How I'd grow Abacus

Abacus is a computer compressed into a compact keyboard with a quad-core processor powerful enough to multitask with ease, and ready to use without setup.

Linux or Windows, an office suite, and an antivirus are pre-installed. It’s also energy-efficient and biodegradable.

But you wouldn’t have guessed what the product is from their homepage.

Neither the copy nor the visuals work, and a casual visitor will wonder if it’s worth spending their time scrolling to understand what this mysterious Abacus is.

The perfect homepage should include all the elements of their USP: powerful computer, fair price, cool form factor, biodegradable, and a pic.

It’s a pity - their internal pages are good. One of them has a section that would be absolutely perfect for the homepage USP.

What a great landing page does is answer visitor’s potential questions in advance. The Abacus website does this only partially.

To be honest, it sometimes even raises new questions and adds complications into the mix instead of answering FAQs.

The product page could use some conversion rate optimization work.

It mentions pre-orders, but when’s the planned delivery date? It says free shipping for the UK, but what about other countries?

Making visitors guess adds a lot of friction to the purchasing process.

I’m usually not a big fan of trying to get press, but I think that - for an original product like Abacus - the right pitch could go far.

This wouldn’t just give them initial exposure. It’d also help with SEO. News websites tend to have really high domain authority.

Before trying to get coverage, I’d change the domain. The name of the company is okay, but “co.uk” isn’t.

From a branding perspective, it feels like the product is just for the UK. From an SEO perspective: a ccTLD domain will make it harder to rank and get global traffic.

The combination of not enough links, a ccTLD domain and no on-page optimization is causing a problem. The site doesn’t rank for “abacus computer.”

Not ranking for your own branded keywords is a big deal. If someone sees the product online and googles it, they won’t find it.

Search might become a good channel in the long term, but it wouldn’t be my immediate priority for Abacus.

For a novel product like this, where there’s no specific pre-existing demand, other channels could work better. Considering the limited resources, I’d start there.

Let’s define the perfect target customer for the Abacus. They’re looking for eco-friendly tech at an accessible price, and with a cool factor.

I think this identity corresponds perfectly to students. The company needs to go all in on social media to reach them.

Gen Z’ers spend their time on Instagram and TikTok. TikTok is the best opportunity right now - it’s got great organic reach.

Abacus currently doesn’t have an account, but if you post good content on TikTok, you can get a lot of attention for free.

Instagram is trying to catch up through Reels - a TikTok clone. It’s giving these clips free organic reach to push the adoption.

That’s another opportunity for Abacus. They have an account, but they’ve posted only one Reel.

But the format alone isn’t enough to spark interest. Abacus needs to post great content. How?

I think they should partner with creators. They’d be working with someone who knows what works on the platform without losing time trying to find out for themselves.

Pro tip: TikTok offers a creator marketplace that allows brands to find fitting creators.

Unlike Instagram where even smaller influencers want compensation, many of TikTok creators would be happy to create content for you in exchange for free products.

Once they’ve posted enough content, they should analyze and select the best engagement performers.

Armed with proven creatives that resonate with their target audience, Abacus can then run paid ad campaigns on both TikTok and Instagram to acquire customers at scale.

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