Web­sites vs. Dinosaurs

Juras­sic Dark

Per­haps you heard about the Big Black­out we had in Spain last week. The entire grid, gone in about four min­utes. Traf­fic lights, ele­va­tors, mobile net­works, trains and sub­ways: all dead.

As with any rare event, after a few days the dis­tor­tion field starts to kick in. I’ve been read­ing the most enthu­si­as­tic, pos­i­tive, heart-warm­ing sto­ries about ​“how peo­ple got togeth­er and helped each oth­er”, ​“n lessons from being offline” and ​“how much we need­ed to reconnect”. 

Fuck that. It wasn’t inspi­ra­tional. It was unex­pect­ed, scary, and very weird.

Hanlon’s Razor — Nev­er attribute to mal­ice that which is ade­quate­ly explained by stu­pid­i­ty — sug­gest­ed gov­ern­ment incom­pe­ten­cy from the start. You can prob­a­bly relate, no mat­ter when or where you read this.

The truth is we had no idea what was going on. And every­one you talked to, every oth­er unplugged extra on this one-episode shit­show, had their own the­o­ries. The most pop­u­lar ones being solar storms, cyber­at­tacks, immi­nent for­eign inva­sion and, of course, aliens. 

Since every­one was freely indulging in stu­pid­i­ty, I dou­bled-down with an even dumb­er, but much more plea­sur­able idea. ​“We were hacked by dinosaurs,” I said with the straight­est face one can have, slow­ly nod­ding like I knew what I was talk­ing about. ​“They’re reclaim­ing this country!”.

All I got was awk­ward silence.

Which brings me to today’s topic.

Can we out­run the T‑Rex?

No mat­ter what the Dino Denial­ists say (yes, that exists) we’re sur­round­ed by metaphor­i­cal crea­tures threat­en­ing our growth. We can cer­tain­ly relate to the beloved saga:

1. We live in times where any­thing seems possible
2. Progress looks fas­ci­nat­ing but is actu­al­ly threatening
3. Threats in the rearview mir­ror are clos­er than they appear
4. We have to workaround a huge pile of crap

The Ecom­merce land­scape is rich­er than ever. Also tougher. More com­pe­ti­tion, blaz­ing fast tech changes, and a whole lot of exter­nal dan­gers to add to our SWOTs. The econ­o­my is uncer­tain, the West is shak­en, and there are a mil­lion things to take care of in order to succeed. 

And we’ve been trained to stand very, very still, if a threat is com­ing our way.

Seems to make sense, it’s hard to run faster and smarter when you fear some­thing big will bite you. But it doesn’t.

Short­cuts

I’d like to remind you, from our hum­ble lit­tle cor­ner, that experts are short­cuts that take you to your des­ti­na­tion, safe and fast.

Still­ness is not a strat­e­gy, and those that don’t dare to move will miss the many growth oppor­tu­ni­ties lying ahead.

Here’s a prac­ti­cal list of areas you should be work­ing on, that we can help with:

Sav­ing you money

It’s not about elim­i­nat­ing items from your bud­get, but about spend­ing smarterand not falling into finan­cial traps (Hel­lo again, Shopi­fy!). A big part of our work is help­ing com­pa­nies under­stand how to opti­mize their tech stack in the long run, dodge bad con­tracts and unnec­es­sary expens­es, all while get­ting more horsepower.

Mak­ing you find­able

SEO is not enough. Not any­more. And Inbound Mar­ket­ing doesn’t do the trick because con­sumers are sur­round­ed by noise, auto­mat­ed con­tent and short-term mem­o­ry. It takes a prop­er com­bi­na­tion of design, con­tent, salience, dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, syn­di­ca­tion and code to make it work and dri­ve more peo­ple to your products.

Grow­ing conversions

CRO (Con­ver­sion Rate Opti­miza­tion) is not a tac­tic. It’s a mind­set. If you’re invest­ing in any way to gen­er­ate vis­its you should cer­tain­ly invest into turn­ing those vis­i­tors into leads and cus­tomers. It requires a devel­oped habit of fine-tun­ing your expe­ri­ence. Ideate, test, mea­sure, iter­ate. 

Build­ing beau­ti­ful, bet­ter websites

Vis­i­tors are speed-dat­ing. First impres­sions mat­ter. To stand out, brands need a store­front that’s plea­sur­able, per­for­mant, and makes prod­ucts shine. One that’s designed and writ­ten in a way that res­onates and sim­pli­fies the expe­ri­ence. 

Check out our last two releas­es, fresh crops from Q12025, for Elinchrom and EGO.

Mak­ing tech talk to each other

Effi­cient­ly bond­ing ERP, CRM, Mar­ket­ing automa­tion, Ecom­merce, PIM and Ana­lyt­ics used to be a night­mare. And a very expen­sive one. Not any­more. By con­sol­i­dat­ing and sync­ing tech­nol­o­gy, you can gain oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies and expo­nen­tial­ly grow your under­stand­ing of your audi­ence (and their life­time cus­tomer value).

Cut­ting costs

Text­book mar­ket­ing says we shouldn’t men­tion this. But pric­ing is mar­ket­ing too. And posi­tion­ing. The fact is that as a ful­ly remote team we can pro­vide top-tier agency excel­lence at a 40% com­par­a­tive rate. That means a range of 150 – 300k year­ly sav­ings. A lot of cash you can pour into grow­ing your business.

Qui­et, good work

We’re known as a Takeover Agency, which is indus­try jar­gon for ​“great at pick­ing up messed up projects after pre­vi­ous agen­cies give (or screw) up, and clients are frus­trat­ed and unhap­py”. And we make those projects work because we part­ner. We just buck­le down and get shit done. Our con­fi­dence comes from our world-class track record, but we’re not full of ourselves.

Yes, this issue was a lot about us. Not our usu­al style. Just a gen­tle reminder that we’re here, and that our core goal is to make it real­ly easy for you. 

Mov­ing for­ward fast is pos­si­ble, even if you’re chased by mod­ern drag­ons. If you’re hav­ing a hard year, don’t freeze. Run brave­ly, fear­less­ly. Like hell.

If you’d like a short­cut, we can help. CTA.