There’s no doubt the holiday season is here, so it’s time to take advantage of the inevitable increase in website visitors who’re searching for something to buy. Since your website is findable online 24/7 (yes, even when you’re sleeping or on vacation), it’s your most important marketing tool. You’ll want to make sure you’re setting yourself up for holiday marketing success.
We’re suggesting five specific tweaks to help your website appeal to eager holiday shoppers. Whether they’re looking for bargains or searching for the perfect bespoke service or gift, you can draw people in with your own holiday twist. Here are our favorite ways to give your website a holiday marketing advantage.
1. Holiday Homepage Tweaks
Update the website notification bar, hero image, and pop-up offer on your homepage. Your homepage often receives more visitors than any other page on your site, so you’ll want to make sure it shows that you’re holiday-aware and eager to sell!
The notification bar at the top of your homepage is the first thing your visitors will see, so use this spot to highlight any special holiday offers. Try to link to a separate holiday specials page, if you can. If you don’t currently have an active notification bar, we highly recommend turning it on or installing a plugin to give you access to such a feature.
The hero image, banner, or slider section is usually the next thing your visitors will notice. Here, you have a chance to integrate holiday colors and themes with your current branding. If you have a slider, create several warm and inviting holiday-themed photos of your favorite products or offers. If your homepage uses a static hero image, take the time to create something eye-catching and special, with a call-to-action button inviting visitors to see your holiday offers, get a discount code, or even to contact you for a free, pre-holiday discovery call.
A pop-up offer usually blacks out your entire webpage when a visitor arrives, requiring the visitor to read and interact with the content — even if they’re just finding and clicking the “x” to close the popup. While pop-ups can be effective, they can also cause a poor user experience (and therefore a poor perception of your brand), so there’s a lot of controversy over their use.
If you don’t yet use pop-ups or generally prefer to avoid irritating visitors, the holidays can be the perfect time to try them out on a trial basis. Because people tend to feel overwhelmed during the holidays, a pop-up can create a moment of pause for your visitors to focus on. You can offer a holiday-specific discount or download/guide in exchange for an email address, or a time-sensitive discount code that’s automatically applied to their cart.
2. Holiday Content Marketing
Investing your time and energy into creating and posting informative content will boost your website’s credibility and Google authority any time of the year. However, creating evergreen holiday-specific content will keep working for you year after year. “Evergreen” refers to content that’s not dependent on a specific date or timeline. You’re writing more generally about your brand’s approach to the holiday season or holiday-relevant offerings that won’t disappear from year to year (private coaching to relieve entrepreneurial holiday stress, for example).
When creating this type of holiday-specific content, you’ll also want to think about connecting to the emotion of the holiday season. Tell a story through your writing, and subtly link that story to your brand and products. Studies have shown that emotion connects visitors to your website/brand, and that connection will both make them more likely to buy, as well as keep them loyally coming back.
3. Add Website Videos for the Holidays
If you don’t currently have video running on your website, we suggest adding video content for the holiday season. According to Unbounce, video on your homepage or a landing page can boost conversions by up to 80%. Videos also increase the likelihood you’ll be found from the search engine results pages, since video boosts your organic traffic from searches 157%, and keeps visitors on your site 105% longer. 66% of people say they actually prefer video content when learning about a product or service.
Use the holiday season to capitalize on visitors’ emotions: their eagerness to find the perfect gift or desperation to ease holiday stress. Videos draw the eye and engage visitors with your brand more than pages of copy, and they will communicate the emotion or story more directly than pages of text ever could.
4. Holiday Gift Guide
Another great holiday marketing idea is to curate your own holiday gift guide and/or offer a free download. Free downloads give your visitors the feeling that they’re receiving a gift, and a thoughtful gift guide shows that you’re actively considering your customers and their needs. Gift guides are always in demand; you’ll be taking away some of your visitors’ holiday-related anxiety, and they may be more likely to make a purchase in relief.
A gift guide could live on its own custom landing page, or be incorporated into a pop-up or PDF download. You could repurpose gift guide images and content on social media, extend the campaign, and direct your audience to your website to buy from your list.
5. Holiday-Themed Search Engine Copy
Most websites have the capability of customizing each webpage’s page title and meta description. This is the headline and paragraph text that shows up in the search engines, which can be customized from your website’s dashboard (often via a plugin such as Yoast SEO) and exists in each page's code.
Page titles and meta descriptions act like free ad copy: a searcher decides which link to click in the search results based on what they read here. This means that you could optimize the “ad” copy for your most important pages by adding in keywords, mentioning special deals or discounts, and encouraging searchers to “learn more.” Perhaps the title for a page about “Cozy Scarves” becomes “Holiday Gift Ideas: Cozy Scarves.” Get creative — but stay relevant, and don’t misrepresent what’s on a given page, or Google will notice how quickly people leave your site after clicking.
A Holiday Gift for You and Your Website
Don’t you deserve a little something this holiday season, too? While you’re making holiday website improvements, why not gift yourself the guidance of an easy-to-follow roadmap?
The JonesHaus Website Audit Roadmap will help you objectively rate the quality of your website, as well as offer specific action items to boost its appearance and performance. We’ll alert you to the most common website mistakes, and give you our secrets to boosting conversions for your products and/or services.