How to Transform Your Client's Website for the Holidays
Make no mistake, the holidays are right around the corner. That chill in the air means it’s time to reach out to clients about updating their websites for the season, if you haven’t already.
The holiday season means big business for web designers. It’s also a great opportunity to demonstrate value to clients and showcase design skills, not to mention fill your calendar. But these festive updates are more than just holiday design magic for your client, they also offer tangible benefits for their business. With seasonal magic, they can see boosted sales and an improved customer connection to their brand.
To get it right, you have to plan early. Reach out to clients as soon as possible so you can book a schedule without any last-minute surprises. Updating a website for the holidays is a ton of work, and you’ll need all the time you can get.
Prep for seasonal updates
While it’s more festive, ramping up for a holiday update is just like planning any client website refresh–with the addition of a very hard deadline.
Begin by assessing your client’s needs and overall goals during a discovery call. They may be looking for a simple holiday reskin, or perhaps they are launching new seasonal products or want to create a holiday landing page for a targeted campaign. Record their wants wherever you manage the project.
After your discovery call, take a step back and review the state of your client’s current site. You may also want to review their past holiday site by checking any revisions. Develop a list of potential holiday updates that meet their needs, starting with the high-level, big-impact changes. After addressing the big updates, round out your list with a number of low-level, nuanced changes that can really make the customer experience as impactful as possible.
With your “wishlist” in hand, meet with your client to discuss potential updates and set objectives. Explain your proposed design changes and highlight the purpose of each one.
To measure the success of your client’s holiday campaign, agree on measurable benchmarks for the website updates. Think of these as holiday KPIs (key performance indicators) that will help determine if the holiday campaign is successful.
You can use Squarespace Analytics to collect data on the effectiveness of the holiday updates. For festive visuals, time on page and clickthrough rate are tried and true metrics to monitor. For holiday products, look to conversions and sales to measure success.
Once you’ve agreed on holiday updates and objectives, establish a timeline and budget for the project. Depending on the scope, your work could take most of October into early November for a launch that falls immediately after Thanksgiving. With this in mind, you may want to bill hourly for your work, but you can also set a fixed rate for the entire project.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to include the cost of post-holiday takedown into your price. More on this later.
During this time, set boundaries with clients about how much support you can provide throughout the season. You’ll likely juggle multiple holiday updates for your roster of clients, not to mention holiday plans of your own. Estimate your hourly time conservatively to ensure that ample time is set aside for roadblocks or unforeseen issues.
Design a festive user experience
Now comes the fun part: the design!
Regardless of how you’re mocking up the changes, remember to be inclusive in your festive designs and content. If your client doesn’t have goals tied to a specific holiday, it’s best to keep your designs welcoming and relatable to a wide range of visitors. Lean into neutral and inclusive language in greetings and copy. As a best practice, focus on themes of joy, togetherness, and celebration.
When designing, think about how your holiday theme aligns with your client's brand and target audience. If you’re in need of inspiration, the following are some options to get your holiday design work started:
Traditional festive
This theme uses holiday colors like red, green, and gold as well as imagery of snow, wreaths, and stars. It works well with brands that desire a classic look.
Cozy-core
This design creates a warm and comforting vibe with browns, reds, and oranges, along with visuals of fires, wool, and hot drinks. Cozy-core is great for brands focusing on wellness and hominess.
Vintage
With sepia tones and muted reds, greens, browns, and golds, this theme celebrates the classics. It also creates a look of cinema-like nostalgia, a common feeling during the holiday season.
Snowflake chic
Using white space and silver or pastel tones alongside snowy imagery, this holiday design offers a modern experience for site visitors. Snowflake chic works well with modern, contemporary brands.
Gift shopping
This holiday theme uses gifts, wrapping paper, and store imagery to create a typically in-person retail experience online. It is great for ecommerce brands looking for a classic feel.
Holiday party
For corporations that want a look of togetherness, you can combine classic holiday designs with confetti and party imagery. This cultivates feelings of unity and camaraderie.
Winter wonderland
This holiday theme relies on natural visuals of animals, trees, and snow to create an enchanting scene. Winter wonderland is great for outdoorsy brands or those that are holiday-agnostic.
When choosing a design, consider how the colors, graphics, and typography impact the design. Your client’s goals and brand should play into the chosen theme as well as resonate with their target audience. The right look should feel like their brand, rather than feeling clunky and out-of-sync with their products and existing messaging.
Also, keep your client’s special holiday products or services front and center in your design. Use these offerings as a hero takeover, in the navigation, or as a site banner to encourage visitor engagement.
Create holiday graphics and seasonal visuals
With a theme chosen and a design in hand, the asset production begins. Roll up your sleeves and open up your graphic design or image editing software of choice. Or work with your favorite collaborator on achieving custom seasonal visuals.
While holiday graphics can encompass any visual asset in the site experience, you’ll likely be tasked with creating custom graphics, banners, and logos for the season. Depending on your client’s budget, you may also be able to source stock imagery (and speed the project along in the process).
When developing holiday graphics, you’ll want to verify that they’re high quality and use the right aspect ratio and file size, especially if your goal is to increase traffic. This ensures graphics will load efficiently on the website and appear correct at all breakpoints.
If it fits your design, integrate holiday-specific elements like snowflakes, ornaments, or candles into product images and other touchpoints. These festive visuals can increase clickthrough rate and attract the attention of visitors.
Pro tip: Don’t get too carried away with the festive theme. Holiday updates should strike a balance between the theme, your client’s brand, and their overall web design. Consider the user experience first and foremost, keeping usability and conversion rates as the site’s primary goals.
Update the content for the holidays
Now that you’ve secured visuals, it’s time to update the website itself. Make visual changes using your workflow of choice, and plan for any additional content that you may want to add.
For ecommerce clients, you’ll want to go through each page and update product descriptions, pricing, and availability. Your client may have an expanded inventory to meet seasonal demand, exclusive sales to capture holiday shoppers, or updated copy to bring in festive terms.
This is a great time to incorporate SEO strategies that optimize holiday-related keywords for better search engine visibility. These can increase your client’s rankings and earn more organic traffic from seasonal shoppers.
Your client may also want to publish seasonal blog content to boost the site’s SEO authority score. If you have the chops, you may write them, or you can outsource the work to freelance contractors.
In addition to blog articles, you should also pitch holiday-specific landing pages to increase visitor focus on your client’s holiday offerings. You may try to surface them using SEO keywords in hopes that they’ll rank organically, or you can build out paid search campaigns to target browsing shoppers.
Depending on your client’s following, they may also want you to set up email campaigns to distribute festive content. These messages can remind customers of sales, updated hours, new products, and more. If holiday emails aren’t their cup of tea, try pop-ups or announcement bars to keep site visitors informed.
Enhance visitor engagement
Outside of the festive updates, you may want to collaborate with your client to design marketing campaigns that get more of their visitors involved. This is a great way to support the benchmarks that you have both set regarding holiday success.
Depending on their industry, it may be beneficial to develop holiday-specific promos and discounts. While some clients may shy away from offering their products at less than full price, clickthrough rates and sales volume often increase as cost goes down.
To push these deals, include eye-catching CTA buttons, banners, and pop-ups on the site. You may even want to A/B test items like copy, button placement, and more so you’ll have even more data to incorporate next year.
Make updates after the holidays
Once you’ve updated the website for the season, don’t forget to plan for the site’s post-holiday state. Just as the decorations go down a few days after the festivities officially end, so does the seasonal web decor. The holidays tend to fly by, so you’ll want to get a plan in place as soon as possible.
Some clients may simply want to revert to their old site, taking things back to business as usual. Others may want to keep some of the design changes without the holiday flair (based on their success), or even plan for a new design for the website moving forward.
Some clients may find it helpful to run post-holiday sales or deals to move some of the leftover inventory. This can also be combined with a quick New Year’s update to create a cohesive user experience. Pitch these items alongside your holiday updates to have fast follow updates in your pocket and ready for launch ahead of January 1st.
Start the holiday updates conversations
Bringing up holiday web design to clients and pitching your services can feel intimidating if you’re out of practice.
Start by crafting an email template to send to your clients. In each email, cover the purpose of the holiday update, the goals, your proposed methods, and the update process, as well as details about their respective business. Your clients are likely as busy as you are, so craft a message that is both skimable and actionable.
The following is an email template that you can adapt to your business:
Subject: Updating Your Website for the Holidays
Hi [Client Name],
I hope this email finds you well! The holiday season is coming up, and I’m scheduling my seasonal website updates for clients. I’d love to include [Client’s Business Name] this year.
A holiday-themed design can boost sales and improve visitors’ connection to your brand. The scope of the updates can vary depending on your goals, but time is definitely running out to get started.
In this holiday refresh, we can:
Cultivate a unique theme that aligns with your brand and target audience
Design custom graphics, banners, and logos for the holiday season
Develop holiday-specific content, blogs, and landing pages
Set up seasonal promotions and email campaigns
And more!
There are a lot of routes we can take with the update, so I’d love to get started as soon as possible. Meeting for a discovery call is the best way for us to get started, then I can get to work.
If you’re interested, schedule a time that works for you using [Link to your scheduling page].
Is it too early to say “Happy Holidays?”
[Your Name]
[Your Company Name]
[Your Contact Information]
Holiday updates make happy clients
Updating your client’s website for the holidays is a great way to demonstrate your value and showcase your skills and thoughtfulness as a designer. Your options for updates are limitless, and everything from festive theming to seasonal campaigns can increase client sales and improve their site engagement.
Scheduling early is key. Holiday update projects are a lot of work and take plenty of planning, coordination, and time. It’s never too early to start prepping, so reach out to your contacts as soon as possible.
Lastly, if you’re juggling a large roster of clients, don’t overbook yourself. You’ll want to spend some time with friends and family too, as well as keep up on your regular projects–not to mention enjoy a little seasonal R&R.
Want more?
Check out Squarespace Circle, Squarespace’s program for professional designers. Along with exclusive content, discounts, and other perks, Circle brings professionals together from all across the globe to exchange advice while connecting with new clients and collaborators.
