Dec 29, 2025

Bolt Rebuild: Transforming any website for the holidays (without rebuilding it)

Make seasonal updates to your website in minutes to delight visitors for the holiday season and more.

Educational

Text that says "Bolt Rebuilds: Holiday Updates"

This is the fifth edition of our Bolt Rebuilds series. If you want to see our other Bolt Rebuilds, check out #1 (adding assets to your project), #2 (import and customize open source components), #3 (hand tracking), and #4 macOS-style portfolio site.

Making seasonal updates to your site typically requires time-consuming coordination between designers, developers, and maybe a copywriter or two. But with Bolt, you can make your site look and feel more festive yourself in minutes.

In this Bolt Rebuild, designer and super user Jakub Skrzypczak demonstrates how to create:

A personal portfolio updated for Christmas (and other holidays)
An e-commerce store adapted to drive seasonal sales

The same techniques work that work for Christmas also apply to Halloween, Easter, Valentine’s Day, or any other seasonal or timely stylistic change you want to make to your site.

Example 1: Turning a personal portfolio into a Christmas experience

We started with a personal portfolio Jakub had already generated with Bolt.

First, Jakub swapped out the hero image. This is an easy change that makes a big difference, since the hero image is your first impression.

To do this, Jakub used Gemini (Nano Banana) to:

Generate the original hero image
Tweak the image slightly by asking Gemini to recreate the same image in winter
Add subtle Christmas details like snow and seasonal lighting

Then, we dropped the image into Bolt and just prompted it to swap the hero section image with our new winter artwork.

Next, we added a subtle motion effect to make the site feel even more festive.

Jakub prompted Bolt to add a falling snow animation across the hero section. The effect was unmistakably cozy without being overwhelming.

Then, Jakub dug into the details.

The portfolio’s “View Work” button already had a hover animation, so we leaned into it and asked Bolt to add a candy cane stripe effect on hover.

After one or two refinements, the button changed on hover with a small touch that added charm without changing the site’s structure.

For portfolios without a large hero image, there are other simple ways to imbue the site with a seasonal touch:

Add a Santa hat to your profile photo
Add a hover Easter egg that changes the H1 text
- Example: “Jakub Works” → “Merry Christmas” on hover

These are the kinds of changes that delight visitors, make the site feel dynamic and current, and take just a few minutes.

Example 2: Seasonal updates for an e-commerce store

For e-commerce sites, festive updates aren’t so much about looking cute as they are about driving sales.

Jakub’s next set of prompts centered on driving conversion and consumer action.

He prompted Bolt to:

Add a Christmas promo banner
Introduce a gift guide in the top navigation
Highlight holiday benefits, including:
- Free delivery
- Extended returns
- Free gift wrapping
Add a “Christmas Mode” toggle

Because this was a larger change, Jakub used Plan Mode so Bolt could reason through the structure before building.

The result:

A top banner promoting holiday deals
A gift guide link to help shoppers find presents faster
Footer messaging reinforcing holiday-friendly policies
A Christmas Mode toggle in the bottom-right corner that turns our page into a full-on Christmas spectacle

Christmas Mode: Letting users control the festiveness

Rather than forcing a single holiday look, we created multiple festive states customers could choose from based on how stripped-down or busy they wanted the site to look.