Customer engagement is a critical driver of success for online businesses, especially during the competitive holiday season. Higher engagement leads to increased brand loyalty, repeat customers, and shorter sales cycles—key benefits that can set your business apart.
As the holiday shopping season approaches, it’s more important than ever to enhance your Shopify store’s customer engagement. One of the most effective ways to do this is through well-designed websites. Research shows that 75% of users judge a business's credibility based on website design, and 38% will stop engaging with a site if it’s unattractive.
In this article, we’ll share actionable holiday website design tips to boost customer engagement, helping your store stand out and thrive during this peak shopping season.
Holiday Website Design Tips to Boost Customer Engagement
Use Spin the Wheel
One of the most popular holiday website design tips is to use a "Spin the Wheel" feature to reward customers during the shopping season in an engaging way. It's a gamified element where visitors can spin a virtual wheel to win discounts, free shipping coupons, gift cards, or other prizes.
Image source: FoxKit
✅ Benefit:
- Increased engagement: Inject a sense of fun and excitement to engage website visitors to interact and stay for longer durations.
- Incentivized actions: By offering rewards, the "Spin the Wheel" feature becomes a powerful tool to motivate visitors to take desired actions. This can include subscribing to newsletters, making purchases, or sharing the website on social media.
❌ Drawback:
- Potential for overuse or misuse: Like any gamified element, the "Spin a Wheel" feature can backfire if not implemented properly. There's a risk of it seeming gimmicky or intrusive, potentially harming the overall user experience.
📌 Tips to do it well:
- Set clear rules and limitations: Establish transparent rules and limitations for the wheel prizes to ensure fairness and avoid misleading visitors.
- Customize design: Align the design of the wheel with the holiday theme and overall website aesthetics. Consistency is key for a seamless user experience.
- Strategic integration: Place the "Spin a Wheel" feature at strategic points in the user journey. Consider triggering it during exit intent or after a certain level of engagement to maximize its impact.
If you tend to use “Spin a Wheel” in your holiday website design, you can refer to CRAFTD London - a jewelry brand for men. When visiting their website, a pop-up lucky wheel will be shown after a few seconds, which offers shoppers the chance to spin and win discount codes.
- From shoppers’ perspective, it works well since it’s easy, fun, and costs them nothing to try.
- From the brand’s perspective, it helps them to engage with shoppers, gives them discount codes so that they will feel the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) effect, and collects shoppers’ data to use in holiday marketing campaigns later.
If you want to create a pop-up lucky wheel like this, consider using the FoxKit app. It not only lets you create your customized wheel but also provides you with a detailed analysis of this wheel so that you can track its performance.
Add an Auto-Scrolling Promotion
One more holiday website design practice is using auto-scrolling promotions. This feature automatically slides limited-time offers, deals, or product recommendations across relevant areas of your web pages.
✅ Benefit:
- Increased visibility: Ensure your important offers or announcements take center stage. Auto-scrolling promotions make sure they are prominently displayed, increasing the likelihood of customers noticing them.
- Enhanced engagement: The subtle movement of scrolling banners is like a virtual tap on the shoulder, capturing users' attention and encouraging them to explore the promotions further.
❌ Drawback:
- Potential overload: While auto-scrolling promotions are effective, there's a risk of overwhelming users if not implemented carefully. Too many scrolling promotions can clutter the browsing experience.
📌 Tips to do it well:
- Limit quantity: Keep the number of scrolling promotions to a manageable quantity. Prioritize quality over quantity to maintain a clean and organized layout.
- High-quality visuals and compelling copy: Make your promotions visually appealing and enticing. High-quality visuals paired with compelling copy can make a lasting impression on your visitors.
- Clear and visible CTAs: Ensure your call-to-action buttons are clear and visible. Guide users towards desired actions by making it easy for them to explore and engage with your promotions.
Burga (a brand that sells phone cases and accessories) practices this customer engagement strategy well. The brand places an auto-scrolling promotion section right below the hero section to capture shoppers’ interest instantly.
By using short sentences like “25% off everything”, “buy 4 pay 2”, “Black Friday”, etc., Burga writes to shoppers’ minds a message that their desired products are discounted and ready to buy.
Image source: Burga
Add an Exit Intent Pop-up
To recover potentially lost opportunities and keep your holiday sales sleigh on track, consider the strategic implementation of an Exit Intent Pop-up. It is a pop-up window that cleverly appears when a user indicates an intention to leave the website, offering a secret discount or coupon to keep customers engaged.
✅ Benefit:
- Reduce cart abandonment: Combat the dreaded cart abandonment scenario by offering last-minute discounts, incentives, or personalized recommendations through Exit Intent Pop-ups. This entices users to stay and complete their purchase.
- Opportunity for additional engagement: Extend the user journey beyond their initial exit intent. Use these pop-ups to collect email addresses for future holiday marketing campaigns or provide valuable information to users before they bid farewell.
❌ Drawback:
- Potential annoyance: While Exit Intent Pop-ups can be effective, there's a risk of users finding them intrusive or disruptive to their browsing experience.
📌 Tips to do it well:
- Compelling incentives: Make the offer irresistible. Provide compelling incentives or exclusive deals to entice users to reconsider leaving.
- Simple and unobtrusive design: Keep the design of your pop-up simple and unobtrusive. Ensure that the close button is easily visible, allowing users to exit the pop-up effortlessly.
- Polite and persuasive language: Craft your pop-up message with politeness and persuasion. Use language that is both convincing and respectful of the user's browsing experience.
To illustrate, let’s take a look at the below banner from Snow, a toothpaste Shopify store. This box will be shown when shoppers move their mouse outside the web page for the first time to entice them to give their email address in exchange for a free whitening wand.
Image source: SNOW
Apply Holiday Sales Effects
To increase user engagement on the website and infuse it with the enchantment of the season, consider incorporating captivating holiday sales effects. They are dynamic visual elements or animations that bring the holiday spirit to life on your website. Think snowfall animations, falling confetti, or gift-wrapping visuals – all designed to evoke the joy of the season.
✅ Benefit:
- Create a memorable user experience: Transport your visitors into a winter wonderland with holiday sales effects. These delightful animations engage website visitors, evoke positive emotions, leave a lasting impression on users, and imprint an unforgettable shopping experience.
- Enhance brand perception: By incorporating holiday-themed visuals, your website communicates a commitment to the festive season and customer satisfaction. It's an opportunity to reinforce your brand identity in the hearts of your visitors.
❌ Drawback:
- Potential impact on website performance: While the magic of Holiday Sales effects is undeniable, there's a caveat. Heavy or excessive effects can potentially slow down your website's loading speed, impacting user experience.
📌 Tips to do it well:
- Subtle and lightweight animations: Less is often more. Use subtle and lightweight animations that enhance the overall user experience without causing significant performance issues.
- Displace motion effects in Foxify Smart Page Builder: For easy implementation, make use of Foxify's capabilities for motion effects such as entrance, hover, and click animations. Brands can keep it simple by incorporating motion effects for text or visuals, adding a touch of dynamism easily.
Image source: Foxify Help Center - Animations
- Test across different devices and browsers: To guarantee a consistent and smooth experience for all users, conduct thorough testing of your holiday sales effects across various devices and browsers.
An example of the holiday sales effect on your website: Kith transformed its homepage from a bright and clean style to a warm look with holiday images, animation, and mellow transitions.
Image source: Kith
These holiday sales effects are trendy and impressive, which engage website visitors to continue exploring its website and eventually increase the chance of purchase.
More Advanced Holiday Website Design Tips No One Tells You
Page Scheduling
Page scheduling is an advanced feature that allows you to schedule the visibility of specific pages or promotions during designated timeframes. Essentially, it lets you plan when certain content or promotions go live.
In the chaos of holiday marketing and sales, timing is everything. Page scheduling ensures that you can orchestrate timely launches of your special holiday pages or campaigns. Whether it's a flash sale, exclusive product launch, or festive-themed content, page scheduling empowers you to unveil them strategically at the most opportune moments.
By having perfect timing, you can boost online customer engagement at the most suitable time as you planned in your holiday marketing strategies.
With built-in page scheduling, Foxify Smart Page Builder puts these tools at your fingertips, simplifying the process of optimizing your website for holiday sales.
To schedule a page for publishing, instead of clicking “Publish now” as usual, you can choose the option of “Publish later” and choose the date you want.
Image source: Foxify
Advanced Analytics
Advanced analytics shapes more strategic decisions compared to surface-level metrics. Foxify's built-in reports break down page views, location data, and way more with granular insights.
Armed with these findings, you can optimize weak points and scale up wins - vital tweaks as the new year approaches.
By doing so, you can not only increase user engagement on the website continuously but also establish a complete brand engagement strategy to execute long-term actions.
In the Foxify app, select the tab “Analytics” on the left sidebar. There, you’ll find an overall dashboard that covers essential metrics of both store performance (orders, sales, average order volume, etc.) and page performance (sessions, pageviews, etc.).
Each tab in the dashboard presents a certain metric. You can click on the top right icon to view the detailed analysis of each metric.
Create A Stunning Holiday Website with Foxify - Smart Page Builder
Designing a website is no small feat. To navigate this relentless process effectively, you need the right tools in your team. As powerful as a Shopify theme can be, sole reliance on it can leave you missing out on great opportunities. What you truly need is a robust page builder that not only facilitates the creation of a visually appealing site but also empowers you with functionalities to enhance user experience.
Consider Foxify Smart Page Builder, your weapon for crafting a website that not only looks good but also performs exceptionally well. Here is why Foxify stands out in the crowded field of page builders:
- Diverse templates: Foxify has over 150 high-converting templates for different page types (home page, product page, landing page) in a wide range of industries (clothing, cosmetics, technology, etc).
Templates library. Image source: Foxify Demo
- Device-specific designs: Recognizing the diverse ways users access your site, Foxify provides device-specific designs. This ensures an optimized experience, whether your customers are browsing on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
- Built-in upsells and cross-sells: Foxify provides built-in upsells and cross-sells app extensions for absolutely free, such as Sticky Add to Cart, Recently Viewed Products, Product Option Swatches, etc. This means you can effortlessly boost your sales by offering additional shopping value to your customers.
- Advanced analytics and report: Knowledge is power, and Foxify equips you with the insights you need. Keep a close eye on your store and page performance with Foxify Analytics, allowing you to make informed decisions to enhance user engagement and drive conversions.
- More dynamic features: Foxify is the very first page builder that translates your website for free with AI-powered FoxMagic. We also released FoxTransfer recently. This one makes sure you can copy and paste any inspiring web design and build a stunning store within minutes. As usual, no code is needed!
Best Practices for Holiday Website Designs - FAQs
- Why should I update my website for the holidays?
Yes, you should. Updating your website for the holidays makes it more welcoming and appealing to web browsers, including your shoppers. A festive design helps customers get into the holiday spirit, making them more likely to shop for gifts or take advantage of seasonal deals. When it comes to updating your website for the holiday season, think of highlighting special offers and holiday discounts that can attract more visitors and drive sales.
- What should I add to my website design for the holidays?
Add fun holiday colors, images, and banners that promote discounts. You should make it easy for people to find gift guides and special offers. Also, don’t forget to check that your website works well on mobile and loads quickly, especially for shoppers on the go.
- How can I highlight special holiday deals on my website?
Use big banners, pop-ups, or countdown timers to show holiday deals. Be sure that it’s clear how long the offer lasts and any important details. These tactics can grab attention without being annoying. And if you ever need a tool for this, consider FoxKit - an AIO Upsell and Cross-sell platform trusted by thousands of Shopify sellers.
- What holiday design trends should I consider this year?
Some popular holiday trends include minimalist designs with holiday accents, retro-style graphics, and fun interactive features like gift finders. If you want to get creative, add augmented reality (AR) to let shoppers preview products in their space.
