The shop that sells at 3am

Count the hours your shop is actually open. Fifty a week is generous. That leaves a hundred and eighteen when somebody can stand in front of your window, be interested, and walk away with nothing.

Those hours are not worthless. Someone walking home on a Friday night, or past on a Sunday, is in a better mood and less of a hurry than the people who come in on a Tuesday lunchtime. They are just locked out.

Four things a closed door can still do, with nothing but printed codes on the inside of the glass.

1. Answer “are you even open?”

The most common question a closed shop gets asked is whether it is closed for the evening, the week, or permanently. Shops that have been shut for years look exactly like shops that shut at five.

A Facebook code in the window answers it better than a printed sign can, because the page has your hours, your holiday closure, and the post about the scaffolding — and you can change all of that from your phone without printing anything.

This is also where Facebook earns its keep against the platforms people would rather talk about. The customer who will not install an app and has never left a review has had Facebook since 2009 and checks it daily.

2. Take the enquiry you are not there to answer

A WhatsApp code turns “I wonder if they do birthday cakes” into a message waiting for you at opening, rather than nothing at all.

The bit that makes it work on a dark street is that WhatsApp normally makes somebody save you as a contact before they can write to you — three steps and a decision, standing in the cold. A code skips all of it and opens the chat.

Put a different first message on the window code than on your flyers — “I saw the window” — and you will also find out how much of your enquiry traffic comes from the pavement. That costs nothing and needs no analytics.

3. Sell the thing they are looking at

If you have a shop and an online listing — your own, or a marketplace — a link code in the window sells at three in the morning.

Point it at the specific thing, not your homepage. A code beside the coat in the window that opens a homepage has made somebody search your site for the coat they were already looking at, which is exactly the work they scanned to avoid. Deep links cost nothing.

4. Collect the follow

An Instagram code catches the person who liked the window display and will otherwise never think about you again.

A follow from the pavement at midnight is worth the same as one from the counter at midday, and costs you a corner of a window.

Print it bigger than you think

A window code is read from the pavement, through glass, often at night and sometimes by somebody who does not want to be seen peering into a dark shop.

The size the generator gives you is the minimum that works at arm's length. A window is not arm's length. Double it, and if you are still unsure, double it again — nobody has ever failed to scan a code for being too large.

Print on white and stick it facing out at the bottom of the glass. Vinyl beats paper because condensation finds paper by November.

One window, four codes, one afternoon

Label each one with three words, put them in a row, and leave them there. They work every hour you are not.