4 Ways Online Retail Sites are Bringing in the Holiday Cheer

If you hop in your “way back machine” and travel back to the turn of the century, Christmas shopping involved schlepping from store to store. My family, growing up, had a tradition of traveling to the mall on Christmas eve to purchase presents. One of the side benefits to this was that I knew my little sister wouldn’t be peaking at her present before she opened it later the next morning. Plus, it appealed to the procrastinator in all of us. The stores were decorated for the holidays, and Christmas music filled the space with good holiday cheer.

Amazon Leverages Prime Membership Benefits with Holiday Music Streaming

Amazon, an undisputed leader in online retailing of products has begun focusing on bringing their Amazon Prime membership into the forefront of almost every page on their website. Whether it’s 2-day free shipping, unlimited video streaming, or unlimited music streaming, many holiday online shoppers are looking to take advantage of programs to save money on shipping costs and spread more holiday cheer for less.

The truly clever part of what Amazon has done can be seen in how they present their products as customers browse. Towards the middle of the page, Prime subscribers will find a button that invites them to listen to holiday music as they browse. The button opens up a stream of Amazon Prime music playlists designed to put shoppers in the holiday spirit.

Snowy Site Overlays

Sites with in-house design teams have started leveraging their IT assets to customize their entire website to the holiday season. For example, some developer are adding a snowy overlay to their site, while others are simply swapping out their stock graphics with snowmen and gift-wrapped presents. The beauty of operating on the web is that the decorating budget only manifests itself in the cost for images to be produced. There’s no maintenance or shipping costs to get special decorations into a physical space. Websites simply create a compelling image and build a site theme around it.

Vacation Websites Leverage Sunny Destinations

As the cold weather rolls into towns across the country, many travelers are looking for someplace warm to enjoy a sunny holiday. Travel websites like Orbitz and Expedia have figured this out and instead of adopting a wintery theme, they’ve plastered their sites with pictures of sunny beaches and palm trees.

Service Websites Leverage Accessibility

During the holiday season, as more and more holiday travelers take flight for destinations around the globe, online services become critical to making the holidays enjoyable. When a customer is at home, they can just travel to their favorite store to pickup items they need on a daily basis. However, on the road it’s harder to find a good place to do things like recharge a prepaid phone or purchase last minute gifts. Service websites have stepped up their game to provide easy access to online services to help supplement traditional brick and mortar stores and 1-800 numbers.