Deck the Halls

I love decorating for the holidays.  Every year, as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I break out the boxes of ornaments and decorations, hang the lights and deck the halls.  By Friday evening, my house is alight with the jolly glow of the Christmas season. I can’t stand to miss even one day of holiday décor availability.

Given my love of the trimmings and trappings of this festive season, I find it strange that I have allowed my Web site to remain undecorated all these years.  Rest assured, I am not alone in my online Grinchery.

Jingle All the Way

With the exception of retail Web sites, who ‘decorate’ because of their financial interests in the holiday, most sites do not change their visuals to reflect the season.  In this day where style sheets allow us to quickly and easily change the visual presentation of our sites, it surprises me that more companies and organizations don’t do some kind of online decorating.  You may see the occasional ‘Happy Holidays to our Valued Clients” message, but a full-on holiday overhaul?  Rarely.

I wonder why this is.  Is it due to political correctness and everyone worrying that any message even close to ‘Merry Christmas’ will only incite unwanted drama?  Is it because of time or budgetary constraints?  Or is it simply because companies don’t even think about decorating their site?

While I am sure the exact reasons vary, I believe that many companies don’t ever consider the possibilities of decorating their Web presence.  Additionally, I don’t think that we Web designers ever make them aware of this possibility.  It’s a lost opportunity for everyone involved.

‘Tis the Season to be Jolly

Why would we want to decorate our Web sites?  For the same reason we decorate our homes, our offices, or in some cases even our cars - because it’s fun.  I believe that alone is reason enough to do it.

Whenever I visit a non-retail site that has been decorated, rare as they may be, it brings a smile to my face.  It shows me that the site owners have a personality and that they care enough about their online presence to do something special with it.  That’s nice and it makes me want to visit that site again and tell others about it as well.

Wow, look at that – potential to have users link to your site all because you had some fun and decked some halls.  I wonder how many SEO/SEM specialists are recommending holiday cheer as part of their traffic generation campaigns this year?

Welcome to my Ho, Ho, Homepage

Recently, for Halloween and Thanksgiving, I contributed a few blog post designs reminiscent of those respective holidays. In a way, I was decorating my site, but for Christmas, I wanted to do something a little extra.  While I do have a few Christmas-esque blog entries planned for this month (this one included), I also decided to give the main sections of the site a holiday refresh.

Admittedly, I went a bit extreme with my decorating because my site lends itself well to that approach, but I can’t think of any site that couldn’t benefit in some way from a little festive touch of the holidays.

So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or whatever seasonal greeting you’d prefer.  I hope you too will consider taking the time to deck the halls of your own site and spread a little holiday cheer and seasonal fun online.