Change your website for seasonal events 
Seasonal events should be visible on your website when they happen. Displaying unique messages or art work (images / flash) will make your visitor feel more comfortable and more willing to share your information / products with their contacts.
As you saw in the previous article [Webtrends] search volumes increase just before seasonal events and peak on the seasonal event itself. Your website should correspond with these trends to maximise potential return.
Here are a few ways how you can change your website:
Changing your logo
The easiest way to give your website a seasonal feel and look is by implementing a different logo during that period. This can be done by replacing your current logo for a limited time with a different image (just make sure your temporary seasonal image is the same dimensions as your permanent logo).
Google is well known for changing their logo [Google Noodle] on their home page to fit seasonal events and to broadcast messages of important dates.
Changing your Style sheet
If your website was build using style sheets to define the look and feel of the entire website it is easy to implement a seasonal event feel/look to your entire website. Adding a background image, changing your header image or website colours can be done to achieve this.
Use more images than usual within your content
In seasonal events, especially festive season use more images than usual. Create a festive feel and look within your product/service page(s).
Display specials in images that are more eye-catching.
Changing these dynamically
A web developer is able to specify seasonal event dates within their code – thus they can get your website ready for a seasonal event long before the actual day.
Don’t be left behind start preparing your website for the next seasonal event.
Using Google Trends to prepare for seasonal events
Ever wondered when the right time is to start advertising for a seasonal event like Valentines day, Easter or Christmas ? Google has a tool that shows you when certain keywords are more popular, and when the search volumes for them increases.
With Google trends you can view the statistics of how often your search query has been searched for over time. This will give you an idea of when you should start preparing for certain seasonal events.
I entered valentines in the trend search box and got the following results:
You will notice that the graph starts climbing towards the end of the year and then peak in February. From this graph you will agree with me that you will need to be ready in December already for something like Valentines day, because right after Christmas that’s the next big event.
By analysing trends you can make sure that you are prepared for seasonal events. If you are using Google Adwords you can plan your campaigns to spend more during these peak times to generate more visits to your website.
Trends can also be used to compare popularity of search phrases for seasonal products that you might have. If you have a clothing store in the united states and two of the products you sell are bikinis and ski jackets, you can use Google trends to see when you need to start focusing more on each product.
Another nice feature that Google Trends offer is Hot Trends. Google Hot Trends displays the latest 20 hot search terms in the United States. This will enable you to change keywords according to your campaigns and website to be more relevant to what people are looking for right now. You can also view past hot searches for example what was popular exactly one year ago.
So make a point of it to follow what is happening on Google Trends and be sure to be one step ahead when it comes to seasonal events.
Comments
Did you reach your customers this Valentines day?
Valentines day has come and gone and hopefully it has been an awesome experience for most of us. I myself really spend an awesome day with my fiancé. As a company though there is more to seasonal events like Valentines day, this is an opportunity for some of us to sell our products to a temporarily over inflated market.
Some companies even base most of its revenue on seasonal events like these. For instance toyshops do exceptionally well over Christmas time. Toyshops thus need to ensure they are prepared for this time of the year by carrying more stock and spending more on advertising.
Just like toyshops you need to identify seasonal periods where your products or services are in higher demand. This could really help increase your sales if you well prepared for these seasonal periods.
So we thought it best to have a look at some tools that could help you spot trends like these. Google Trends is a great tool that you could use to investigate search volumes on Google at certain periods of the year. Helping you spot when searches related to your product or services are in demand. We will discuss this more in our next blog post.
Not only do you need to know when your products are in demand but you also need to make your customers feel like you are servicing them this season. One way of doing this is by styling your website to match whatever the current event is albeit Valentines Day, Christmas or New Year. We will also show you how to ensure that your website is build in such a manner to make it easy to change the style to fit these seasons.
Now all of this is worth very little if you don’t plan out your marketing strategy for this period. You will need to make sure all your on-line ad copy and banners put emphases on the fact that you are servicing this seasonal period. We’ll help you look at your marketing plan to ensure your strategy is ready for this.
So with all of this being discussed in the posts to follow you will need to definitely follow us on twitter or check in tomorrow to find out how this could benefit you.
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