All web store owners out there know that design is one of the most important aspects of your website as far as conversions are concerned. For example, your pages might be lightning fast and highly functional, but if the design is not on the same level, it will discourage visitors from buying anything from you.

A poor design will not transmit the idea that your company is reliable and trustworthy. And if the pages are too cluttered or confusing, it will distract visitors from the main call-to-action buttons and they will leave without finishing what they were there to do.

Now that the holiday season is coming, a remarkable presentation is more important than ever. During this period, you will get more new visitors than at any other time of the year. So this is not so much about maintaining your regular customers as it is about convincing new ones that you’re the business to go to.

People are more willing to spend money during the holiday so they can give their loved ones something they like. Your task is to capitalize on that spirit and offer them a reliable service. Let’s see how you can do that with some design improvements.

1. Make Sure Your Design is Fully Responsive
Your website should behave consistently across all devices, not just desktops, but also smartphones, tablets, and even smartwatches, if possible. During the holiday season, people will always be looking for good deals and gift ideas, whether they are at home, at work or on the subway.

So, make sure they can check out your deals by giving them easy, user-friendly access to your web store from any device. Invest some time in making your design extra-responsive, if it isn’t already.

2. Use White Space
White space is not just unused space, it is also an important design feature. In art, the empty space around an image is usually called negative space, and sometimes it is even the main feature itself. For your website, using white space well could mean, first of all, clearing your pages of useless clutter and make them feel clean and spacious.

Then, it can also be used to make some elements on the page pop out. For example, you might have some awesome Christmas deals now that Christmas is coming. You can use white space around the “Christmas Deals” section on your web store to make it really stand out from the other elements.

3. Use Red-Colored Elements
Coloring some elements with red, as well as other colors that stand out, is always a good design technique to use. Good examples would be the “Add to Cart” or “Proceed to Checkout” buttons, which are usually colored in lively colors like red or green throughout the whole year.

But during the holiday season, people are imbued with a different spirit. You can take advantage of that by using a lot of red in all areas of your website. This not only reminds people of Christmas, but it is also the color normally used when shops are on sale.

It is proven that people respond well to red, maybe because it creates a sense of urgency, or maybe because it is the color of passion and it also increases heart rate.

So don’t be afraid to use the red color. Perhaps combine it with some other elements like snowflakes to really give your website that Christmas-y feeling. You can also carefully and sparingly use other colors in a couple of sections to create a color contrast. This technique is useful when you want to draw attention to certain elements of your page.

4. Make Special Deals Stand Out
Sometimes, when people are browsing the web for gifts, they aren’t sure about what they’re going to get yet. Sometimes they even have no idea, and are out there looking for inspiration. If this type of visitors stumbles upon your website, it is important that you captivate them right away and show them that this could be what they are looking for.

You’ll probably have some Christmas deals, daily deals or other kinds of special offers available, so you should showcase these offers clearly. Use product sliders or carousels and place them in a strategic spot so they stand out from other sections.

You can even create a dedicated page for “Christmas Offers” or “Gift Ideas”. These special promotions might catch the eye of those undecided shoppers and hopefully offer just what they were looking for.

5. Use Video Features
It is proven that having video elements on your page makes people more likely to perform the conversion action. It’s no surprise, either, given that so much of the total web traffic is accounted for by video files.

Even major brands like Apple use video features on their website during the Christmas season. Just watch out for a couple things. Make sure that the video has high quality, as a poor quality or blurry video can have the opposite effect and give users the impression that your brand is not reliable. Also, don’t use videos that are too long or with little movement, as it can make visitors impatient and drive them away.

6. Use a Card-Based Design
Card-based designs have gained popularity over recent years. Pinterest is a good example of a successful card-based design. This type of design is effective because it divides the page into several areas, or “packages”, each having a single theme or category. This makes it easier for visitors to quickly scan your website and identify all the features, giving them a sense of a more user-friendly experience.

Also, by clicking a card the user is instantly taken to the card’s category page, which makes for more intuitive navigation. This kind of approach makes, even more, sense when combined with mobile devices, which have smaller screen sizes by nature. It is simply easier to swipe through the cards and choose the one you’re interested in.

So divide your categories and deals into individual cards and give them a consistent, clean design to make your customers’ life easier.

7. Improve Your Website’s Search Function
During the holidays, more than ever you are going to have people visiting your website that are not familiar with your web store. Usually, when people don’t know their way around they’ll resort to the Search Bar. And if this feature is not working properly, visitors will soon be discovered and go look elsewhere.

So make sure that your Search Function is responsive and provides relevant results. If this is not the case and customization is not helping, you can use one of the great Search Bar extensions available on the Magento Marketplace. If people are able to find what they were looking for, they are much more likely to buy from you.

Overall, this is all about providing a pleasant, exciting experience to your users. People are happy during the holiday season, so be part of that spirit, use cheerful design elements and help them find the awesome deals you have to offer.