There is something special about the sights and sounds of holiday shopping. Garland and lights are hung, seasonal music is pumping, maybe the smell of pine is in the air; but most importantly, careful merchandising by retailers is a call-to-action to entice customers to buy. Online retailers can also make seasonal changes to put more emphasis on what’s hot for the season, beef up holiday sales numbers, and even get a little festive.

Here are five must-have five features for Yahoo! Stores to woo holiday shoppers:

1. Give Holiday Shoppers a Peek Inside with Flash Sequence Banner

There’s something nostalgic about walking down the sidewalks of a festive, decorated, snowy Main Street during the holidays, with all the store fronts giving shoppers a glimpse at what’s featured and on sale inside. Flash sequence banners can be your virtual window display case. While useful year-round, the holiday season is a prime time to consider adding flash sequence banners to your homepage. Boost sales by rotating through promotional messages for sales, special shipping and gift wrap offers, featured products/sections and then, after-holiday clearance sales! Aside from increasing conversions, flash sequence banners keep your homepage fresh.

2. Attract Bargain Shoppers with Dynamic Sales Page

Ever walk right toward the clearance rack or value bins at your local department store? Bargain shoppers sure do, especially around the holidays. Dynamic Sales Page, one of Solid Cactus’ newest features, makes deals and steals easier to find. Working in tandem with Dynamic Paging, the new Dynamic Sales Page feature automatically populates with all items listed ‘on sale’ in your store. Not only will customers easily find your best deals of the season, but this feature also saves valuable time for store owners like you because no longer will you have to manually create and reorganize pages each time items go on or off sale.

3. Increase Order Size with Multiple-Add-to-Cart

It’s all about the accessories and coordinating items when it comes to gift-giving. Video game systems need controllers and games. Necklaces need matching earrings. Baseball bats need balls and balls need gloves. You get the idea. No matter what products you offer, chances are other items in your store are a perfect complement. Item Page Multiple Add-to-Cart puts coordinating items smack dab in the forefront, thus suggesting add-ons the user may not have initially thought of purchasing. Plus, customers can effortlessly add those multiple items to the cart with just one click. Multiple-Add-to-Cart can eliminate the need for users to search for accessories, and more importantly, increase order size by prompting customers to buy more with that one click.

4. Build Exciting Promos with Scratch and Save

Holiday shopping can be exciting; you never know what bargain you may find or when you will come across an unexpected slashed price on the shelf. Entice your e-commerce shoppers with a secret savings with Solid Cactus’ newest feature, Scratch and Save. This fun, interactive feature gives your customers the chance to scratch off a virtual coupon, revealing a mystery discount code that can be used upon checkout. There are endless promotion ideas for this feature, but to get you started for the holidays, why not call it a “Secret Santa Sale” and couple it with an e-mail marketing blast and featured graphic on your homepage?

5. Build Urgency with Holiday Countdown

How many shopping days are left? Solid Cactus’ Holiday Countdown is a perfect way to build urgency with your online shoppers. Think of it as an Advent calendar for your store– without the chocolate, of course (although we’d offer that if we could). The feature provides a countdown in hours, days, minutes, and seconds to the end of the holiday shopping season, a special sale, a free shipping offer, or other time-sensitive promotion. This feature isn’t just for Christmas, either. Change the graphic and promotional message throughout the year for other seasons or holidays like back to school, Halloween or a general annual sale.

The trees may be green now, but summer is the time to get in holiday mode and make preparations for the busiest shopping season of the year.