Up for grabs: every pix­el a billboard

Mind Read­ing

I’m evolv­ing my mind-read­ing game. 

It’s a much need­ed skill for any­one advis­ing clients remote­ly. Help me give it a try:

Close your eyes and make a busi­ness wish for 2025. 

Don’t hold back. Pour all your psy­chic strength into it. 

I’m feel­ing it. The force is strong with this one. 

I can almost see it!

Done! 

Was it ​“Sell more”?

75%

For three out of four busi­ness­es, it is:

Sev­en­ty-three per­cent of small busi­ness own­ers expect next year’s rev­enue to increase — iden­ti­cal to last quar­ter and the high­est num­ber record­ed since the Index began in 2017. Sim­i­lar­ly, more than two in five (44%) antic­i­pate increas­ing staff in the next year, which is near Q22023’s high water mark (47%). (Source)

Accord­ing to the lat­est Small Busi­ness Index Report there’s ​“con­tin­ued opti­mism”, ​“bull­ish expec­ta­tions” and ​“upbeat plans for next year’s headcount”.

Look­ing good.

One hun­dred emp­ty billboards

We can agree that when it comes to ecom­merce, among the many tac­tics avail­able, there are two essen­tial ways to grow your sales.

1. Brand reach growth equals more traf­fic equals more sales.
2. Or you man­age to grow con­ver­sions with your cur­rent cus­tomer base and traffic.

Our indus­try is so fix­at­ed on the first that we tend to neglect — some­times sim­ply ignore — the latter.

A way to eas­i­ly improve sales with­out break­ing the bank or doing a replat­form or redesign (don’t do both at the same time) is to sim­ply take advan­tage of what you already have avail­able at your disposal. 

Every pix­el in your con­tent is a bill­board. Here are some real life examples:

Post-sale ban­ners on ​“my account”

You often go back to your account to dou­ble-check the sta­tus of your pack­age. Your buy­ers too. It’s an ide­al place to dri­ve folks to the next step in their expe­ri­ence. War­ran­ty reg­is­tra­tion, train­ing, incen­tiviz­ing reviews, invit­ing to a user gen­er­at­ed con­test, sur­veys, upsell oppor­tu­ni­ties and more.

Turn con­tent into orders

Add links, CTAs or ban­ners in your con­tent that lead straight to the check­out. You worked a fan­tas­tic influ­encer inter­view on how they use your prod­uct? Add a ​“Shop the look/​kit/​set” but­ton, and turn your piece into a direct-to-sales land­ing page.

Bars, ban­ners and codes

Per­sis­tent mes­sag­ing can turn a ​“maybe” into an ​“I’m in”. Work on your brand codes to uni­fy visu­als, voice and tone. Dis­play your nar­ra­tive con­sis­tent­ly and incen­tivize con­ver­sion across every page of your web­site: top bar per­son­al­ized mes­sag­ing, visu­al­ly appeal­ing hero sec­tions with a strong on-brand copy, ban­ners and visu­al­ly rich sec­tions on prod­ucts that tack­le objec­tions and make hon­est and attrac­tive promises.

Reorder­ing cat­e­gories for best conversion

Prod­ucts that are arranged smart­ly are ads on their own, in the sense that they can fun­nel the casu­al vis­i­tor brows­ing. Make sure your best per­form­ers are shown first. Some plat­forms keep you tied to their con­straints on what to show and on which order, but smart AI-dri­ven tools like AdvancedCommerce’s Mer­chan­dis­ing fea­ture allow you to choose your top items, and let the AI fig­ure out, based on spe­cif­ic cus­tomer behav­ior and pro­fil­ing, which one sells best on which position.

Make trans­ac­tion­al emails mar­ket­ing emails, too

What invi­ta­tion, incen­tive, or oppor­tu­ni­ty can you cre­ate when you send those bor­ing, flat emails with sta­tus updates, invoic­es or confirmations?

Spice them up, test, send and measure.

Get’em while they’re hot

Have a rich, beau­ti­ful ​“thank you” page that directs peo­ple to inter­est­ing con­tent so new sub­scribers can con­tin­ue con­nect­ing with you. Show appre­ci­a­tion and give them an unex­pect­ed extra mile in the form of con­tent, dis­counts or ideas.

What’s on the menu?

Nav­i­ga­tion is more than a list of links. It’s a way to con­nect the dots and ease the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Make it visu­al. A small sub­set of your prod­ucts are mak­ing you the most mon­ey. Show them proud­ly in a beau­ti­ful inter­ac­tive menu sec­tion. Make it smooth and remem­ber to adapt as bold­ly and beau­ti­ful­ly to mobile.

Nobody likes pop-ups.

Wrong. Nobody likes gener­ic, intru­sive, annoy­ing pop-ups. Devote some time to craft copy, design and human con­nec­tion, and these pop-ups will dri­ve engage­ment, leads & con­ver­sion. Split-test and have dif­fer­ent con­tents for dif­fer­ent stages of the journey.

Lifestyle and sto­ry­telling are ads too

A lot of peo­ple will research online and pur­chase offline. Work on your sto­ry­telling and it will most def­i­nite­ly have an impact, not only on direct sale but also on con­ver­sion attrib­uted to oth­er chan­nels (deal­ers, dis­trib­u­tors, mar­ket­places, etc.).

SEO is get­ting hard­er. Ads don’t pay off any­more. Per­haps we should pri­or­i­tize hav­ing the best, most beau­ti­ful and con­sis­tent­ly con­vinc­ing web­site we can. 

So there you have it: A hun­dred bill­boards on your web­site, ready for the tak­ing. Fill them with ads and put a spell on your vis­i­tors. In a good way.