The holidays are a hectic time of year for retailers of all descriptions, but a plus side to online retailers of the increased traffic to your site is the excuse to spruce it up and get festive. Adorn your web pages and emails with snow, reindeer, and a sprig of holly, and trust us, your viewers will love it!
Here at Fresh Relevance, we’ve been keeping our eyes peeled waiting for the first fall of online snow, to share with you our favorite festive websites and emails:
Emma Bridgewater: User-Generated Instagram Content & Hashtag #EBchristmas
This year, Emma Bridgewater is getting social with the “#EBchristmas” page on the website where customers’ Instagram posts of Emma Bridgewater stock can be pulled through into a photo-blog style page. This is a great way to engage with your customers and encourage repeat purchases. It will also act as social proof for new visitors, who can see what other people bought and loved from Emma Bridgewater. Each image that is posted to the page also links back to the page for the product it showcases and shows the product’s star rating. Social Proof used in this way can help to maximize conversions on products with high ratings.
Whistlefish: Homepage Product Recommendations
A wintry scene with snowy mountains and woodland creatures in scarves welcomes any visitors to the Whistlefish website this holiday season. Not only have Whistlefish got the Christmassy feel to the homepage, but underneath this banner is a row of Product Recommendations for visitors to the page. Product Recommendations are a great way of helping visitors find something they want to buy quicker, so gift buyers at this busy time of year will not grow impatient when they have little time to waste!
Ralph Lauren: Scrolling Web Banners
Web Banners are a great visual touch to any website, especially when they are Christmas themed! Ralph Lauren has used a Web Banner that scrolls through its selection of festively-themed products for different demographics. 93% of companies see an uplift in conversion rates as a result of website personalization, so use personalized Web Banners on your homepage, with products that you think individual visitors might be interested in to maximize your conversion rate.
Scribbler: Christmas Coupon Codes
Scribbler has applied a snowy scrolling web banner to the homepage of its website, with a coupon code for visitors to the website to receive a discount with. The holidays are an expensive time of year for a lot of consumers, so offering money off can be a great incentive for them to stay on the website, and possibly make a purchase. 63% of consumers say they would spend more money with companies that personalize promotional offers, so one way to top this use of coupon codes by Scribbler could be to personalize any coupons used in your email and web content. Countdown Timers help to create a sense of urgency for shoppers, so when you have an offer available for a limited amount of time, you could use one to give your viewers an extra nudge.
Fat Face: Advent Calendar Competition
Advent calendars help to build excitement and anticipation for Christmas throughout the entirety of December, and Fat Face has emulated this with their advent calendar competition, where shoppers can enter daily to win prizes that will be released each day. Why not do something similar, but with Daily Deals, so that shoppers can anticipate and use a deal in each day of December, leading up to Christmas Day? See Whittard below for more on Daily Deals.
Whittard: Daily Deals Advent Calendar
Whittard is another online retailer to have jumped on the advent calendar bandwagon this festive season, but they seem to have read our minds and used Daily Deals rather than running daily competitions like Fat Face. By clicking on the correct number corresponding to the date, you will be taken to the deal of the day, with a coupon code to use at the checkout. This is a great way to get shoppers coming back to your website regularly to check what deals you have to offer.
Lush Cosmetics: Product Recommendations & Social Proof
Lush Cosmetics is well renowned for its seasonal products, and Christmas is no exception! Not only does the company have an entire corner of its website dedicated to Christmas, but in this corner, Lush has made product recommendations based on their best and newest Christmas themed products. To go even further, Lush Cosmetics has applied user reviews to the product recommendations made. This use of Social Proof helps to reinforce why these products have been recommended for purchase to shoppers on the website.
Sephora: The Gift Finder
Buying gifts can often be a draining task for shoppers as they attempt to read the minds of their loved ones, so this Christmas, Sephora has got its online shoppers’ backs with this Gift Finder. Take a short quiz to be taken to a page with a selection of recommended purchases for the criteria you applied to the finder. This is a quick, straightforward way of getting shoppers on your page to where they need and want to be, and it’s also fun for them to complete. A stress-free gift shopping technique for the busiest time of year.
Download our Holiday Guide for more Christmassy Inspiration!
