Christmas is often the busiest time of year for websites, especially for online stores. So, if you’ve been too busy getting your Christmas inventory ready and have only just got around to making your site look invitingly festive, here are some quick and easy ways to bring some last-minute yuletide cheer and to put your visitors in the right mood to buy your seasonal products.
Festive banner image
Your homepage banner image is the first thing your customers are going to see when they land on your website and it plays a critical role in whether they’ll stay or go somewhere else. At this time of year, people are looking for things to buy for Christmas and so having a festive-themed image lets them immediately know that they have come to the right place.
Banners are available from a wide variety of image websites; some are even free to download and use. Alternatively, you can create your own and show off your best products. Just make sure the one you display matches the products you are selling and doesn’t clash with the overall design of your site.
Christmas value proposition
A value proposition is a short heading and description that sums up why a customer should buy from your website by telling them what your unique offer is and what value they will get from your company. You usually place this on or just below your banner image.
During the Christmas period, tweak your value proposition so that it shows the value you are giving in terms of your festive offering. For example:
The Perfect Gifts For Those You Love
Handmade, beautifully boxed, and delivered in plenty of time for Christmas.
Christmas images
You can’t replace all your website images with festively themed ones but you can change some of them. Even a smattering spread across your website, especially on major pages, like product category pages, can work to establish a seasonal motif and put the visitor in the right mood to shop.
Christmas countdown calendar
Urgency can be a big driver when it comes to pushing sales, which is why so many websites use time-limited offers as a marketing tactic: we’ve all seen the ‘Buy today and get 20% off’ and ‘Offer ends at midnight’ strategies put into practice.
There’s no need to do this during the Christmas shopping period because customers are well aware that there is a very important deadline approaching. However, it can be helpful to offer a gentle, less pushy reminder in the form of a Christmas Countdown Calendar that you can display on your site. It will just remind them that the days to Christmas are getting fewer and that, if they want things delivered in time, the sooner they order the better.
It is also very important to let your customers know when the last purchase day is if they want your products to arrive on time.
Festive screen decorations
Another quick and easy way to spread seasonal cheer right across your website is to install a Christmas decorations plugin. If you are a WordPress user there are quite a few of these available for free, direct from the WordPress repository. They include falling snow, Christmas lights, a bauble on a branch, Christmas music, Santa and more. As they are plugins, you’ll be able to quickly install them and just as easily put them aside once the big day is over.
Engage with interesting Christmas facts
Finding interesting ways to keep your visitors engaged and in the Christmas mood can be a bit of a challenge. Thankfully, there’s a rather cool WordPress plugin that can help you do this easily. The Random Christmas Fact Widget can be easily installed into the sidebar of your site, so its 40 different snippets of light-hearted, seasonal wisdom can be seen by everyone, no matter what page they are visiting.
Christmas competition
Another way to increase engagement and to show your customers you’re not a Scrooge, is to put a competition or giveaway on your website. One fun and very easy way to do this is to use the Scratch and Win Giveaways plugin which has several Christmas themed scratch cards to display.
One particularly interesting thing about this plugin is that it can be used for lots of purposes, such as collecting emails, getting users to refer their friends, stopping customers leaving by popping up as they approach the exit button and more.
Conclusion
As you can see, it’s not too late to make changes to how your website looks in order to make it appealing for Christmas shoppers. From festive banners to yuletide competitions, there are lots of quick and easy ways to create a seasonal atmosphere and drive those last-minute sales.
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