Dress Your Site for Thanksgiving With our Tips and Tools
While cornstalks, turkeys and pilgrims set a festive decor for millions of homes and brick-and-mortar businesses across America, you may be wondering how to bring the feel of Thanksgiving to your online store.
If you are looking to dress up your site and brand for the holiday, it is important to remember that you don't need a full redesign — in fact, industry experts agree that a redesign just for a holiday is likely to confuse regular visitors to your site.
Instead, try adding subtle Thanksgiving imagery and promotions, similar to the way that brick-and-mortar stores and businesses only change their window dressing and not their entire store or office layout for the holiday.
Here are some tips and a few free and budget-conscious tools to spruce up your site temporarily for Thanksgiving:
Add Subtle Thanksgiving Imagery for a Bigger Impact
Adding holiday-themed product shots is a low-cost, easy way to offer a visual taste of Thanksgiving at your e-commerce storefront for the holiday. Online store owners can create a festive look by simply replacing their front page product images with ones that are holiday-specific or those featuring traditional autumn colors.
Online shops with seasonal products can create a Thanksgiving-specific category page and leave it up all year for SEO purposes. As the holiday approaches, use a simple image on your main storefront page to link to your special Thanksgiving holiday category.
If you don't stock seasonal items, you can still incorporate accents of an autumn theme. A furniture store, for example, may not have holiday-specific stock, but you can show pieces on your main page that are in fall colors, or use product shots with autumn themed accents such as red and orange throws and pillows. If you use stock photos and cannot get these types of product shots, consider adding decorative fall leaves and simple border imagery to highlight your product images for Thanksgiving instead.
Offer Visitors Business-Focused Knowledge
If you don't sell tangible goods but are the owner of a service-related business that has a Web site, use your knowledge of your subject matter instead of images to bring a holiday feel to your pages. Everyone loves quick and easy tips, and you can offer Thanksgiving guidance to your readers that showcases your own area of expertise. For example, a stationary Web site can offer tips on Thanksgiving invitation etiquette, or a garden center can offer a step-by-step guide on how to create a Thanksgiving centerpiece. A Web site with a focus on cooking or cookware can offer readers professional tips on how to successfully pull a succulent, juicy turkey out of the oven for their family and dinner guests.
The topics you can choose for a Thanksgiving theme are virtually endless and you can work in holiday tips for just about any Web site or business topic. Online store owners can create separate pages within their site for hosting the Thanksgiving tips year-round for SEO purposes, and again, use simple imagery on their main page to promote it to readers as the holiday approaches. This type of Thanksgiving content can also be used in your holiday newsletters.
Emphasize the Thanks and Giving
Make a play on the words "thanks" and "giving." Thank your loyal readers by offering turkey-themed coupons or discount codes, and dress up your site's landing page with matching logos and images. Like the holiday tips, this is also an incentive that you can carry over to your November e-mail marketing campaigns.
For those sites not selling merchandise online, consider thanking your readers by giving them an opportunity to win some of your business branded and promotional items by offering creative and fun Thanksgiving giveaways that relate to your Web site topic. Other suggestions for give-aways: free unique e-books that focus on holiday topics (similar to knowledge tips), free Thanksgiving coloring pages for children or other low cost Thanksgiving-themed freebies.
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Looking for temporary Thanksgiving dressing for your site? Try online stock photo sites for low-cost Web images.
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Dress Your Web With with Thanksgiving Images
Should your Web team be lacking in artists, there are many places where you can find Thanksgiving images to use on your site, either free or for very low prices. Some of your office-type software may have a selection of clip art and images you can use on your Web site (you'll need to check usage restrictions in the EULA accompanying the software), and many online sites also offer Thanksgiving images with varying restrictions. Here are several sites where you can find great Thanksgiving clip art and stock photo images:
Free Clip Art
Clip art (define) is basically a type of computer graphic (or illustration) that can be inserted into just about any type of document, including Web pages. Web clip art is usually in .gif or .jpg format and often you can edit clip art images in a graphics program. There are a massive number of "free clip art" Web sites and sites where you can purchase clip art packages. When choosing free clip art images, it's important to read the usage terms. Some authors may have no restrictions, while others may ask you to place a link back to their site from within your own site pages. Here are five sites offering Thanksgiving-themed clip art:
Royalty Free Stock Photos
Royalty free stock photo (define) sites offer digital photos and images that you can use on your Web site. Stock photos are often a good choice for temporary use as the images are professional quality and they are bought and sold on a royalty-free basis so they can be used for commercial design purposes. Many stock photo sites offer images on a per download basis, depending on the size of the image you want to use, and since you don't need large images for Web use, you can obtain quality Thanksgiving images on some sites for just a dollar or two. Here are five stock photo sites that you can peruse to find the perfect Thanksgiving images to dress your Web site:
Vangie Beal is a seasoned online marketplace seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com and avid online bargain hunter. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com.
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