With October coming to an end, e-commerce sites everywhere are getting ready for the holidays. Whether you’re gearing up for a Black Friday or Cyber Monday Sale or freshening up your landing pages with some holiday magic, branding for the holidays is a can’t-miss sales opportunity. In this article, we’ll go over five ways to make your e-commerce landing pages stand out, enabling you to do everything from grow your email list to gain conversions all holiday season long.
#1: Accessorize with a Pop of Holiday Color
Show off your holiday spirit by creating landing pages that feature common holiday colors (green and red, anyone?), images of cozy fireplaces or even gift boxes. Your holiday marketing strategy begins with the visual scheme of your website, so make sure people feel excited about the season right from the get-go.
Beware not to go overboard; you don’t want your imagery to overwhelm the rest of your site and distract from the purpose of the page. Like icing on a gingerbread house, your holiday imagery and colors should perfectly accent the already awesome structure of your website.
#2: Create a Sense of Urgency
This is true for all product pages, all the time, but the holiday season is a fantastic time for retail sites because the urgency is already built-in! What you can do is emphasize the timeliness of your sales on your site, reminding your customers that they need to act now if they want to surprise their special someone on time.
One of the best ways to do this is with the popular holiday countdown timer. You’ll see Amazon do this with their Cyber Monday deals, counting down the hours until each product special is gone forever—and it WORKS. Display your timer above the fold or along a sidebar, where your customers can easily see how much time they have left, and prepare for your holiday sails to go up!
#3: List Holiday Sales Prominently
No one can participate in a sale if they don’t know it exists. To help boost your holiday sales, make sure your biggest promotions are front and center. One of the best ways to do this is by incorporating your sale into your branded color design, using a banner or other top-of-page display. This immediately makes the connection between your sale and the holiday shopping rush. Add in a call to action and a link to your top-selling products, and you’ll be ready to go.
Discounts should also be displayed prominently, especially around high-performing products. In addition to displaying discounts on product cards and pages, special Black Friday deals and holiday specials can be displayed both on your product pages and other landing pages.
#4: Make it Easy to Convert
Again, this is a year-round tip, but it’s especially important during the peak of the holiday shopping season. Make sure each product on your landing page is designed with a clear purchasing path, which can be used on both desktop and mobile devices.
In the simplest instances, you can create a button that adds the product directly to the shopper’s cart. You can also display a sidebar with the current cart contents, allowing customers to see what they’ve chosen, and seamlessly check out when they’re ready. For all your sales processes, the key is to minimize the steps it takes to purchase. The easier the conversion path, the fewer abandoned carts you’ll see this year.
#5: Optimize for Mobile
According to a 2018 study by Adobe, 60% of holiday shopping is done on mobile devices, which in total accounts for 40% of seasonal sales. If your holiday landing pages aren’t optimized for mobile, you’re losing out on a huge consumer opportunity. To optimize your seasonal landing pages for mobile:
- Make sure that the buttons are large enough to be seen and interacted with on smaller screens.
- Format holiday banners for mobile devices, keeping text size in mind.
- Don’t overload your mobile landing pages with too much text.
- Ensure that getting from products to checkout is simple, minimizing the number of “touches” between your product and cart pages.
Getting Ready for the Holidays
The holiday season is the height of activity in the e-commerce world. Instead of being a last-minute optimizer, take the time now to look at your landing pages and evaluate how you can make them stand out among the crowd. After this season, make sure to benchmark your performance and record what you did, so you can improve on your process next year for even better results!