Boo! You already know it’s the spooky season — the time of the year when it’s all about the Halloween spirit.
For Americans, it’s also the time of year to spend. According to the National Retail Foundation’s survey, Halloween 2021 is projected to bring in a record-breaking $10.14 billion, with nearly a third of that spending coming from digital sales. This number, however, doesn’t include all the purchases made with “spooktacular” discounts and deals you’re no doubt already seeing everywhere. The holidays are always good for hype!
However, for brands and website owners in general, Halloween is not just a valuable opportunity to promote a specific product — it’s also a chance to show creativity and inject some humor into their communications. It doesn’t matter if what you’re selling isn’t candy, costumes, or decorations; you can still find a way to partake in seasonal activities and get your brand noticed. The range of what you can do is only limited by your creativity and budget.
So, unless your thing is being refined and demure, here is our checklist for Halloween website ideas, along with inspiration and tips on how to do it with Boxmode.
Changing your name, logo, and header
It’s a time-honored tradition for small and large brands alike — changing your name or logo to something Halloween-y. This year, Krispy Kreme is changing its name to Krispy Skreme, introducing a line of Halloween-themed donuts and offering a deal on October weekends wherein customers get the opportunity to purchase a second set of donuts for just $1. You can now see this changed logo on Krispy Kreme’s site, along with themed banners promoting these new offerings.
Now, suppose you’re a multi-national retail corporation with over 1,400 locations worldwide and million-dollar revenues. In that case, this kind of change will require hundreds of hours of work from dozens of people over months. But if you’re a small business owner, it’s going to be much easier for you. With Boxmode, turning your site into a Halloween website is going to be easy.
Brainstorm your company’s new name. When thinking of a new name for your brand, a good rule of thumb is to restrict yourself to ones that either rhyme with the original, have overlapping sounds, or just make sense thematically.
Are you going to redesign your logo? This is a crucial point determined by your resources. If you don’t have an in-house designer, there are tons of freelancers on Fiverr who will easily give your logo the Halloween treatment. If you’re in the DIY mood, logo maker websites and freemium design tools like Canva and Adobe Spark will help you out.
If you’ve got a Boxmode website and are working with little resources, this is the most simple change you can make. Go to the Editor, click on the Header Widget, and then your logo.
Click Edit, then input your new name.
That’s it!
Spooky discounts and banners
Halloween is an excellent opportunity to hack and slash your prices and promote your brand. These days, consumers expect Halloween sales even for products that are not related to Halloween. For example, video game giant Epic Games are doing just that with the annual Halloween sale in their store.
Are the games on sale strictly Halloween-related or in the horror genre? No, they’re a mix of titles with different gameplay styles and mechanics.
The sale is promoted on Epic’s homepage with a Halloween website banner and a carousel with titles and prices. Want to make a banner like that for your site? It’s easy to do with Boxmode.
To create a new banner, go to the Boxmode editor and navigate to the page where you want to add a banner. Next, click + in the Left panel, then click Sections. At the end of the list, you’ll see Banners, which, when clicked show Boxmode’s five banner presets currently available.
After choosing your banner, drag and drop it onto the page.
Change the content to suit your brand and message.
Done! Thanks to Flaticon for providing the Jack-o’-lantern image.
Keep reading to learn how to use other marketing tactics and channels to promote your discount.
Halloween website backgrounds, fonts, and themes
Logos and banners aren’t the only things you can Halloween-ify. Depending on how far you’re willing to go, you can change your whole site’s look to fit the holiday theme. Unfortunately, Boxmode has no Halloween website template (yet!), but the templates we do offer are fully customizable and can be re-decorated to your desire. Let’s look at some ideas!
Halloween backgrounds
If you’re planning to add Halloween effects like bats, witches and brooms, cobwebs, skulls, ghosts, and other spooky accouterments for your website, our advice is this: go minimal. You can find design packs with elements you can work with on sites like Etsy and use them with Canva or similar tools to get the desired result.
Spooky fonts
There are lots of free Halloween-themed fonts out there ranging in style and purpose. You can use them in any graphic design you’re planning to do for your Halloween activities.
Seasonal colors
To achieve a similar effect to a Halloween website template, try changing your site’s color scheme to a traditional Halloween palette — orange, yellow, black, and a combination thereof.
Boxmode website builder users can change their theme colors in a snap. For example, to change the color of your site’s header, open the editor, and click on it. Next, click the brush icon and then Background. Pick a shade of orange you like.
Keep in mind that making changes like this may, in turn, entail other changes, like changing the color of the text to have more contrast and aid visibility.
Halloween events
Halloween events are not necessarily a social ordeal, especially when it comes to events held by brands. Launching an event is a great way to get noticed during the holiday, whether it happens online or offline, with fanfare and spectacle or without. What can you offer on Halloween?
IKEA hosts in-store events for kids at this time of year, ranging from Halloween photo-ops and candy giveaways to scavenger hunts to crafts workshops, all the while giving parents time to shop. For adults, film screenings, live music, and haunted houses are the more popular choices. Your event may even have a tangential relationship to Halloween, like Guitar Center’s Halloween Open House.
In a world recovering from COVID-19 and hungry for socialization, physical events are guaranteed to be a big hit in 2021, while digital-only events fall out of stock. Still, please be mindful of local conditions and restrictions while planning an event.
Halloween-themed landing pages
If you’re considering running a discount or an event and expecting lots of traffic to your site, you’ll need a landing page to direct traffic to a single source and track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Lots of brands you know and love have done it already. Want examples? Here’s some Halloween website design inspiration you can use for your landing pages.
Last year, Chipotle launched the Boorito, a buy-one-get-one deal on Halloween. Their landing page web design is quite simple, featuring a Halloween-themed animation with Chipotle branding, instructions on how to take advantage of the promotion, and a detailed outline of the terms.
For the second year in a row, the streaming giant Hulu is running a Halloween event called Huluween. Their idea is to create a landing page that functions as a hub for Hulu’s seasonal films and shows, including classics and new releases made just for this event. Last year’s Huluween was a smash hit, with users reportedly watching more than 120 million hours of content.
For a more recent example, look at Heinz’s Tomato Blood Ketchup promotion. The brand created a whole new site with ecommerce functionality dedicated to Halloween, selling their product in new packaging, costumes and face masks.
So if you’re thinking about promoting an event or featuring a special product that’s in theme with the season, try making a landing page with Boxmode. With its easily customizable templates and forever free policy, you can make one in a breeze. Watch our latest webinar to learn how to create an event landing page in Boxmode.
Halloween content
Halloween content goes beyond changing your name and logo — it’s about getting into the spirit of the season. Treat this as a creative challenge where the goal isn’t to make something perfect but rather have fun with your brand. Do this effectively, and you’ll get the attention of your audience (and maybe some good PR, too).
Here are a few tips on what you can do in different marketing channels, along with inspiration from major brands.
Social Media
Social media is probably the number one way marketers humanize their brand and develop a relationship with their audience. The key to using this channel effectively is always minding the niche cultural differences of each separate social media.
Posts that will work well on Twitter are simple, not-too-ambitious ideas. This post by Pringles, for instance, asks followers to help decide which of the four costume options their mascot is going to wear on Halloween. And don’t forget the time-honored tradition on Twitter to change your display name. Go for easy puns and, if all else fails, just use a seasonal emoji.
Instagram and Facebook are famously video-heavy and like short-form content with a DIY spin. For example, M&M’S is posting recipes for Halloween treats that incorporate their candy. On Facebook, you can also change the profile picture and header images like Angry Birds and other brands.
Email marketing is perhaps still the most effective among outbound channels since users explicitly opt in to receive your emails and get your content directly in their inbox. No pressure, but you do need to get it right or risk an “unsubscribe” or worse — “mark as spam.”
Whether you’re promoting an event or discount, or announcing a new Halloween-themed product, always put that information at the top. Remember that you lose a reader before they reach that CTA button with every second spent consuming the email.
Make sure to center the holiday in the design and copy with references to trick or treating, witches, magic, etc.
If it’s not too silly for you, include a Halloween-themed .GIF in your email — your customers will love it. Giphy can help you find a great option. Make sure to test the email before sending it to ensure it loads quickly.
Blog
Your site’s blog is an excellent tool for communicating with your audience via more long-form and multimedia content that doesn’t fit into most social media. This is a channel where you can show off your creativity and earn loyal customers.
Ideas for Halloween-themed blog posts will be heavily influenced by your product. For example, you may want to create a Halloween editorial like IKEA, dedicating a post to celebrating Halloween while using your products. Or, like online fashion retailer SSENSE, you may want to showcase how your products can be turned into looks inspired by classic horror films. And if you provide a website builder, you may want to communicate how your users can implement Halloween ideas into their projects.
By the way, did you know Boxmode users can now add a blog to their website? It’s true — and it’s as easy to use as you’d expect it to be.
Whether you’re having a sale that you need to communicate or you simply want to say “Happy Halloween” to your followers on social media, your content needs to ooze spookiness. Throw in a few bad puns, a reference to eating candy, maybe a quote from an iconic Halloween film or TV show, and you’re golden!
Facing off with huge brands in a battle for clicks and attention may seem daunting. Yes, they have the time and resources that you don’t have, but the creative approach will always win.
In the end, don’t take Halloween too seriously. The point of doing anything on this holiday as a brand is to show your personality and creativity. Mix and match tips from this post. There is no too little or too much — all that matters is the effort you put in.
Happy Halloween!