Target

Overview

FormatPage Grabber

PlatformDesktop + Mobile

EngineGreenSock

AgencyUndertone

Multi-category showcase for Target. Products across home, style, tech, and grocery rotate through a carousel with per-category CTAs. Target campaigns ran frequently with seasonal variations (back-to-school, holiday, Black Friday), so I built the architecture for rapid reskinning: swapping CSS custom properties transforms the entire palette and mood.

The template had to handle any product mix while maintaining Target's playful, colorful brand identity.

Context

Target was the highest-frequency account I worked on — campaigns ran monthly with seasonal variations (back-to-school, holiday, Black Friday, everyday essentials). Building a custom ad each time was unsustainable, so this became my most evolved template architecture. The reskinning system used CSS custom properties for the entire color palette: a single config swap transformed the ad from holiday red-and-green to back-to-school blue-and-yellow. Each product category card was a self-contained unit with its own hero image, background color, copy block, and CTA URL, which meant the operations team could swap the product mix without touching animation code. The GreenSock easing was deliberately different from my luxury accounts — Target's brand is energetic and accessible, so I used Back.easeOut (springy, slightly overshooting) instead of the Quart.easeOut or Sine.easeInOut I'd use for Saks or Porsche. The per-category click attribution was the most important piece for Target's merchandising team — they wanted to know which product categories drove the most engagement from rich media, and the click ID system gave them that data per-campaign.

How It Works

~2s

Brand

Target bullseye animates in. Seasonal headline and campaign theme set the context: holiday, back-to-school, or everyday essentials.

Auto-cycle

Browse

Users can manually navigate categories. Each category card has pricing, product imagery, and a "Shop Now" CTA.

Click-through

Shop

Per-category CTAs deep link to Target.com category pages with campaign attribution for merchandising analytics.

Engineering

Category Carousel

Product categories rendered as carousel cards with GreenSock transitions. Each card is a self-contained unit: hero image, background color, copy, CTA.

Seasonal Reskinning

CSS custom properties for brand colors and seasonal themes. Swapping the property set transforms the ad from holiday red-and-green to back-to-school blue-and-yellow.

Category Attribution

Each category CTA has a unique click ID, enabling Target to measure which product categories drive the most engagement from rich media formats.

Brand Playfulness

Target's brand is colorful and energetic. GreenSock easing uses springy curves (Back.easeOut) and faster durations than luxury brands: matching Target's accessible personality.

Engineering Decisions

Target sells everything. A single product focus would represent 0.001% of their catalog. The carousel shows breadth and gives users multiple reasons to click.

Target ran campaigns monthly. Building a custom ad each time would be unsustainable. A reskinnable template with swappable imagery and colors scales with the business.

Target isn't Saks. Their brand is fun, fast, and accessible. Spring easing and quicker transitions match the energy of walking through a Target store.

Target.com has thousands of products. Sending users to the homepage creates decision paralysis. Category deep links narrow the funnel while preserving choice.