Winter holidays are your last chance this year to enjoy a sales boost. While your promotional discounts and offers are the core of your holiday sales, the overall look of your website creates the emotional desire to buy.

Let’s be realistic: everyone offers special holiday discounts. But only some businesses get major sales, while others barely make a decent profit. So, what differentiates one from the other? Basically, it is about the design, and the way the company leverages the power of festive colors and patterns to entice customers and lead them along the sales path.

Why does holiday web design for your website matter? It is the same thing that makes stores put up Christmas trees in the middle of the sales area and tinsel and globes in the shop window. It creates the spirit of holidays and people automatically enter into the festive mood and are more likely to buy something, either for themselves or as a gift.

So let’s get started with the most important web design elements which will bring you lots of sales during this holiday season:

1. Dress Up Your Logo

A special Christmas logo is not a completely different logo. Your customers should be able to recognize your brand name from the first look at your logo. At the same time, they must see the festive change.

It can be anything from adding a tiny mistletoe branch or a snowflake to your logo, but the impact is significant. You set a holiday mood and your customers will understand that they should expect special offers and discounts from you.

2. Brand Your Menu Buttons

Deck your website design with surprising and holiday themed menu buttons! Use a holiday inspired font and color and discuss with your designer about the opportunity of reshaping the entire look of your menu, with extra buttons just for the holiday season.

In this way, you can promote your sales more efficiently, and can also redesign your shopping cart and the full shopping process.

3. Bet on Red

Red is the classical festive color, but also the color expressing urgency. It is a great color choice for the Buy Now button and to promote limited time offers. Also, red creates a great contrast for a landing page dedicated for holiday sales.

Red is reportedly the only color that can increase the human heart rate, so do not forget to put a large red banner on your home page as well.

4. Clean Up Your Design

In every home, holiday cleaning is a family ritual. People spruce up their homes, move away furniture to create a pleasant open space where the Christmas tree will shine in all its splendor.

The holiday season is also the moment to remove clutter from your website design: add more white space around your main offers and take down graphic elements and text boxes which are under-performing (you can use a heat-map tool to find the areas with the smallest number of clicks).

5. Shape Your Special Offers as Coupon Cards

People love gift or coupon cards. They mean great offers at discount prices. At the first sight of the general shape of a discount card (think of one of the discount cards you get in the mail for 20% from Kohls or another popular retailer), your customer will get the urge to take advantage of the offer as soon as possible.

In this way, you will be able to create both an emotional and a visual stimulus for clients and encourage them to make a purchase (or more).

These five simple redesign tips for the holiday season will help you end your year with a major sales boost to prepare you for a truly happy New Year!