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The leaves are beginning to turn, Starbucks has been selling pumpkin-spice everything for nearly two months already, and your most recent Google search is “topical costumes 2023”...it can only mean one thing: Halloween is soon!
With so much pomp and circumstance surrounding the spooky season it’s no surprise that ecommerce brands use it as an opportunity to run fa-boo-lous marketing campaigns (see what we did there?).
While it’s easy to focus on the seasonal product offerings that these sorts of campaigns promote, we can’t ignore the smart changes brands make to their sites to sell these items! From a reimagined homepage to a clever change to a site’s main menu—a thoughtfully executed halloween-themed website variation will make you say “oh my gourd!” and encourage visitors to buy!
Keep reading to learn about four website tests you can run for Halloween and the companies that are already executing these strategies perfectly.
Add “Halloween” to Your Main Menu
When it comes to selling seasonal products, Halloween or otherwise, it can feel like there is a mad dash to sell products before the holiday (or other observance) the items relate to passes. For this reason, if your company sells Halloween-related products it’s smart to add an easy way for visitors to access those items to your main menu to encourage them to view the products during the desired time frame.
In the example below, Dolls Kill, an ecommerce apparel company that tends to do a big marketing push around Halloween has not only added “Halloween” to their main menu but also a detailed drop down showing their entire seasonal product offering. Visitors who come to the site in search of Halloween products should have little to no issue finding exactly what they’re looking for quickly, whether it’s spooky homegoods or the perfect costume for their dog.
In doing so, they not only continue to substantiate they are a great resource for Halloween goods year in and year out, but also enable visitors to quickly find Halloween items if that’s why they’ve chosen to visit their site.
Give Your Homepage a “Gourd-geous” New Look
Perhaps the most obvious and splashiest way to indicate to visitors that you have Halloween products to sell is by making major changes to your homepage. While this certainly won’t work for every brand—companies that rely on changing seasons and the holiday calendar should have no qualms about adopting this bold strategy!
Below Postable, a greeting card company, features a fall-related card on their homepage. Because of what Postable sells, it’s more than likely that visitors are coming to the site in search of a card for an upcoming or timely event. Because of this, Postable features a card in celebration of autumn. While Postable may not yet be aware of an anonymous visitor’s interests or intent, this homepage indicates to new visitors that they offer an incredibly wide variety of greeting cards for every occasion.
Add Spooky Creative to Modals
Developing and executing seasonal creative is no easy feat. That’s why you should consider leveraging your halloween-related imagery in unique places across your site—not just your homepage! Adding product photography to more bespoke parts of your site, like a modal, builds great continuity across your site and can allow you to see if your seasonal items help you convert more customers in various contexts.
Below, cosmetics retailer, Lush, uses a product photo of their “Bat Art” bath bomb–a halloween-themed item in a modal promoting a contest they are running during the month of October. To be entered to win, visitors must sign up for Lush’s email subscription list between October 1 and November 1. While this is a contest that could presumably be run at any time of the year, in this variation Lush has chosen a halloween-related image to create a thematic tie between the pop-up and their seasonal product offering. If they try this test again during the month of December with winter-holiday imagery will they see the same results? Only time will tell!
Show Off "Haunted" Recommend Items
As mentioned previously, selling seasonal items can feel like a race to clear out your inventory before a given date. That’s why you should take every opportunity to show off your Halloween items, particularly to visitors who have already indicated that they might have an interest in buying these types of goods. One great way to showcase your full seasonal product offering is by showing visitors recommended items directly on the product detail page (PDP) for a Halloween item.
Take a look at the example below where direct-to-consumer (DTC) apparel brand, BlackMilk, does just that! At the bottom of each of their PDPs for Halloween pieces they’ve included recommended items from the same collection. This enables visitors who have indicated they’re in the market for Halloween items to take a look at products that they didn’t initially consider— a surefire CRO strategy!
When it comes to selling seasonal items online, there’s no shortage of creative ways to optimize your site to sell those very products. That’s why the spookiest thing you can do this Halloween season is pick one website idea and stick with it! Rather, it’s important to test as many site variations as possible to find out which Halloween-related elements work best for each visitor. Think of this type of 1:1 personalization as a “costume” for your site—allowing you to present your brand in different ways depending on who is looking.
Whether you implement these creative website ideas for Halloween or another celebration down the road, we hope these four ideas give you the inspiration you need to optimize your site for selling seasonal products!
