Celebrating Holidays and Current Events on the Web€¦ · Many of the holiday designs on websites...

Celebrating Holidays and Current Events on the Web

By Shuli Gilutz, Jakob Nielsen, and Susan Farrell

48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD. FREMONT, CA 94539-7498 USA WWW.NNGROUP.COM

Copyright © Nielsen Norman Group. All Rights Reserved. Download your own copy from: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/celebrating-holidays-and-current-events-web

http://www.nngroup.com/

http://www.nngroup.com/reports/celebrating-holidays-and-current-events-web

About This Free Report This report is a gift for our loyal audience of UX enthusiasts. Thank you for your support over the years. We hope this information will aid your efforts to improve user experiences for everyone. The research for this report was done in 2002, but the majority of the advice may still be applicable today, because people and principles of good design change much more slowly than computer technology does. We sometimes make older report editions available to our audience at no cost, because they still provide interesting insights. Even though these reports discuss older designs, it’s still worth remembering the lessons from mistakes made in the past. If you don’t remember history, you’ll be doomed to repeat it. We regularly publish new research reports that span a variety of web and UX related topics. These reports include thousands of actionable, illustrated user experience guidelines for creating and improving your web, mobile, and intranet sites. We sell our new reports to fund independent, unbiased usability research; we do not have investors, government funding or research grants that pay for this work. Visit our reports page at https://www.nngroup.com/reports/ to see a complete list of these reports. HOW TO SHARE Do not link directly to the PDF file (the hosted address could change). Instead, we encourage you to distribute the following link to the report’s page on our website to allow people to decide whether to download it themselves: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/celebrating-holidays-and-current-events-web

Authors: Shuli Gilutz, Jakob Nielsen, and Susan Farrell

https://www.nngroup.com/reports/

http://www.nngroup.com/reports/celebrating-holidays-and-current-events-web

Copyright Notice

Please do not post this document to the internet or to publicly available file-sharing services. This report is free, but it is still copyrighted information that may be updated from time to time, so please don’t distribute this file or host it elsewhere. Even when people post documents with a private URL to share only with a few colleagues or clients, search engines often index the copy anyway. Indexing means that thousands of people will find the secret copy through searches.

Table of Contents

About This Free Report ................................................................................................ 2

Overview .................................................................................................................. 5

Frequency of Holiday Celebrations ............................................................................. 8

Types of Presentation .............................................................................................. 12

Specialized Content and Features ............................................................................ 37

International Audiences ........................................................................................... 54

Misleading Holiday Content ...................................................................................... 60

NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 2


Overview Holidays and special occasions such as the Olympics form an important part of people’s lives. It is common to decorate homes, offices, and public spaces for major holidays, and it is also becoming fairly common for websites to decorate their pages in recognition of holidays and other occasions.

We surveyed a sample of 56 websites from the U.S., U.K., and Israel on each of seven holidays during the last months of 2001 and first months of 2002. The holidays were Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, Presidents’ Day, Purim, and St. Patrick’s Day. On average, 21% of the sites displayed holiday material during the 7 holiday periods we targeted for the survey.

Major holidays were celebrated much more than this average indicates. The greatest extent of holiday celebrations was found for Purim on Israeli sites (83%) and Christmas on American (47%) and British (42%) sites.

Why do websites decorate for holidays, and why do they celebrate special occasions that are not directly related to their main topic? For example, many sites that have nothing to do with sports have featured special recognitions of the Olympic Games, the soccer World Cup, and other major sporting events. Having a sports site tell you who won the World Cup makes sense, but it is less clear why a non-sports site would put a soccer ball on its homepage just because some matches are being played in Japan and Korea.

There are two main reasons for websites to recognize holidays and special events, but both reasons fall under the same general category: trying to respect website visitors as human beings and not just as a source of “eyeballs” or e-commerce transactions. Websites need to connect with their users and be seen as welcoming environments and not just as exploitative money grubbers.

The first reason for a website to change its design for a holiday or special occasion is to appear up to date. Major holidays and special events are important to people, and they constantly see these special days reflected in the physical décor of their surroundings. A website that doesn’t reflect what’s currently topical and important will feel out of touch. Worse, it will seem stale and people may think that it is outdated in other respects as well.

“This is probably an outdated website since it doesn’t show that it’s Hanukkah now.” — (Fourth grader from Israel, about an Israeli website for kids)1

The second reason for a website to show holiday decorations is to increase visitors’ joy of use. Even simple ornamentation like a Christmas wreath, a Valentine’s heart, or a soccer ball can impart a small moment of happiness as the user is reminded of the greater happiness caused by the holiday or special occasion. You may be engaged in the dreary task of researching “enterprise solutions,” but that’s still Christmas and it’s a happy time of year.

Websites can observe special occasions beyond traditional religious and national holidays. Simple seasonal themes like summer or winter may be appropriate, as can newsworthy events such as major sporting competitions, even though they don’t

1 For more information about our studies with children and their use of websites, please see the report Usability of Websites for Children: 70 Design Guidelines, http://www.NNgroup.com/reports/kids

48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD. FREMONT, CA 94539-7498 USA [email protected] 3

http://www.nngroup.com/reports/kids/

mailto:[email protected]

relate directly to the purpose of the website. The key questions are whether the occasion is both time-dependent (it doesn’t happen all year long), and whether it is likely to be on the minds of a large number of visitors.

Whimsical or unusual events should generally be observed in a way that does not intrude on visitors’ main goals in visiting the website. As shown in many of the screenshots in this report, it is perfectly feasible to celebrate holidays and special occasions in ways that do not reduce usability or distract people. These subtle celebrations can still give a pleasant and welcoming feeling to those who care about the event.

Sites used several methods to celebrate holidays:

• Adding incidental, decorative graphics

• Adding splash pages (not recommended)

• Emphasizing existing content or products appropriate to the holiday

• Creating special content for the holiday or event

• Adding holiday-themed titles to regular content (not recommended).

Many of the holiday designs on websites were fairly simple, some showing nothing more than a small ornament, such as a snowflake above the headlines or a Santa’s cap on the logo. For most websites, a low-key holiday design would suffice to allow the dual benefits of currency and joy of use without delaying actual use of the site.

Some websites went overboard in their holiday celebrations and added special splash pages with holiday themes that visitors had to pass through before reaching the main homepage. Splash pages are almost always bad and should be avoided for holiday celebrations, except possibly on the actual date of a truly major holiday.

Tip: To increase the sense of currency and relevance to visitors, consider celebrating major holidays on your website. Be careful not to intrude on the user’s tasks with your decorations, however.

Websites can also recognize holidays by giving extra emphasis to headlines and other content that relates to the holiday. Weather.com, for example, announced: “On a mainly dry Valentine’s Day, winds turn gusty across the central U.S.”

Corporate sites and information services tended to be more modest in recognizing holidays, whereas children’s sites and e-commerce sites tended to have lavish holiday celebrations. News-oriented sites often fell in the middle. This distribution of holiday emphasis among Web genres makes good sense but is not absolute: some corporate sites might benefit from extensive holiday content and some e-commerce sites could conceivably sell such sedate or serious products that it would be better for them to display very minimal holiday decorations. It is worth noting, however, that NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command), an agency with perhaps the most serious services of all (missile targeting and tracking) follows the worldwide journey of Santa’s sleigh every Christmas Eve.

Tip: Holiday content can lighten up a serious site to give visitors a good feeling about the company’s human side.

In the case of e-commerce sites, usability is often improved by designing a special holiday-themed store section that pulls together relevant merchandise from across the site in a single location. Such themed areas reduce the users’ need to navigate



and increase their ability to find specialized products. A holiday theme store can also provide inspiration for the harried, last-minute shopper.

Tip: Sites that sell things should help last-minute shoppers by pointing to holiday merchandise.

The biggest usability problems we saw that were related to holiday celebrations were caused by misleading or outdated holiday content. For example, it does no good to have a holiday-themed area on the homepage of an e-commerce site if it links into generic areas of the site where the holiday-related products are hard to find. The entire concept of appearing up to date and enhancing user enjoyment backfires if holiday celebrations are out of synch with the actual holiday.

Timing is important on both ends of holiday celebrations. Once a holiday has passed, the ornaments need to come down. But it’s just as bad to be early: during Thanksgiving, people in the United States are preoccupied with that holiday, and sites that feature Christmas decorations may appear to be out of touch with visitors’ current concerns.

Holidays and special events provide opportunities for websites to brighten up their design and connect with their users on a more human level than pure business and transactions. There are a few pitfalls to avoid, and it is important to retain support for users’ main reasons for visiting the site, even during the holidays. But when done tastefully and without creating usability problems, holiday celebrations are a great way to increase joy of use and make the Web a more humane environment.



Frequency of Holiday Celebrations To get a general picture of the extent to which websites observe holidays in their design, we conducted a systematic survey of the homepages of 56 websites on each of 7 major holidays:

• Christmas (December 25th, celebrated in many countries)

• New Year’s (January 1st, celebrated in many countries)

• Presidents’ Day (February 18 in 2002, but always on a Monday, USA only)

• Purim (Feb 26, 2002, date falls according to Jewish calendar, celebrated in many countries)

• St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th, Irish holiday celebrated in many countries)

• Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday in November, USA only)

• Valentine’s Day (February 14th, a romantic holiday in many countries).

Averaged across 56 websites and 7 holidays we found that holidays were celebrated 21% of the time. Most holiday celebrations were minor: 47% of holiday celebrations we saw consisted of a minimal image or text, and 40% of observed holiday celebrations consisted of a medium-sized image or text. Only 13% of the holiday celebrations involved a major design element that dominated the homepage to create a powerful holiday atmosphere for the visitor.

We chose the 56 websites to represent a cross-section of e-commerce sites, corporate sites, content sites, and children’s sites in three countries: The United States (38 sites), the United Kingdom (12 sites) and Israel (6 sites). The following table shows the extent to which sites in each country celebrated each of the holidays on their homepage. The holidays are sorted by the degree to which they were celebrated on average across our sample.

W e b s it e H o l i d a y O b s e r v a t io n b y C o u n t r y

Christmas Valentine’s

Day Thanksgiving St.

Patrick’s Day

New Year’s

Purim Presidents’ Day

USA 47% 34% 42% 24% 16% 0% 5%

U.K. 42% 25% 8% 0% 17% 0% 0%

Israel 17% 33% 0% 0% 0% 83% 0%

The national differences in holiday celebrations are notable and fairly obvious. The big lesson from the table is that there is a need to adjust holiday celebrations to local traditions in each country if you have an international web strategy.



HOLIDAYS CELEBRATED BY THE 56 WEBSITES (Shown: percentage of the 7 holidays celebrated. Domain names are given when not www.<name>.com)

eToys 71% Amazon.com 57% Barnes and Noble (bn.com) 57% CNN 57% Google 57% Safeway 57% BBC 43% Kmart 43% MaMaMedia 43% MSNBC 43% Sesame Street 43% Yahoo 43% ZDNet UK (zdnet.co.uk) 43% Alfy 29% AT&T (att.com) 29% Bell South 29% CNET 29% Dbook (dbook.co.il) 29% Excite 29% Expedia 29% Fox Kids UK (foxkids.co.uk) 29% Mapa (mapa.co.il) 29% MapQuest 29% Microsoft 29% Walgreens 29% Wired 29% Amazon UK (amazon.co.uk) 14% Boeing 14% Coca-Cola (coca-cola.com) 14% CVS 14% Disney 14%


http://www/


eBay 14% Shop and Save (shopandsave.co.uk) 14% Slashdot (slashdot.org) 14% Snunit (snunit.k12.il) 14% Toys "R" Us UK (toysrus.co.uk) 14% Y-net (ynet.co.il) 14% Cardinal Health (cardinal.com) 0% City Mouse (citymouse.co.il) 0% General Motors (gm.com) 0% The Guardian Newspaper (guardian.co.uk) 0% hp 0% Johnson & Johnson (johnsonandjohnson.com) 0% Kids’ Channel (kids-channel.co.uk) 0% Merck 0% Merrill Lynch (ml.com) 0% Opera Magazine (opera.co.uk) 0% Salon Magazine (salon.com) 0% Sara Lee 0% Streetmap (streetmap.co.uk) 0% British Museum Company (britishmuseum.co.uk) 0% Travelocity 0% TXU 0% USX 0% Weather.com 0% Weather UK (weather.co.uk) 0%



The top-scoring site was an online toy store, which makes sense because many holidays are great opportunities to sell toys and other gifts intended for children. Thirteen sites could be said to be particularly attuned to holidays, celebrating more than 40% of the holidays. The genres of these top-celebrating sites were as follows:

• 5 e-commerce sites

• 4 news sites

• 2 search engines and portals

• 2 children’s sites.

Nineteen sites didn’t celebrate any of the seven holidays on their homepages. The genres of these holiday-ignoring sites were as follows:

• 9 big corporations

• 4 information services (weather, maps, city guide)

• 3 news and magazine sites

• 2 e-commerce sites

• 1 children’s site.

Big corporations we surveyed tended to downplay holidays, whereas e-commerce sites tended to play them up. Still, there is no absolute rule that certain genres of sites celebrate holidays and others don’t. We found some e-commerce sites with very few holiday celebrations and some corporate sites that did celebrate holidays, though mainly the major ones.



Types of Presentation Acknowledging current events creates the impression that a website is regularly updated. Potential current events include: general seasonal changes, sporting events, or historic occurrences. People who are occupied with such events may appreciate specific content and services related to their current state of mind and may also feel somewhat connected to the website because it acknowledges the event.

When displaying holiday-related visuals, content or services, websites may achieve several goals:

• Visitors may approach services and content they wouldn’t have found otherwise or didn’t know existed (for example, specialty products on shopping sites).

• Visitors may feel more welcome and comfortable when the website creates a homey holiday feeling.

• The website may bolster users’ trust by presenting up-to-date content.2

Mentioning a current holiday may make the user experience more pleasant. The presentation can be extremely minimal, such as adding a line of text (“Happy New Year!”) or a tiny image next to the logo. Many service-oriented companies we saw took this a bit further — by adding some visuals and bringing to the first page the content and services that visitors might be interested in during the holiday. Many products, services and content can be relevant, such as a bed-and-breakfast guide for Valentine’s Day or the weather report for picnics on the Fourth of July. Some websites created a total festive experience by including multimedia (we saw mostly Flash), changing the whole color scheme, or creating big holiday sections with unique content.

M I N I M A L P R E S E N T A T I O N

In the following examples websites incorporated very small additions to remind people that a holiday was currently taking place.

2 In our studies of how websites convey trustworthiness, we found that trust is diminished when a website appears to be outdated. Conversely, when a website seems well- maintained and current, users tend to perceive the site as more credible. For more information, please see our Trust report, which has 34 design guidelines for trust and credibility. http://www.nngroup.com/reports/ecommerce/trust.html


http://www.nngroup.com/reports/ecommerce/trust.html


Weather.com mentioned Valentine’s Day in its homepage text.

Weather.com added “Valentine’s Day” to emphasize the currency of their page. Although there was no real benefit to the site in mentioning the holiday, it did make the site seem more up to date and audience-aware to have a current event on the front page. The effort to add the text was negligible, but the benefit of communicating weather.com’s timeliness is potentially huge in terms of winning user trust and loyalty.

Tip: Timeliness shown by acknowledging current events increases user trust in the currency of the rest of a site’s content.



AT&T Christmas — little snowflakes add to the Happy Holidays graphic.

AT&T used only two small motifs to create a festive homepage. They added a “Happy Holidays” gift box graphic next to their logo and scattered snowflakes throughout the page.



Snowflakes and a gift graphic added holiday flair to CNET.

CNET.com took a similar approach. Subtle snowflakes at the top of the page created a holiday atmosphere, and a gift image linked to their e-commerce section. These small additions appeared on CNET.com from Thanksgiving until after Christmas, making the website more festive for an entire month.



Amazon UK added banners and a tiny sprig of holly to achieve a seasonal look.

Yahoo! also put small holly sprigs around the logo during Christmas.



L O G O C H A N G E

A few websites changed their logo slightly in celebration. Because frequent visitors are used to the standard logo, they are likely to notice even a small change in it.

Excite’s logo featured a tiny Olympic torch during the 2002 games.

Excite sported a tiny holly decoration on Christmas.



Gadget Universe’s logo had a tiny Santa hat during Christmas. A gift box in top-center position emphasized the present-buying theme of that holiday.

Google dramatically decorated their logo for Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

Google, a search engine site that many people use several times every day, shows its freshness regularly by changing its logo in unexpected ways. Because Google is quite minimal in terms of visual design, this playful treatment of the logo is even more dramatic and effective than it might be on a more cluttered homepage. Google addresses many of the holidays and even keeps a gallery of their various logos.

H O M E P A G E G R A P H I C S

Another way to present current events with minimal effort is to add small images to the homepage content area as links or decorations.



Galim showed two holiday navigation graphics during Hanukkah and Ramadan.

Galim, an Israeli website for kids, represented two holidays that were taking place at the same time in Israel — Hanukkah (a Jewish holiday) and the Ramadan (a Muslim holiday). They introduced special graphics to their regular homepage — each linking to holiday-specific content for its particular audience.

Galim used the same approach during two other holidays.



Shop and Save showed a small Christmas tree graphic during Christmas.

MaMaMedia used its ”Today’s Feature” content area to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Because MaMaMedia had a consistent location in which to present current events and holidays, the website could be updated easily.



MaMaMedia also changed its daily features to celebrate St. Patrick’s and Valentine’s Day, without disrupting the rest of the page.

M U L T I M E D I A C O N T E N T

A few websites made more substantial changes during holidays, including the use of multimedia elements, such as animation, sound, or interactive content.

Fox Kids UK presented various Flash animations in a consistent location.

Fox Kids UK also had a consistent location on their homepage where they displayed content related to current events. Like MaMaMedia’s, this design allowed easy but dramatic content changes without changing the design of the whole page.

Fox Kids UK showed holiday animations in their homepage multimedia space. 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD. FREMONT, CA 94539-7498 USA [email protected] 19


Tip: Using a consistent spot on the homepage to display changing content can save a lot of work when current events need to be reflected on the site.

Wired.com showed a humorous turkey animation for Thanksgiving.

S P L AS H P AG E S

Some websites created a splash page (a landing page that is shown before the “real” homepage), dedicated entirely to the current holiday. Although we do not recommend splash pages in general, showing them for only one day in order to greet visitors in a personal way may not be as annoying as a splash page or “intro” animation that must be endured on every visit can be.

Tip: If you must use a splash page or a Flash intro, do it in such a way that the user need not see it every time.



PayPal’s Christmas greeting was presented as a splash page.

After signing on at PayPal during Christmas, users saw this splash page, including a heart-warming personal holiday greeting from PayPal’s employees. Because this site deals with registered users and the splash page is shown after login, PayPal could keep track of who had seen the splash page and thus make sure most users would see it only once. This technique allowed PayPal to avoid annoying its paying customers on subsequent visits during the holiday with the same interruptive content. PayPal uses this same technique to impart important information about service changes to customers throughout the year.

CVS’s holiday greetings were conveyed by a Christmas-card-like splash page.

During the winter holiday season, visitors to CVS encountered this splash page before being allowed to proceed to the homepage. Although it is a nice greeting to see once, keeping it on the site from Thanksgiving to Christmas created an annoying user experience. It is not clear what the “skip this screen” control was supposed to



do, but relying on users to check a box instead of clicking through is just wishful thinking. As we’ve seen in many usability tests, people dismiss many alerts from their browsers quickly and habitually without ever reading them or noticing they can turn off the warnings.

Similarly, it is better to give visitors the option of turning on music or playing animations than it is to force them to find the off switch after surprising them with unwanted multimedia. Relatively frivolous content, such as holiday decorations, should be presented in the least offensive way possible, because annoying users negates most of the benefits of celebrating the event on your site and can turn them away from the very features or services they came to the site to get.

Tip: Don’t rely on users to improve their own user experience by turning off annoying content; do it for them. Let visitors opt in or play it again if they want to, but don’t force them to opt out after they become annoyed.

C O L O R S C H E M E S

Changing the color of the logo, titles, background, and other page elements can add holiday flavor to a site. Most holidays have strong color associations. Displaying holiday colors is very common in physical environments, such as stores, public institutions and on streets, and the same strategy can be applied to websites.

Safeway created a holiday look by adding a simple title (“President’s Day Savings!”) and an appropriate red, white and blue color scheme.

C H A N G I N G T H E E N T I R E H O M E P AG E

A small number of websites changed the whole look and feel of their homepage to accommodate a seasonal change or create a specific atmosphere. Sesame Street, for example, showed the time of day. Rather than showing a timestamp (Thursday, July



4, 2001) like some websites for adults do, Sesame Street showed the sun’s or moon’s position in the picture of the street on their homepage.

Sesame Street’s homepage filled up with autumn elements as the new season approached.

Sesame Street’s seasonal makeover: winter and spring.



A Danish toy website created a Christmas interface by adding specialized content, changing the color scheme, putting a Santa hat on the company mascot, and putting an animated snowfall at the top of each page.

The Danish toy store Fætter BR created a Christmas feel during December by modifying several components of its normal design. The navigation bar was decorated with animated snow, the mascot got a hat, holiday news items were featured, and information was shown about shipping items in time for Christmas. The animated snowflakes in the navigation bar were pleasant and welcoming at first, but after a while, the animation on every page became annoying.

The site’s mascot and logo character is a toy soldier, usually depicted wearing a bearskin cap (as seen in the upper left corner of the page). In the middle of the page, the character wears a Santa-style cap instead, in keeping with the Christmas theme. This graphic also draws the user’s attention to the annotation on the right, encouraging shoppers to order their presents before December 16th to ensure delivery before Christmas. The gift-wrapped presents farther down the page are a final touch that draws the user’s attention to the headline: “This Year’s Christmas Presents 2001: Top 10.”

Overall, the Fætter BR site exhibited an appropriate amount of Christmas-themed illustrations and content for a toy site in December, providing a welcoming environment where visitors were encouraged to shop for Christmas presents. The



animated banner may have been overkill. It might have been better if the snowflakes slowed down or even stopped falling after a while, or they could have twinkled slightly inside the site instead of moving around and thus distracting the user’s attention from the products.

Tip: Multimedia elements that are merely stage decoration should be used sparingly on sites where users have important or frequent tasks to perform.

B A N N E R A D S A N D P R O M O T I O N S

Holiday decorations attract attention because they are new elements on the website. Many websites thus create promotions that emphasize current holidays and events to attract users to those features. Decorated promotions may be either internal or external to the site, in terms of where the link goes.

Shop and Save showed holiday-themed banner ads.



eToys promoted Salt Lake City 2002 Barbie during the Olympics.

Kmart promoted American flag beach towels on Presidents’ Day.



Expedia promoted Olympic travel opportunities during the games.

Valentine’s Day was another promotional opportunity for Expedia travel packages.

Walgreens promoted spa vacations right before Valentine’s Day.



eBay advertised flower delivery on Valentine’s Day.

Bell South promoted their merchandise by adding seasonal relevance.



Microsoft also used the holidays to promote its products.

Microsoft also offered to help people with New Year’s resolutions.



The Vatican promoted its new holiday stamps on Christmas.

Dbook gave away free holiday doughnut certificates with every book ordered during Hanukka.



When shoppers bought their Hanukkah gifts on the Israeli website, Dbook, they received gift certificates for traditional holiday desserts that could be redeemed in various shops throughout Israel.

S E Q U E N T I A L S T O R I E S

Several websites created an image series throughout the holiday season or event. When users returned to the sites during the celebration period they saw constantly updated content.

Google presented a new image each day for its Olympic series.



Fox Kids UK counted the days until Christmas.

Fox Kids UK presented a countdown of the days until Christmas in its homepage Christmas animation. This sequential story tactic makes people wonder what tomorrow’s image will be like and may encourage return visits out of curiosity much as a daily cartoon can.



Google created another visual story that ended on Christmas.

S Y S T E M A T I C D E S I G N

Some websites used a systematic design approach to present current holidays and events. A consistent location or set of page elements for the various holiday celebrations can make updating websites and incorporating unexpected events easier, because the addition doesn’t completely change the homepage but fits into the intended location.



eToys created a design that incorporated holidays in a consistent location. Shown are the winter holiday season and Valentine’s Day.



Specialized Content and Features

C O N T E N T

By providing current, useful, and relevant information, websites try to create a compelling user experience to attract visitors. Although adding text, multimedia, or activity content usually requires more effort than simply adding clip art, users’ satisfaction may increase with the complexity of the content effort as well. Holiday items can take a wide variety of forms, including downloads, holiday products, and new content.

CNN.com featured holiday articles during Christmas and Thanksgiving.

CNN.com puts forth a lot of effort to publish the most current content possible. They address holidays and current events by promoting relevant content to the font page. Headlines that otherwise might not have made the first screen (such as a blessing from Bush’s speech) are emphasized when they relate to a current holiday.

Front page link on Yahoo! — “US celebrates Thanksgiving.”



Wired featured news of a geek’s proposal on Valentine’s Day.

Wired.com found a unique opportunity to present content that was both relevant to their visitors and to the current holiday (Valentine’s Day). One of the main stories presented that day was about a marriage proposal shown on a different website (Slashdot.org) that is also aimed at technology enthusiasts.

Tip: Use current event content in a timely way that will delight your visitors by being relevant to their interests.

Tip: Consider affiliating or identifying with other sites your audience likes.

Dbook offered romantic recommendations for Valentine’s Day.



CNET offered Valentine downloads.

BBC offered Valentine’s Day content items.

BBC featured a variety of content on Valentine’s Day. They created a Valentine’s Day section with stories and articles and also added special online features such as polls and chats with “Cupid Casanova.”



ZDNet UK added various content items for Christmas and the New Year.



The Guardian linked to content relevant to Valentine’s Day, but they didn’t give it high visual priority.

S P E C I A L S E C T I O N S

Several websites dedicated a full section to the current holiday or event. Some presented only a small link from the homepage, but interested people could click through to a wealth of content and interaction.



CNN gathered content from various parts of its website to make a specific Valentine’s Day section.

BBC provided a special Christmas section.

NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 4 0


A special Purim guide on Mapa included all the shows, parades and trips for the holiday.

Mapa is an Israeli travel and entertainment website. During the Purim holiday, they presented a special section with information such as where holiday parades would take place and where to take the family for day trips.

Mapa added a specialized guide on Valentine’s Day also.



Mapquest provided a specialized Valentine’s Day section to showcase their relevant content.

Kmart created a whole store dedicated to Valentine’s Day but didn’t emphasize it visually at all, which made it too easy to miss.



Tip: When you show current event content on your website, do a quick usability test. It can simply consist of showing a color printout of the page to some typical users and asking them to do a particular holiday task. Give them a pencil to “click” links with. Be careful not to use any of the words that are labels or phrases from the interface when you explain the task. Redesign until people quickly notice the relevant link.

Tip: If your traffic in a new holiday section is very low, you should suspect you have a problem with the presentation of the link or its relative location. People often avoid looking at graphics that might be advertisements, for example, so the position of the holiday link relative to a banner ad (or using a holiday graphic that looks like an ad) can cause it to be overlooked.

Beeb showcased their Valentine’s Day store by putting it front and center with a cupid graphic and even added “Valentine’s Day” as the default search option in their product finder selection list. A self-promotional graphic completed the holiday décor.

S P E C I AL S E R VI C E S

Unique content doesn’t have to be prepared text and visuals. Some websites created dedicated tools that visitors might be interested in during the current holidays or events. These weren’t always fancy and complex applications. Many were simple tools that allowed users to get relevant information.



MSNBC offered TV event schedules for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

ZDNet UK introduced animated Valentine’s e-cards for adults and listed them as a top story for the day. Another headline used Valentine’s Day to get attention.



MaMaMedia and Disney introduced electronic Valentines for kids.

Amazon introduced its new wedding registry and offered e-cards and gift certificates for Valentine’s Day.



Yahoo! highlighted several relevant features in pink for Valentine’s Day.

Mapquest polled US visitors about when they would be traveling during Thanksgiving and offered a road-trip planner.



T H E L O C A L C O N N E C T I O N

Tip: Websites that cater to a geographically nearby community can tie holiday celebrations to local stores, events, or venues. Some ideas include offering gift certificates visitors can redeem at a nearby store, last-minute store giftwrapping and pickup, multiple-store search for popular holiday items, and parties or gatherings.

Dbook encouraged visitors to enter a costume contest.

Dbook announced a costume contest during Purim. The winners’ pictures were presented on the website and they were given gift certificates for books.

Tip: Plan for adequate project support when organizing large holiday events or managing substantial, time-sensitive, holiday content.

S P O O F S , M Y T H S , L E G E N D S A N D T R A D I T I O N S

Another idea is to create stories that take on the holiday spirit. April Fools’ Day has a great tradition for spoofing, when many websites post outrageous claims that almost always end up fooling some of the people some of the time. NORAD, for example, has a Christmas story based on the legend of Santa Claus.



The NORAD homepage always has a Santa tracking link that tells the story of the origin of its Santa tradition. http://www.norad.mil/NORADTracksSANTA.htm

On Christmas Eve, NORAD’s Santa link took users to a special kids-oriented Santa Tracking website, available in six languages.

Since 1997, on Christmas Eve, NORAD has reported its tracking of Santa’s sleigh via a special holiday section of its website. The organization’s Santa-tracking tradition dates back to 1955. The 2001 site included information about Santa Claus and NORAD itself, as well as a realtime map of Santa’s progress. This elaborate site is a nice way for an otherwise very serious military organization to communicate with kids, and it may also help boost morale of the on-duty military personnel.


http://www.norad.mil/NORADTracksSANTA.htm


H E L P I N G L A S T - M I N U T E S H O P P E R S

Last-minute shopping is a familiar phenomenon. In fact, many sites do their best business just before holidays. When people purchase holiday gifts online, one of the most critical issues to them is the delivery date. Some experienced online shoppers are aware that delivery may be a problem, and they start by looking for reassurance that their gift will arrive before the holidays. Other people may be quite disappointed if they discover the delivery time only when ready to check out, after wasting much time selecting items — time that is usually in short supply immediately before a major holiday. Such disappointment and dissatisfaction could cause them not to return.

Many e-commerce websites address the delivery date issue early in the shopping process. By reminding visitors of relevant cutoff dates or even stating that gifts bought today cannot be delivered on time, these websites gain users’ trust and loyalty.

eToys presented an early-bird sale for the upcoming holiday season.

eToys addressed the last-minute problem by offering discounts to those who shopped early. Getting a jump on the competition is also smart business.

Tip: The busiest shopping day of the year in the US is the day after Thanksgiving, because it’s the last long weekend before Christmas. Physical stores often have huge sales then, and online stores could time their promotions accordingly, perhaps by offering sale prices, merchandise reservations, or store coupons.



Amazon suggested gift certificates as a last-minute present that can be given instantly, even two days before Christmas.

Barnes and Noble also promoted gift certificates for procrastinators and told shoppers when it was too late for Christmas delivery.



Toys "R" Us provided prominent notice when the Christmas delivery ordering deadline passed and referred visitors to its physical stores.



International Audiences Many websites have international audiences. Their diverse groups of users may experience different holidays, current events, dates, and even seasons than those at the location of the web server or company headquarters. Websites must address their various user groups and be relevant to each.

Some sites we surveyed used several fairly successful tactics to cope with diverse audiences, including:

• Making separate content for each audience

• Catering to several holidays at once

• Celebrating “the holidays” without naming them

• Representing time, dates, and seasons on their homepage.

D I F F E R E N T S I T E S F O R D I F F E R E N T A U D I E N C E S

One possible solution (although one that takes considerable effort), is to create several localized websites. Each would be dedicated to a specific community and would accommodate cultural and geographical issues, such as language, holidays, traditions, current events, dates, seasons, and so forth.

Alfy’s American website in February showed a cold-weather theme.

Alfy.com is an international kids’ website. Although it offers six languages, its default is an American homepage in English, which reflects weather, culture and language from the USA. On the top right of the page, flag icons represent links to the website’s localized versions for Korea, China, Taiwan, Israel and Portugal. The screenshot above is from February 2002. The screenshot below shows the Israeli version during February, where there was no snow but a lot of Purim decorations. (Purim was the holiday in Israel at the time.)



Alfy’s Israeli site in February showed warmer weather and a local holiday.

P R E S E N T I N G S I M U L T A N E O US H O L I D AY S

Another way to address multiple cultures having different concurrent holidays is to add links to content for each holiday. The homepage does not then have to change much, but it’s still possible to include major decorations for all of the holidays.

Yahoo’s homepage during Christmas had links to both Kwanzaa and New Year’s as well.



Google represented both the Olympic Games and Valentine’s Day with one image. (Screenshot from 2002.)

As previously mentioned, Google presented a different logo image each day of the 2002 Winter Olympics. On Valentine’s Day, Google’s designers came up with a visual image for both events — a skating pair. They did the same for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Sticking to what’s almost a tradition, eight years later Google again used the sport of pair skating to do double duty, representing both the Olympic Games and Valentine’s Day. (Screenshot from 2010.) Note also the heart in the track the skates have left in “the ice.”



Kmart presented a general holiday section starting during Thanksgiving that stayed relevant throughout the holiday season.

Kmart solved the multiple holiday problem by generalizing. They created a holiday store that offered shoppers relevant gifts throughout the winter holiday season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s). Visitors might feel that a general celebration is less specific, personal, and updated; but from the web developer’s standpoint, the advantage is that only one change is needed for several holidays.



Like Kmart, eBay introduced a general and vague holiday theme.

hp also chose a general holiday celebration.

L O C A L T I M E S A N D D A T E S

Users often visit websites at a different time or date than that of the server’s location. When it’s still Christmas in the US, for example, it may already be the morning after Christmas in the UK. Ideally, at that time, a website would not show any Christmas content to British visitors, because for that audience the holiday has already passed.



U S I N G C O U N T R Y F I L T E R S

Accommodating every user population is probably impossible. Visitors may be offended that some holidays and events are mentioned while others aren’t, and cultural, religious and political issues may cause some to be alienated by a website.

One solution is to use country filters so that people see different content depending on their presumed geographical location. The content they receive would thus be more targeted to them, and offending and possibly problematic content could be omitted. Of course, every user’s location cannot be deduced from their IP address or domain name, but with some effort, many could be served in this way.

Tip: Those from unknown locations could be asked to choose one, but always tell users why you want information about them, and don’t force them to give up nonessential personal information if they don’t want to.

Tip: Calendar sites on the Web can help you sort out holidays around the world: http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Holidays/Calendars_and_Lists http://www.calendarzone.com/Holiday http://www.vpcalendar.net http://www.holidays.net

A D D R E S S I N G S E A S O N A L C H AN G E S

Some websites create a whole different look for each season of the year. Although this change isn’t event specific, it lends a general seasonal atmosphere and needs updating only four times per year.

Remember that the seasons are reversed in the northern and southern hemispheres. In December, when Stockholmers suffer snow storms and 19 hours of daily darkness, Sydneysiders take to Bondi Beach and will not appreciate winter-themed web designs.

Disney’s website showed seasonal changes for summer and winter.


http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Holidays/Calendars_and_Lists

http://www.calendarzone.com/Holiday

http://www.vpcalendar.net/

http://www.holidays.net/


Misleading Holiday Content In some cases, websites added holiday and current-event content that seemed very attractive but was actually misleading. This problem might be even worse than not having a holiday celebration at all, because it could disappoint people.

S A M E C O N T E N T , N E W L A B E L

At Barnes & Noble, visitors were led to believe that the highlighted content was specialized for Valentine’s Day. Although Barnes & Noble presented book covers and hearts, the links went to regular sections of the website.

These links in the special section didn’t lead to Valentine’s content but to generic pages.

Here bn.com did it right — the highlighted section introduced specialized content for Black History Month.



E N D H O L I D A Y S O N T I M E

A main goal of adding holiday content is to show a website is current and fresh. When decorations are left up long after the holiday, they instead show how stale the content is.

MaMaMedia was still presenting Valentine’s content on Presidents’ day (Feb. 18, 2002), which made them look behind the times.



Timeliness turned to neglect when a letter to Excite users still said ”Happy New Year” on Valentine’s Day.

D O N ’ T S T A R T T O O E A R L Y

Presenting holidays too early may also alienate people. For example e-commerce sites could be perceived as trying too hard to push their merchandise without really paying attention to the users’ needs.

Celebrating the wrong holiday is especially problematic. Toward the end of the year several holidays occur in rapid succession, especially in the United States, where Thanksgiving is a major holiday in late November. To achieve the design benefits of communicating an up-to-date website and portraying a company that connects with people’ personal lives, it is important to recognize the holiday that is currently being celebrated and not one that happens later.



The British Museum presented “New Year Shopping” before Christmas.

Boeing reviewed the year before it was finished (shown: December 21, 2002).



CVS created a wintery and Christmassy atmosphere … on Thanksgiving.

Coca-Cola also showed Christmas imagery for Thanksgiving.

Tip: If you use holiday content, be punctual in both its placement and its removal; otherwise it could backfire, making your site look out of touch.



Date post:	22-May-2020
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	0 times
Download:	0 times

Celebrating Holidays and Current Events on the Web€¦ · Many of the holiday designs on websites...

Documents