It’s September, and if your website is not ready for the holidays, it’s high time you get right on it. But, you say, what do I need to do to get my site ready for the holidays? Is it not enough that I have last year’s designs on the site? I never took them down, so I should be OK, right?

Not really. Take a look around you and you’ll see that the big shots: they already have their merchandise out on the floor. It’s new, and fresh, and eye catching. And it’s not last year’s merchandise!

  • You can start by adding something festive to your header/logo (make sure you save your current one to place back on your site once the holidays are gone). You can also, change the link colors on your site to green or red.
  • Next, how about creating a holiday gift guide and post a link to it on your home page? This will help people get ideas about gifts and make plans, even if they are not ready to buy now.
  • Now, not everyone can make up their mind easily, so offering Gift Certificates on your site is also a good idea.
  • If you plan to do any PPC (pay Per Click) advertising, you should start now, so that you are ahead of others. The closer to the holidays we get, the more advertisers will be starting their campaigns, and the harder it will get to find your “niche”. If you start now, you’ll have a history in your account and that will be very helpful. You can also get all the kinks out of the way before the holidays rush.
  • One last suggestion: get a script that will count down to Christmas. There is nothing like seeing it in front of you. Here is a site that offers a Christmas Countdown Script.

And if you want to see it in action, look at this page of Christmas Gift Baskets.

I hope I inspired you to go work on your site and be ready for the soon coming holiday season. And if you have any other ideas, please make sure to leave a comment.