How to Run a Giveaway on Your Website (Embed, Popup or Landing Page)

To run a giveaway on your website, create the giveaway in a giveaway tool, copy its embed code and paste it into a page on your site (or show it as a popup), then add rules, promote the page and pick a winner at random when it ends. With SweepWidget, the same code works on WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow and plain HTML sites.

Here’s the whole process, from an empty page to a winner.

Why run it on your own site?

A giveaway on your website does more than one on a social post:

• Visitors come to you. Every entrant lands on your site, next to your products or content.
• You keep the contact details. Every entrant leaves a name and email, so you can reach them after the giveaway.
• You control the experience. Your design, your rules, your page, with no feed algorithm deciding who sees it.

1. Pick one goal and a prize that fits it

Decide what the giveaway is for: email signups, traffic to a product page, social followers or more sales. Then pick a prize your ideal customer wants, ideally your own product or a gift card to your store. A generic big prize pulls in prize hunters who never come back.

2. Create the giveaway

Sign up, then either click New Sweepstakes to start from scratch or open Starter Templates and pick one that matches your goal (there are templates for website traffic, blog comments, custom forms and more). Fill in:

• The title, with the prize in plain words
• Start and end dates, and your time zone
• The prize and the number of winners
• Who can enter

For a full walkthrough of the giveaway builder, see how to create a giveaway with SweepWidget.

3. Choose actions that send people around your site

Every entrant gives a name and email. On top of that, add three to five ways to earn extra entries. Some work especially well on a website:

• Visit a page. Send entrants to a product, a new collection or a blog post.
• Bonus entry with daily re-entry. People come back to your site to claim it again, from once an hour up to once a day.
• Secret code. Hide a code somewhere on your site or in your newsletter (Pro plan and above).
• Subscribe to your newsletter. New entrants go straight to your email tool through one of 30+ email integrations (Pro and above).
• Refer a friend. Each entrant gets a link to share, which brings new visitors to the giveaway (Pro plan and up).

Keep one or two actions mandatory and make the rest optional. Long lists of required steps make people give up.

4. Paste the embed code into a page

Click Save & Publish. You’ll land on the “Your Giveaway is Ready!” page with the embed code. (You can also get it later from your dashboard with Embed Into HTML Of Your Site.)

The code is one short snippet. Paste it in your site’s HTML or code view, not the visual editor:

1. WordPress: install the free SweepWidget plugin and paste its one-line shortcode into the page, or edit the page, add a Custom HTML block, paste the code, then click Update or Publish.
2. Shopify: use Quick-Embed to have SweepWidget create a store page for you (type a page name and click Create Page & Embed), or go to Online Store > Pages, click the <> (Show HTML) button and paste.
3. Wix: click Add (+) > Embed Code > Embed HTML, paste, then resize and publish.
4. Squarespace: add a Code Block, paste, save and publish.
5. Webflow: add an Embed element, paste and publish.
6. Custom HTML site: paste the code inside the <body> where you want the giveaway, then upload the file.

Then open the page on your phone and on a computer to check it loads. If it doesn’t show, the usual cause is pasting in the visual editor or missing part of the code.

You can put more than one giveaway on the same page. Each has its own ID, so they won’t clash.

5. Or show it as a popup

On the same page, tick Turn giveaway into a popup and set a delay in seconds. Copy the updated code and paste it into your site. Visitors see the giveaway in a centered window after the delay and can close it with the X.

A popup works well on your homepage or blog, where people didn’t come looking for a giveaway. A dedicated giveaway page works better when you’re sending traffic from email or social. If you use Shopify, click Update Page URL On Shopify Store after turning the popup on.

6. Make it look like part of your site

In the Design tab you can:

• Pick from 900+ Google Fonts and set text and background colors to match your brand.
• Position the widget left, center or right within the space where you embedded it.
• Remove the SweepWidget logo and footer (white-labeling, Premium plan and above).

7. Decide what happens after someone enters

Two options help turn entrants into customers:

• Redirect after entry. In Entry Methods > Advanced options, add a URL, such as a product page or a thank-you page with a discount. It doesn’t work if the giveaway has a refer-a-friend action, since those entrants never “finish”.
• Pre-fill for logged-in visitors. On Premium and above, you can pass a logged-in visitor’s name and email into the embed code so they enter in one click.

8. Add rules, promote it and pick a winner

Write short rules that cover how to enter, the dates, who can enter and how the winner is picked. SweepWidget’s rules generator gives you a starting point to adapt.

Then promote the page: link it from your homepage, email your list, post it on social media and print the QR code for your shop counter. No website, or want a link for social? Every giveaway also gets a free hosted landing page you can share anywhere.

When the giveaway ends, open Manage Entries, click Pick A Winner and choose Randomize the Selection. Check the winner met your rules before you announce them.

For how to check the winner and show the draw was fair, see how to pick a giveaway winner fairly.

Ready for the last step? See how to pick a winner at random.

FAQ