This is the third installment of our Jingle Your Bells All The Way To The Bank holiday PPC management series, where I will discuss a few landing page optimization techniques that can help increase your conversion rates during the holiday shopping season.
The Holidays are just around the corner, which means it’s time to start preparing for that influx of seasonal traffic we look forward to each year. Aside from thorough keyword research, modifying ad copy and tweaking your account structure, it is also important to ask yourself if your landing page is ready as well. Is the color scheme appropriate for a seasonal landing page? Is everything positioned correctly? Are your holiday special offers clearly indicated? These are all questions you should be asking yourself in order to achieve an optimal ROI for the upcoming holiday season.
So if you’re anything like Clark Griswold, then you’re probably thinking about going all-out. However, I’m here to tell you that sometimes simplicity is key, especially when dealing with landing pages. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t spice things up a bit, but rather, highlight the importance of striking a clean balance between spreading holiday cheer and driving conversions. For the purpose of today’s post, here are some ways to go about striking such a balance:
Start With The Basics
First, you’ll want to make sure your page incorporates all of the basic landing page best practices. I wrote a post back in August on how to perform a successful landing page audit that outlines these best practices in more detail. Before you begin making holiday changes, I would strongly recommend checking to make sure you have all of the basics covered first.
Holiday Landing Page Optimization Techniques
After you’ve optimized your page according to the general best practices, then it’s time to spice things up a bit. Here are some techniques that can help you achieve optimal conversion rates during the holidays:
Create some hype.
Although it may seem rudimentary, this step is easily overlooked. You want to be sure to promote the holidays you’re accommodating in order to create some hype around your brand. Let your customers know that you are acknowledging specific holidays for special sales and promotions. This will ultimately increase their likelihood of returning to your site on the most popular shopping days (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc).
Implement a holiday-specific color scheme.
Another quick way to gear your page up for seasonal traffic is to implement a holiday-specific color scheme. Although I’m not sure what colors represent Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Christmas is a much more concrete example. You can easily create a Christmas-like environment by including lots of red and green. Aesthetic changes like these are quick fixes that can easily adapt your website to accommodate specific holidays.
Highlight special offers and promotions explicitly.
One of the most important things you can do to help increase your conversion rate throughout the holidays is highlighting your special offers and promotions above the page-fold. The last thing you want to happen is for a potential customer bounce away from your page, simply because they couldn’t find your hidden offers. This becomes even more crucial if you intend to highlight those deals in your ad copy, so make sure they can be found easily.
Add seasonal images.
Seasonal images are another thing you should try to include on your landing pages during the holidays. These images help create an appropriate atmosphere and make shoppers feel like they landed in the right spot. A good seasonal image can induce emotion and memories of personal holiday experiences, which can ultimately cause your customers to feel more relaxed while browsing your site and making purchases.
Make it easy for customers to find what they are looking for.
During the holidays, the easiest way to help people find what they’re looking for is to implement a gift finder on your site. In the example above, you can find gift ideas by gender, age, and even personality. This way, you’re essentially removing some of the difficulty involved with gift giving by providing ideas for your shoppers to work off of. This is yet another way to achieve optimal conversion rates throughout the holiday season.
Add gift/e-gift card options.
Providing the option to purchase gift cards can also help improve your conversion rates this holiday season. Despite having a gift finder, sometimes people simply want to give recipients their own freedom to choose what they want to buy. Gift cards and e-gift cards can then act as a secondary effort to earn even more business from your customers without forcing them to decide on a specific product right then and there.
It’s never too early to begin preparing your website for the holidays. We’ve discussed a variety of ideas today for you to try out and hopefully implement on your landing pages, but this list is by no means exhaustive. In fact, I would love to hear about your own holiday landing page optimization experiences in the comments section below. Thanks for reading!
