thePOS: compare the market, for card machines
Payment providers spend fortunes chasing the same small businesses. So we built the place those businesses go to choose: thePOS.co.uk, a comparison site for card machines. Think compare the market, for taking payments.
thePOS · SumUp · Dojo · United KingdomThe brief
This one is ours, which makes it the most honest case study on the site. The card payments market is crowded and confusing: SumUp, Dojo, Square, Zettle and the rest, all shouting similar promises at the same cafes, barbers and market stalls.
A small business owner doesn't want the shouting. They want one page that says which machine costs what, with which fees, for their kind of business. Comparison content wins that exact moment, so rather than pitch the idea to someone else, we built it ourselves.
What we did
Designed and built thePOS.co.uk from scratch: comparison engine, provider profiles and buying guides mapped to the searches people actually make, like 'card machine for small business' and 'SumUp vs Dojo'.
Underneath it runs the full Cracked Media stack: technical SEO from day one, GA4 and GTM measurement tuned to lead events, email capture in Klaviyo, and paid search feeding the pages that convert.
The model: pay per lead
Providers pay for qualified leads, not for clicks, impressions or promises. When a business compares machines on thePOS and asks to be connected, the provider pays for that introduction. If our marketing doesn't produce buyers, we don't get paid. Incentives don't get cleaner than that.
It's also the sharpest proof we can offer of how we work: performance marketing with our own money on the line. If you have an audience of buyers, or you want a lead engine like this built for your sector, this playbook transfers.