We decorate our homes and workplaces during the holiday season to add festive cheer. Why shouldn’t we do the same for our websites?
Silly as it may sound to some, decorating your website for the holidays is important. It’s a website’s way of keeping up with the spirit of the season, for one.
It’s also a smart thing to do business-wise because there’s always the chance that the sight of your online holiday decorations can get people into the right mood to give you the conversions you need.
If anything, you should make adding holiday cheer to your website part of your web design practices, especially if you’re in the retail business.
So what can you do to decorate your website for the holidays? Here are some ideas.
Tweak your logo
Get creative with your logo by adding holiday elements to it. Making it wear Santa’s hat is cute, but it’s also incredibly common.
Find your way of tweaking your logo—like adding bells, snowflakes, holly leaves, ornaments, wrapped boxes, or anything related to the season.
Use fonts perfect for the holidays
There are many typefaces available on the Internet that seem to be designed for the season, like Aleka, Mercury Script, and Homi Script. Like other holiday-themed typefaces, these fonts look timeless and nostalgic.
Use these highly decorative fonts for your homepage banners and landing pages for that unmistakable holiday cheer.
Color it Christmas
If your website’s original color scheme goes well with traditional Christmas colors like red and green, then tweak your site’s colors to make it more Christmassy overall.
However, if red and green won’t work, you can always go for more metallic hues such as gold and silver, both of which are associated with the season, and tend to blend nicely with other colors.
Snowfall effects
Image credit: GIPHY
There’s nothing like the sight of falling snow to get many people into the holiday spirit, so adding snowfall effects to your website would be a good idea.
There are many scripts and plugins that can help you make your homepage, or any page you enable it on, snow.
Run a countdown timer
You can ramp up the anticipation for the upcoming holidays by adding a simple countdown on your website.
Aside from being a fun way of getting everyone excited about the season, a countdown timer also helps create a sense of urgency—like people should do their Christmas shopping before it’s too late.
As with snowfall effects, there are plenty of plugins and scripts that can add a countdown timer to your website.
Holiday-inspired CTAs
Put up festive calls-to-action on your homepage and other high-volume traffic pages to get them into the holiday mindset.
Play with words and make sure they’re as witty as they are appropriate for the season. Don’t forget to deck your CTA with holiday-related elements and colors, too!
Go for a holiday-themed hero image
One graphic or image that can get your visitors in a holiday mood instantly is the hero image. After all, it’s the first thing people see when they access your site.
You can go all out by using a vector graphic illustration or a photo that is unabashedly Christmassy, or you can be a little more subtle about it by just sprinkling the image with holiday-related elements.
Write a holiday-themed copy
Decorating your website for the holidays isn’t limited to tinkering with the graphics or visuals. If your site has a blog, then make it a point to post something in the spirit of the season.
It could be about a fun Christmas story, coverage of certain holiday parties, a very thankful post, or something reflective that reminds us of the importance of this time of the year and what it means to us.
Or you can just go ahead and post gift guides or product guides that can help them out with their Christmas shopping!
Put up winter-themed photos
When we say “holiday season,” many people think about Christmas, but let’s not forget that there are other holidays that take place in December like Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.
You can make your website look festive without referencing any of those holidays specifically by just putting up winter-themed photography.
Heart-warming pictures of kids playing in the snow or couples curling up by the fireplace while drinking a hot beverage are perfect for the holidays.
Best of all, you don’t have to take down winter-themed photos after the holidays. They will still be appropriate well into the new year, at least until the actual cold season officially ends.
One thing to remember about decorating your website for the holiday season is that you should not overdo it.
You don’t even have to redesign your entire site either unless it’s what you want.
Just a few, simple touches here and there are more than enough to make your visitors feel that the holiday season is, indeed, upon us.
About the author: This creative blog was written by Anthony Tisara. Follow his team on Twitter: @mybizniches
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