Seasonal Web Design Done Right

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, many businesses most likely have jumped on the chance to add animations or have special offers – which is great! Seasonal web design is a great marketing tool and can help drive more visitors and sales, if done right of course.

Firstly, why is seasonal design good?

Now a days having a website is not enough. There are so many factors to think about when designing an e-commmerce website, such as navigation, user experience, competition, and so on.

While having good offers and promotions during the holiday seasons and special occasions are good, we’ve learnt through user experience that the design plays a factor in the final sale.

There is an emotional response and if your website matches those feelings, you are more than likely going to achieve better conversions. Just think, during the Christmas period shops are donned with Christmas decoration and special Christmas offers, thus creating a festive spirit and helps customers who may be thinking about it become even more spirited, making them more likely to purchase something.

Having a seasonal theme can also create a sense of urgency for certain products. By having certain products on offer during the seasonal period, you can create a feeling that if they don’t buy it now they may miss out once the seasonal period is over!

This also doesn’t mean you have to tap into every single holiday out there.

Big holidays such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Halloween are good opportunities, but you also need to think about who your target audience is and think about what they would appreciate, for example, if you have a large American audience, then you could do something for Thanksgiving.

So, how do you make your website more seasonal?

While making your website more seasonal is a great idea, this doesn’t mean you should change every inch of the page – this can be a bit of an overload, which can turn customers away.

What we always like is clean, and simple changes – this way then it isn’t an overload, doesn’t seem garish and can keep your branding classy and stylish. Simple things you can change include:

• Logo: Probably one of the most popular and easiest ways to tap into the seasonal period is to add seasonal designs to your logo, whether it is on your homepage or social media. Seasonal logos are eye-catching, creates spirit from first instance and shows you are up-to-date. To change your logo, best thing to do is to keep your original logo and just add seasonal changes on top, for example, if it’s Christmas you can add a santa’s hat on the top.

• Banners / sliders: Another popular and simple thing to do is to swap out your banners, sliders and CTAs for seasonal ones. You don’t have to change every single one, but one or two to promote the festive season and help draw attention to seasonal products is good. If you are not planning on having a seasonal sale then one banner or slider that mentions the special occasion is still good as it puts visitors in the spirit.

• Add Animations: As web designers, creating fun animations is always fun. They are a great way to make your website more jazzy and creates more engagement with the customer. Special occasions are a great time to try these out, for example, during Valentine’s Day you could have little hearts falling from the screen, or during Halloween you could have ghosts hover in the background. Obviously, it does depend on your brand and audience, but if you are more laid back then this is definitely something to consider

• Decorations: If animations is not your thing, then you can always add little decorations to your website, so instead of falling hearts, you can add hearts in the header for Valentine’s Day, and instead of hovering ghosts, you can add spiderwebs in the corner of the web page for Halloween. You can also change out the colour theme of your website to match the special occasion, e.g. reds for Valentine’s Day, oranges and black and Halloween, red and gold for Chinese New Year, and so on.

• Website Imagery: Not everyone has the time or budget to add animations or design new banners, so a simple way to get seasonal is to add occasional photos. If you work with a lot of brands or third-party, they are likely going to have a few holiday-themed photos, so you can always ask.

All of these are great ways to make your website more seasonal and for the most part, are easy to implement (minus the animations!). Just make sure you don’t over-do it and keep your website clean!