“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!”
The holidays are upon us. The weather is crisp and lovely, a jolly mood is all around, and everybody is gearing up to do plenty of holiday shopping to bring their loved ones joy and holiday cheer. As holiday sweets bake in the oven, it is time to put a little more love into your landing page strategy and target the many holiday shoppers who will drop by with their holiday spirit and credit cards. When it comes to making a landing page successful, it is important to go back to the very basics of marketing – which is “think like your customer.”
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and imagine what they would love to see when they come across one of your ads or landing pages. These fine elements that would encourage them to browse, and most importantly, make a purchase.
In this article, you will see a few effective tips to optimize your landing pages and make the best use of the massive seasonal traffic of holiday shoppers.
MAKE SOME HYPE AROUND YOUR PAGE!
Holiday shopping tends to put everybody into a rushing and spending mode and people are out to grab the best deals they could possibly find. Use that to create urgency and excitement around your landing page and drive them one step forward into taking action.
For you Starbucks lovers, this holiday landing page generates hype like a legend. You only have a 3-hour window between Nov. 18-21 to buy 1 holiday drink and get the other for free.
You’ll notice that the variety of drinks is actually secondary here and the focus is getting you to your local Starbucks on time. Adding a countdown is also a visually effective way to increase the hype around the product or service you’re promoting. Give the idea to the customer that the sooner they make that purchase, the better.
You can also add Flash Sales and discount coupons with deadlines to create an urgency and convert them to making a purchase before they leave the website.
HIGHLIGHT SPECIAL SALES-DRIVING DETAILS
Consumers are invariably attracted to special deals and offers that will save them both time and money. For example, offer a special holiday discount, accentuate the Free Shipping if available, ad a promo code. These highlights are crucial to prevent potential customers from bouncing away from your page.
Take a look at this well-detailed Macy’s landing page. They chose to highlight special products which people usually scout for before the holidays and discounted them for Black Friday. Macy’s also offer their customers an extra 10% off on exclusive products using the promo code: Thanks. People aren’t going to ignore such discounts, you can be sure of that!
ADD HOLIDAY-THEMED COLORS AND DECORATIONS
Colors have a strong impact on people, and everybody loves the warm and fussy feeling that they get around anything that reminds them the holidays.
Use holiday colors such as Thanksgiving’s orange, brown and yellow or Christmas’ red, green and gold in your landing pages, adapt graphics and decorative images to accommodate the holiday spirit. It’s fun and converting. The right texts, images and holiday-specific color scheme will significantly increase the visits, clicks and actions taken on your landing page, and people will come back for more.
Add seasonal greetings that manifests the holidays are here, and it is time to treat themselves, their loved ones and friends. After all, it’s the season of giving.
This spooktacular Big Fish Games landing page goes to show how seasonal oriented a brand can get, and very successful indeed. These guys are always in tune with holiday specials and this time they chose a warm and yellowy design of pumpkins and falling leaves, offering a 70% off on first games for new customers.
USE THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA
As the holidays approach, people tend to be active on social media even more than usual – which is already quite a lot! Add a social media integration feature to your landing page and encourage your visitors to like and share, share, share. You can easily integrate popular and visual-based social networks like Instagram and Pinterest to your landing page and combine your social media marketing strategy into your landing page promotions.
It’s a known fact that people trust recommendations from their peers over direct advertisements. They are more likely to make a purchase before and during the holiday season if they see that the people they know have already purchased your product. The more you can integrate social media into your page, the better.
Here’s a great example from Mamas & Papas who not only included social icons for easy sharing but also gave the option of sending to a friend via email. Fantastic for conversions!
MAKE IT EASY TO SEARCH AND BUY
While this may seem obvious, many marketers lose themselves in the promotional aspect of the campaign and forget about the actual buying process. Nobody wants to spend hours to find something they’re interested in buying and go through the buying process from hell. And as the whole idea of holiday shopping revolves around gifts, buying them should be easy. Filter products in categories such as age and gender, customize your page to fit a certain target audience, for instance parents, vacationers, children, and such, to help visitors find what they are looking for in a flash.
The basic rule of “think like the customer” stands here as well. Again, put yourself in the shoes of your customers. How do they search for things to buy? Consider your niche and think about the ways that your customers may do their searches on your websites, and give them the smoothest path to the final sale.
Debenhams really make it easy for their customers to choose a gift for Her, Him and Kids. People can even filter gifts by “something quirky he’ll love” or “The perfect gifts under $25”.
KEEP YOUR PAGE CLEAN AND MINIMAL
Are you familiar with the phrase “less is more”? Well, this often applies in marketing. Regardless of how many amazing promotions you’d like to advertise, an excessively cluttered landing page may drive people away.
Pick a strong tactic and stick with it. You can add more promotions as you go, as long as you keep the design minimal.
Back to Starbucks who just know how to craft the perfect landing pages for the holidays. These acclaimed coffee makers kept their LP as minimal as possible and still managed to dazzle their members with free bakery items, exclusive offers limited edition gift cards. Take a look.
So, in a nutshell:
- Create an excitement and limited time offers during which people can redeem your offer, make a purchase, sign up, etc.
- Build interest by emphasizing attractive details such as, discounts, free shipping,
- and promo codes.
- Incorporate a festive and aesthetic design to your pages.
- Encourage people to share your ads through their social media channels. There’s nothing like a friendly recommendation from their peers to increase sales.
- Make it easy for people to buy. Build a smooth and easy sale funnel that will help quicken your sale.
- Keep it minimal and avoid cluttering your visitors with too many details, loud designs and over-promoting.
Happy optimizing for the holidays!
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