Time is always of the essence in getting a sale when a visitor arrives at your website. During the holidays, there’s not a minute—make that a second—to waste. As shoppers fight the clock to finish long to-do lists, their patience is in short supply.

Savvy marketers anticipate these needs and optimize their websites to connect visitors with the right products in as few clicks as possible. One way to do this is with product badges, a merchandising tactic that has proven quite effective.

In addition to some of the other ideas for product badges we’ve shared before, here are a few new options for your consideration.

Out of Stock: By telling shoppers on the index page when a product is out of stock, a retailer reduced consumers’ frustration and secured a 2.31% lift in conversion.

Gift of the Day: Daily specials are popular during the holidays, a factor one retailer played up via product badges to generate excitement around particular items. To increase the interest level, it also promoted the daily deal via a lightbox served to visitors when they arrived on-site. To give you an idea of how well this combo can work, the retailer scored a 231.34% lift in average order value (AOV) for one of its daily promotions.

Top Gifts: This straightforward message drove an increase in AOV of 35.14%. Enough said!

Top Gifts for Him: With the simple addition of two words to its already-successful “Top Gifts” badge—plus a different creative look so shoppers could distinguish between the two badges quickly—this retailer gained an additional jump in AOV of 123.70%.

Results like these are sure to get any marketer into the spirit of the season.

And how about you—which of your testing campaigns this year taught you the most about your website and visitors? Share your insights in the comments section below, and we will all start 2013 with some new ideas to test!

Thanks for reading… Website Testing Wins will be back in January!