How I'd grow Thankbox

Thankbox is an online group card & cash collection service. It’s a digital way to celebrate special occasions.

People write custom messages with photos or gifs. They can add funds for gift cards. The giftee will get a special, customized message in their inbox.

I like the branding even if the name could suggest a physical product. The features and benefits are immediately clear at first glance.

The header says what the product does, the subheader clarifies the problem it solves, and the explainer video does its job in 30 seconds.

I’d change the CTA. Users can create their Thankbox to see what they’d get without paying or signing up.

This isn’t stated anywhere above the fold so the visitor would expect the CTA is a standard purchase button. They need to add “Try it (no payment or signup required)!”

The about page is the second most visited page of almost every site. It’s surprising that Thankbox doesn’t have one (it’s a small bootstrapped product).

It’s a missed opportunity to make a connection and not be a faceless company. People love buying from other people.

Thankbox’s weakest point is probably its pricing. $5 is definitely too low, especially because there isn’t a message limit.

Imagine a big office with 50 employees saying goodbye to a colleague. They wouldn’t have a problem paying $10, and Thankbox could double their revenue.

The second change I’d introduce to increase AOV would be adding some nice premium options that the users might want.

For example, allow each person to upload a short 15-30 second video of them saying something nice to the person for just $5.

Thankbox has a potential viral effect baked in. People invited to leave a message might want to use it again.

But after a while, they might not remember the name of the service. A small prevention hack: send an email to every participant for future reference.

I’d incentivize word of mouth. When people receive a gift, they like thanking the sender publicly.

But an email can’t be easily shared. To overcome this, Thankbox could also send a visual asset card, prompting the recipient to post it online for the world to see.

This is an example of a product you don’t care about 99% of the time, but there’s a moment when you absolutely need it and you go looking for it.

That’s why search is an important channel for Thankbox, starting with paid ads but transitioning to SEO as soon as possible.

Pro tip: use the Search Console to see which pages get traffic, but aren’t optimized for the search terms.

E.g. Thankbox has a page that gets traffic for “farewell card online” and “virtual farewell cards for colleagues” but it’s not targeting them in page title, URL, etc.

Thankbox created pages targeting commercial keywords. It’s the right move to expand on, but first there’s a mistake to fix.

Some of them are orphan pages (no internal links from the homepage or other pages on the site to them). This can hurt their rankings.

They will need to target informational keywords. The search volume for commercial keywords is limited; their growth will stagnate.

Even if visitors searching for those terms aren’t specifically looking for it, they might be ready to try Thankbox.

The biggest obstacle to getting a stream of daily search traffic right now is the fact that Thankbox doesn’t have a good backlink profile.

In fact they have a domain authority of 5 (it’s on the low end). Their short to medium term goal should be to get more backlinks.

Editorial links are typically obtained by doing things that don’t scale. E.g. reaching out to websites to do interviews, being a podcast guest, etc.

With just a bit of research, the founder could select a few authoritative websites that might be a good fit.

Another way for Thankbox to score their first links could be getting featured by some of the products they use to run their own website.

Every online business uses a lot of tools, so contacting them and asking if they’d be interested in a testimonial is often an easy win.

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