For November’s series we’re diving into the exciting world of the holiday season. With Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and Boxing Day (for our non-American friends) all approaching quickly we’re sharing our favourite tips & tricks for strong holiday-PPC results. Carrie dived into the exciting world of holiday ad copy earlier and now I’m going to take a look at all the things that make for a great holiday landing page.
Shipping Deadlines:
If you are advertising products as Christmas gifts, make sure that you are reassuring your potential customers that those gifts will get to them in time. Make sure you add a banner on your product pages or a message under your ‘add to cart’ button that states “Order by December 16th To Get This by Christmas.” First, this will prevent customers from bailing from your site because they don’t want to take the risk of getting their gifts in time. Second, it adds a sense of urgency to their purchase, which should help to drive up conversion rates.
If you have multiple shipping deadlines, try adding a page and linking to it from a prominent part of your landing page. Amazon lay all the information out nice and clearly for their customers:
TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE DOING FOR BLACK FRIDAY:
Ok this one is all in caps because I wanted to emphasize how crazy Black Friday still seems to me as a non-American. Chances are if I’m coming to your site within a couple of weeks of Black Friday, I’m probably interested in finding out about what you will be having on sale. Make sure to tell your customers:
- What day/time you open
- What products you have on offer
- Will you be doing online deals or in-store only?
Lots of the big retailers are great at putting black Friday pages together. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples here from Best-Buy and HH Gregg:
This page answers all my questions and gives me a nice simple call-to-action that lets me click through to see all the deals they are offering.
I liked HH Gregg’s Black Friday page because it actually lets me look at their Black Friday deals leaflet:
The only thing I’d improve on is making these pages easier to find from homepages or other landing pages. Don’t make me have to leave your site and come back through Google – Black Friday should really be front of house by now.
Don’t Forget About Mobile:
Mobile is super important for the holidays. Why? Because purchases are a lot more time sensitive. If I’m out with my family for Thanksgiving and you have some great online deals, chances are I can’t get home to use my Desktop or bail out to the nearest brick and mortar store. I need to buy now, and often my phone is my only option. In that case make sure I can get exactly what I need to and it’s easy to do. Give me quick links to the deals you’re running and make searching easy.
Second, make sure to cater for the things most mobile users want – store hours, locations and Black Friday specifics.
Walmart’s mobile site was a bit of a mixed bag for this. On the one hand it’s very fat-finger friendly, but on the other not necessarily all that intuitive. I had to swipe across the hero banner to find Black Friday details, which is not something I expect to have to do from a UX point of view – I started by scrolling down the page and getting lost and frustrated.
Account For Changes In User Behaviour:
During most of the year when I go to your website it is for selfish reasons. I want a new TV, I need to pre-order the new Xbox, my sink broke and I need to find the right valve to repair it (etc. etc.). For Christmas this shifts. I’m now buying mostly for others and that’s a little trickier to do. Unless you have a comprehensive list of instructions for what to buy people, chances are you’ll have to do a bit more sleuthing. Finding the perfect gift for someone else becomes a lot more of a browsing-oriented experience.
To that end, make your landing pages colourful and varied. Show me all kinds of different options to choose from. I really liked this from cafepress.co.uk:
Not only does this help me narrow down my search “guys > techie” or “kids > sports superstar” but it really helps me out as someone with no clue what to buy.
Finally, Don’t Lose Sight Of What Makes A Great Landing Page:
Trust, proof, offers, usability, clear value propositions & great images. These things remain as important as ever if you want me to buy from you during the holidays.
As always if you have any favourite landing pages or top CRO tips you’d like to share with us, do so in the comment section below!
