaches than ever before (thank you Teresa Torres) - I've seen the amount of UX testing increase as the outputs are proving to positively impact key decisions throughout product delivery Engaging with Product Teams has been key - without their buy in, it is difficult to make changes. Access to Metrics and KPIs have also been crucial to showing the impact of positive change, with qualitative and quantitative insights working together a necessity to drive efficiency and good customer experiences. I'm really excited to continue this journey with these customers. If you or your team want to find out more about how I can help you, feel free to reach out. #UserTesting #ProductDelivery #ProductLeaders #UserResearch #UXDesign #ContinuousExperimentation #Consulting

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See a lot of posts on the gains Klarna are picking up with AI. I’m sure they are doing some great things but the claim that they are halving their workforce and rebuilding salesforce to 90% functionality is pretty unlikely. feels like a convenient cost saving exercise, riding the PR wave and fluffing the investor narrative. Different question, could a lot of 1k+employee organisations zero cost base their ticketing system and CRM and remove a ton of bloat building 10% of the functionality in house.

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Working with teams in person when building new ideas or solving big challenges together always works better than lots of remote calls 🤝 I’ve recently been running innovation workshops and building product roadmaps for a new scaleup company that could have been ran over lots of short remote calls BUT Doing the work in person through workshop framework MASSIVELY helps get things done ALOT faster, stimulate more ideas flowing and with a facilitator running the workshop they can unlock the best in the groups collective intelligence by guiding: 🤝 Better Ideas Together: Meeting in person helps us come up with more creative solutions we might miss when working separately. 💪 Stronger Teamwork: Working side-by-side builds trust and understanding, making our team more effective. 💨 Faster Problem-Solving: Talking face-to-face lets us tackle issues and develop new ideas more quickly. 🤩 Shared Excitement: Being in the same room creates a positive mood that makes work more enjoyable and productive. ♥️ Lasting Connections: The relationships we build working together in person can lead to long-term personal and professional growth.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Yes be efficient, Yes be good at your work, Appreciate your team, But also make sure you prioritise people time in your work 🙌 #realteamwork #inpersonideas #facilitation #workshop #facetoface #collaboratebetter

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How do we get our site ready for peak? So often, there are lots of 'low hanging fruit' in the form of usability issues that an online retailer could focus on, but there is one small change that could have a positive impact on the customer experience, which is to incorporate a customer's own name thoughtfully within it. Evidence from various psychological studies has suggested that hearing ones own name showed great advantages such as faster and more accurate responses including perception, attention and memory. Coupled with emerging technologies from https://anagram.ai/ an AI product expert, there is the opportunity for any retailer to create an elevated and personalised concierge style customer experience, starting with name utilisation. Whilst you might have been hoping for something more groundbreaking than to 'insert first name' which retailers such as M&S and Net-a-porter already adopt either in the post add to bag notification or in the welcome header, there is greater opportunity that can come from applying it in more nuanced scenarios e.g: 🛍  User has items in their basket that are now out of stock in their size 💌  Here you could recommend visually similar items in the same size served up in a tailored apology with a discount  👁 User has exceeded the average products browsed per session  💌 Here you could insert a personalised prompt to apply filters based on previous product attribute interactions There are many more use cases to explore, and my inspiration is often found outside of retail, for instance recently the https://mymind.com/ app gives a great lesson in tailored UX copy. Brainlabs

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I frequently hear Exec teams simultaneously claiming “Customer focus”, whilst avoiding talking with their customers. 🤔 Establishing the practice of user research at the top-most level enables a culture of customer focus throughout the organisation. Some of the biggest breakthroughs I've witnessed as part of a leadership team have resulted from the whole C-level spending a couple of hours meeting with real customers. Examples: - Finding our customers have an alternate use case for our product - Realising who our real competitors are - Discovering a new channel where our customers are engaged - Understanding the real connection between our pricing and customer actions - Uncovering features/UX being used in an unexpected way

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Seeing this says to me the Ruroc EOX launch has flopped. If you're asking customers "why didn't you buy" with options of: "Product Design isn't good enough" "I am waiting for a good promotion" ...You have to be deluded if you think you're going to get actionable information from a survey like this. Here's what has gone wrong for Ruroc. Firstly, "EOX" was designed as the 'Finale' of the Atlas line. It should have been positioned as the pinnacle of the range and should have replaced the Atlas 4. Atlas was plagued with issues from v1.0. We rushed, the pandemic hit, suppliers messed us around, we had to build our own factory REMOTELY to keep up with demand. To fix the issue once and for all I hired a specialist product designer who built out the team to deliver the 'perfect product'. It was costly, but it would allow us to reduce our Customer Service costs, return logistics costs, and reduce our in-house QC team from 18 to just 2-3. A huge cost to get a huge saving. Absolutely necessary for Ruroc to stabilise and continue growing at 70-100% YOY. That product, the one that should have been Ruroc's biggest success, is now called "EOX". To sell products online and grow successfully you need: - Scarcity - "I want stuff other people don't have yet, or I don't want to regret not buying when I had the chance." - Innovation - People want the latest greatest and best... if it's not that, why am I giving you my money if my current product does the job? - Social Proof - it's FOMO, who's wearing it, who's buying it, am I going to be the odd one out if I don't buy? - Reciprocity - What's this brand done for me? How have they engaged me? Do I buy into their mission, do I feel obliged to be part of it. - Commitment - OK I've pre-registered, I've followed the page, I've signed up for the newsletter, I'm watching the launch video, I'm going to buy. Not one of these tactics was properly employed during the launch of the "EOX" Further to that, some genius has made the decision to continue with the Atlas 4 and have it run alongside the EOX So now, as a customer of Ruroc, what does this say to me. Ruroc Atlas 4.0 Track - $679.00 (Has no real track certificate) Ruroc Atlas 4.0 Carbon - $595.00 Ruroc "EOX" - $559.00 (brand new should be better than Atlas 4) Ruroc Atlas 4.0 Street (fibreglass) - $319.00 (Confusingly is lighter than the Track and Carbon Atlas) So if I want the best, I buy the most expensive helmet? I can wear it on the Track right? No, not in USA or MotoGP. I want the lightest, so I buy the cheapest? I want the newest, but is it worse than the old models because it's cheaper? This is beyond confusing for customers. Customers give brands minimal attention. Your messaging is as much in the decisions you make around naming and pricing as it is anything else. Ruroc "Atlas-X" - $659.00 Drop the Atlas 4.0 and discount til it's gone Clear message to consumers - "the new product is better, replace your old helmet now" It's not hard.

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🎉 Reflecting on a busy month for us at Staffbase... 👇 🏆 We've been shortlisted for a B2B Marketing Award for Best Omnichannel Programme for our 'This Is Not Your '90s Intranet' campaign. It's the first time we've received this type of recognition for our campaigns. https://lnkd.in/dA3XZhU7 🚀 We landed in the Sifted 50: Germany - a ranking of the 50 German startups with the strongest revenue growth over the past 3 years! https://bit.ly/3NuRirH 📰 We're receiving more media coverage than ever... 🎯 Forbes: "4 Reasons Why It’s Getting Harder To Be A Successful Manager" mentioned our landmark study with the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism https://lnkd.in/d8vXi6Z5 🎯 PRWeek: "61% of employees leave jobs due to poor internal comms" https://staffba.se/PRWeek 🎯 Die Welt: "Die Top-50 beim Umsatz – diese deutschen Unternehmen wachsen am stärksten" https://staffba.se/DieWelt 🎯 Business Punk: "Oh Gott, ich will nicht nach Berlin“ covering our journey as a start up in the former East Germany in an interview with our Founder and CEO, Martin https://lnkd.in/d5Z6gyfn 🎯 HR Brew: "Internal comms is huge for employee retention—but only if you do it well" https://staffba.se/HRBrew 🎯 manager magazin: "Warum das Chemnitzer Start-up Staffbase an die Börse will" about our IPO plans... https://lnkd.in/dHHSPxDy 🚀 Most importantly of all... we're winning great customers all over the world including another of Germany's biggest supermarkets, a major charity in Australia and we're now partnering with seven of the ten biggest automotive manufacturers. We're so excited to working with all of these new customers to achieve success together and up level the whole internal communications sector! 📈 And looking at our plans for 2025... we're just getting started. 📈 There are few things more gratifying than working with great people and then seeing them achieve success. And this team is one of the very best I've had the pleasure of working with... Thank you to my fantastic leaders Fabian Liebig, Lara Dobson, Melanie Bochmann, Athena Koutsonikolas, Dr. Juliane Kiesenbauer, Tee O., Giovanni Picone, Luke Pheasey, Jenny Köhler, Brian Tomlinson, Álvaro Andrés Carrillo and the whole Marketing & Communications team for everything you do each day to make this journey such a fun one! :) #employeecomms #internalcomms #internalcommunications #marketing #b2bmarketing #CMO

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When you’re a millennial product manager, attempting to share her knowledge of product, with the wider community and one of the most successful artists in the world is currently on a mass tour of the UK, there’s only one question on your mind: What would the dangerous animals of product management be if they were Taylor Swift songs? If you've been asking yourself the same question then have I got a blog post for you! https://lnkd.in/dYxE_QDq #product #productmanagement #tech #UX

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Well. £1,500,000? We better get cracking. I’m beyond excited for us to have this support in what we’re doing. The budget will be nice, sure. But it’s not as nice as the conviction shown by those backing us. And then there’s the timing—right when our strategy and product roadmap is coming into clearer focus than ever. Lovely. I was going to put the link to the story in the comments because that’s what you’re supposed to do, apparently. I don’t think anybody really knows any more. While this means a lot to our early customers and our whole business, here’s what we’ll be doing with the marketing slice. We’ll be bringing our new perspective to market by sharing our frameworks and thinking. Exploring ways to connect the problems we know eCommerce teams are feeling with what we’re building. We’ll be investing more in building personal connections and mobilising “our people”. Getting to know our audience and giving them something outside of what we’re selling. We’ll be kicking off more growth experiments, while keeping tabs on how we want to market. That means considering our own customers’ intent rather than being cold SaaS sellers. Appropriateness, always. It’s time to take things to the next level and build a proper marketing engine while we’re at it. Comment “🥱” and maybe I’ll share along the way. You know, out of spite. https://lnkd.in/dbAgxhKw

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🚀 The Hidden Cost of Too Many Handovers in Product Development 🚀 In the journey from idea to product, every handover in your product delivery process represents a potential drop in understanding and alignment. This often results in a final product that fails to resonate with or is outright rejected by your customers. Why does this happen? Effective product development isn't just about having a great idea; it's about crafting and iterating that idea into a solution that meets real needs. This process requires continuous collaboration and a deep understanding that can only be maintained when your team works closely together. However, when there are frequent handovers between teams, silos form almost inevitably. These silos disrupt the seamless flow of information and ideas necessary for iterative development. Instead of a cohesive and comprehensive solution, what emerges from such a process can often be disjointed and suboptimal. To build products that truly delight and engage users, we need to minimize these transitions and ensure that our teams are aligned and integrated throughout the product development lifecycle. Only then can we harness the full potential of our collective creativity and expertise. Let's rethink our processes to foster better integration and collaboration. Our products—and our customers—will be all the better for it. #ProductDevelopment #Teamwork #Innovation

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I would zoom out a bit. A/b testing is just a side effect of following a scientific approach to building a business and product. Not everything I worked on at Booking.com was an a/b test. We still needed to find a way to validate each hypothesis. Still don’t copy Booking’s playbook blindly. There are more nuances that make this approach successful. Your business might be operating under different constraints and context that requires a different playbook.

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How have I not read this before?! Insightful, informal and peppered with great advice for product professionals and anyone hoping to build great products and businesses. Whilst not all of it was new it was great to be reminded that at work ‘there are two things that matter: products and people, what you build and who you build it with.’ #buildgreatproducts #productinspiration #productbooks

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💳 Do you know what you're really giving away when you sign up for loyalty card? ✅ If not, I'd recommend this podcast from BPP School of Technology about how your loyalty scheme data is used, and how it does a lot more than generate discounts and a more seamless checkout. Mike Hoffman shares that some companies use customer data and profiling to determine how long you wait in a phone line queue, and even whether you qualify for a return! 😳 I love a discount coupon, but as with all online tools and digital technology it’s important to recognise what we are giving in return and to educate ourselves on how to keep ourselves safe. Listen on Spotify at the link below, or or search for BPP Techsphere wherever you get your podcasts. https://lnkd.in/eQHdVT-B #mindovertech #digitalhabits #onlinesafety

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I've loved seeing the total transformation in our developer experience over the last year. Kieran Mountford and the team have worked so hard, with loads of feedback from our developer customers. What's new? 🙌 Go SDK Earlier this year, we launched two new SDKs, and we’re happy to announce that our Go SDK has been tagged as v1. It joins our PHP and Node SDKs, which have already helped developers quickly and reliably integrate Paddle. We are also excited to share that our Python SDK is also nearing its v1 release. This will bring us one step closer to our goal of offering four fully mature, first-party SDKs by the end of the year, making Paddle integrations even easier across the most popular languages. 🚀 Paddle + Next.js Starter Kit Built on Next.js 14 and other tools and libraries that we’re huge fans of like the shadcn component library, Tailwind CSS, and Supabase, this starter kit provides best practices for integrating Paddle into your Next.js project. It comes with a flexible pricing page, inline checkout implementation, and an authenticated dashboard with simple billing management features—all ready to go out of the box. 🤖 We’re excited to unveil one of our most requested features: the Webhook Simulator. We know that testing Paddle integrations can be a bit of a challenge, especially when it comes to understanding when webhooks will fire or recreating scenarios in a sandbox environment. The Webhook Simulator changes all of that. More details from the team here: https://lnkd.in/et6fDpu5

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The Marketing Moves Making Waves This Week 🚀 Here are the top stories you might have missed this week in the world of marketing. 1️⃣ Monzo Bank looks to renegotiate our relationship with money Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dpdrdWwG 2️⃣ McDonald's wipes the smile off its meals  Read more here: https://lnkd.in/d2DjcMHZ 3️⃣ Habitat lights up UK streets for its 60th anniversary Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ddBDj7_6 4️⃣ Volkswagen shows us the beauty of a VW lies with what you do with it Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dyW68TGY 5️⃣ The HEINEKEN Company gets Ross Kemp behind bars to pour a perfect pint Read more here:: https://lnkd.in/dmMCShHx 6️⃣ Bumble Inc. fumbles their latest campaign  Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dEkXVdN4 + + + + + + + ✏ Let me know in the comments what caught your eye this week 👁 👍 Like, share & follow Tom Child 토마스 차일드 if you found this interesting #marketing  #branding  #strategy  #advertising  #communication

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A new team member recently told me, “This is wrong” about a new Planda report design idea. Their feedback was very valuable and made us come up with a better product with an element that I missed. They were thinking of the customer. Hearing “You’re wrong” can be tough to some but it is vital - having a team that feels comfortable giving critical feedback drives growth in ways you never imagined. I can't do everything and I rely on this type of thinking. Always let your team know you’re open to corrections. If you want to grow a company you need this. How do you react when being told 'you're wrong'?

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