It being the thick of the holiday season there are time sensitive events showing up all over the place. From Black Friday, to Cyber Monday, to “two hour” sales, there is a ton of time sensitive web content being offered up. Retail marketers clearly have a handle on the frequent alteration of their sites based on the day, date, and time in their marketing efforts.
B2B or corporate marketers might take a cue from this and consider implementing date/time related content as well. Consider something as simple as a time of day related greeting.
Let’s try it out with a simple example that offers a greeting and corresponding animal doodle image based on the current time of day. Different greetings and images are displayed in the morning, afternoon, and night.
Going beyond simple greetings
It might make sense to present different content based on whether you think your visitor is just starting their work day or putting in a late night effort. Another idea is to present content variations throughout the week. Monday’s steaming coffee mug image can be automatically replaced by Tuesday’s donut image. A lunch menu can change to a dinner menu as evening approaches. Items for a contest/scavenger hunt can be presented at different times to encourage repeat visits during a special promotion. Think advent calendar.
It isn’t a big challenge technically
I used Javascript for the date, day, and time elements of this post. Major scripting platforms have date handling methods so it could easily have been done with Flash or PHP.
