How to Build a Holiday Hub Page for Your Retail Website

Two years ago this month, I recorded the very first tip that launched the Weekly Retail Tip series. The advice was to build one page on your website that holds all your holiday messaging and offers, and to send people to this page, which I call your “Holiday Hub”. This time, I’m starting earlier and updating the tip because things have evolved. I am still giving the same advice to my stores this season, but this tip deserves more than the ninety-second video I gave you in 2024, because now not only do your customers want this information, but AI agents do too.

Deloitte predicts that holiday retail sales in 2026 will range from $1.70 trillion to $1.71 trillion this season, with eCommerce experiencing growth of 7.5% to 8.4%, surpassing retail overall. Bain also estimates that about 70% of holiday spending will still occur in physical stores. Your website’s holiday content represents a key growth opportunity, as it can significantly influence customer actions. Today, your website serves as the critical nexus where online inquiries can lead to store visits, phone calls, appointments, or online sales. 

Holiday Shopping Is Beginning with AI 

Bain’s 2026 outlook indicates that 24% of shoppers intend to begin their holiday discovery using an AI platform like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, marking a 17% increase from the previous year. Additionally, 60% plan to start on a retail or brand website, up from 51%. Adobe’s report showed that during the 2025 holiday season, traffic from generative AI tools to retail sites surged by 693% year over year, and this traffic resulted in a 31% better conversion rate compared to other sources.

Wow! That’s an impressive number, as we’re all searching for customers further down the funnel who are ready to make a purchase. It’s important to realize that shoppers coming from an AI assistant aren’t just browsing; they are deeper into the buying process because they’ve already asked many questions, and have been guided to research and cite content. Most retailers need to understand this crucial point: when a question involves a local element or is time-sensitive, AI assistants with live web access do not answer from memory. Instead, they retrieve relevant pages at the moment of the query and craft the response based on what they find. 

I know you’re wondering what factors determine whether your page is one of those sources.

The primary factor is recency. A page modified last week is more relevant than one last updated in 2024. Holiday pages usually go live in October and remain unchanged until December, precisely when shoppers have the most urgent questions. Updating your page weekly isn’t just busy work; it’s a valuable signal. Similar to sending weekly emails to your customers, it offers a continuous chance to be recognized by AI platforms.

The second key point is consistency. If your hub shows you close at 6:00, but your Google Business Profile indicates 8:00, and your Instagram bio gives yet another time, an assistant faces conflicting sources without a way to determine the correct one. In such cases, it tends to default to a source it can confidently describe. Deloitte’s 2026 Retail Industry Global Outlook emphasizes this at the industry level, recommending that retailers keep their data accurate, accessible, and optimized for AI to prevent becoming invisible to consumers.

A hub helps because it reduces the number of places your holiday information lives across your website, making it easier to keep it correct and current. 

What Belongs on Your Holiday Hub

The test for what belongs on your holiday hub is simple. Ask yourself: Does this help someone decide to buy from you or visit you?

Here’s a quick list to start considering all the items that you get asked over and over:

• Holiday hours, including extended hours and closures
• Dates for custom orders or shipping cutoffs, plus the last day for local delivery and in-store pickup
• Return and exchange window start and end dates through January
• Gift wrap, gift cards, and personalization options
• Seasonal layaway or special financing or payment options

Policy visibility matters more than most retailers recognize. Narvar’s 2026 Holiday Shopping Report found that 56% of consumers have delayed or avoided a purchase because they were uncertain how long a refund would take. That is a sale lost due to a missing sentence on your checkout page.

Your hub should also include a few more things, but these items you’ll want to roll out as you share them on other marketing channels like print, radio, social, or TV.

• Publish your offers organized by date: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, plus anything online-only or in-store-only. Give each one its own line so a shopper (or an AI assistant) can tell them apart. 
• Store events or happenings: Ladies’ nights, men’s nights, trunk shows, tree lightings, and for some stores, the downtown shop and stroll evenings that some towns build their season around. 

For jewelry retailers, include repair and custom design cutoff dates, sizing turnaround times, private appointment availability, and your last day for engraving. When these deadlines aren’t published anywhere, customers turn to phone or chat instead, pulling salespeople away from in-store sales. 

For food and CPG brands, add perishable ship-by dates by zone, cold pack details, allergen information, and gift box and bundle availability; and don’t forget corporate gifting deadlines.

Build It So Both Your Customer and an AI Assistant Can Read It

Put the items I mentioned above on the page as text, not in an image or graphic. Flipbooks, graphics, and PDFs are useful supplements, but a shipping deadline that exists only inside an image cannot be read, quoted, or found by the AI.

Write your subheadings as the questions people often ask when they call or text. “When is the last day to ship for Christmas delivery?” is better than “Shipping Information”.

Use one URL for the whole season. Do not build a holiday page, then a separate Christmas page, then a gift guide page that duplicates what’s on the hub page. Fragmenting the information will defeat the purpose.

Like Santa, make your list and check it twice; make sure the page matches everywhere else. Same hours, same dates, same policy language as your Google Business Profile, your social bios, and your email footer. 

Add a visible Last Updated section at the top of the page as you make ongoing changes.

Then add it to your website’s main navigation, or add a seasonal alert banner accessible across the entire site. I recommend adding a link to the hub page on your social link tree and into posts on your Google profile. You can also add a repeating footer to your emails and include a message on your receipts: “Visit our holiday happenings center all season for events, offers, and important deadlines.”

Why This Makes Your Season Easier to Run

This is a benefit I didn’t mention in 2024, and it could be the most significant one for a small retail team.

A hub manages the season for both you and your customer. If a carrier changes a cutoff date, you update it once, avoiding the need to search through pages, banners, or pinned posts. When your team receives a phone inquiry, they refer to the same page the customer is viewing, ensuring consistent answers.

At the end of the season, unpublish one page instead of reviewing your entire website in January to avoid leftover holiday content that might suggest neglect. Remember to update the items I mentioned earlier and maintain a list of the locations where you added links.  

Next year, you can republish it and update the dates. Or you can duplicate the structure for other holidays: Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and graduation season. This is an opportunity to build a process and a template, not just a page.

The Build Plan, Now Through November 1

Week of September 21. Gather your decisions: hours, cutoffs, policies, event dates, offer calendar. Most of this lives in someone’s head or a group text. Get it into one document.

Week of September 28. Build and publish the page, even if half of it says, “dates coming soon.” Publishing early gives the page time to be crawled and indexed before traffic arrives.

Week of October 5. Add your annual or community events to the page. Consider where to start adding the link, especially if you want early orders. 

Week of October 12. Add shipping cutoffs and policy language. Verify against your carriers’ published dates.

Week of October 19. Run the consistency check. Hours and policies should match across your site, Google Business Profile, and social profiles. Consider adding the link to main navigation and headers on your website.

Week of October 26. Test it. Ask an AI assistant a few of the questions your customers ask most and see what it says about your store. Ask a team member to find your Christmas Eve hours in under thirty seconds.

November 1 forward. Make a plan to update weekly; don’t forget to update the date discussed above. Think about where else you may want to include this messaging.

Two years ago, the advice to create a holiday hub was that it made things simpler for your customer. That is still true. I also discovered how much simpler it makes the season for the retailer, and how much of your holiday visibility now depends on having one current, readable, consistent place where the answers live for AI.

Not sure your holiday presence is ready?

Schedule a complimentary consultation and let’s walk through your site, your listings, and your season together.

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