Ideas on giving my wesbite a Xmas overhaul..

[Timboo]

Hi all - I'm looking to give my ecommerce (book) site a seasonal Xmas overhaul - to get people thinking about xmas shopping etc.. any ideas / inspiration about colours, tweaks, 'cutsey' motifs etc that I can use.

Many thanks
Tim.

[monkeythumpa]

Make it easier to use, other than that don't do anything "cutesy". Nobody wants a dancing santa on every page.

[eggy ricardo]

For your site I personally would give it a festive feel, to induce purchases as you mentioned, but whatever you do - don't make it too fussy. Also, I presume you are only looking to start designing now, I personally would wait a month or so before going live with this thing.

With regards to the desing, maybe typical Christmas colours (what I regard to be red and green), maybe some holly and snow or something? Also, you could place some ads with pictures of presents and so on and a reminder that Christmas is nearing. You could maybe also link these to a special offer for Christmas.

I'm neither a designer, nor an expert in e-commerce, so these are from a customer's perspective.

Hope this helps,
Cheers
Richard

[henry0]

Remember
Users do not want any longer "Flashy stuffs" that last many seconds.
A user wants to be where he/she wants in the less amount of time
The rest pretty much does not matter

Further if your returning users are used to a general feeling
applying overall changes can be detrimental
unless using changes to announce a discount!
then they don't care :)
so maybe you may give it a X-mas feeling, annonce some specials and trigger more sales.