Banner Design Tips
by David Callan
Banner advertising is by far the most popular and widespread
form of advertising on the Internet, almost every website
has some form of banner advertising on it. There's just no
escaping the banner on the net.
Even though we have all read the news about the declining
effectiveness of banners on the web, I still believe that
with the right 'ingredients' banners can be a good source of
visitors and income for most webmasters.
There are four of these ingredients that I'd consider the
most important, using all or most of them will always enable
you to get a higher click through for your various banners.
I'll list them and then continue to discuss each one in a
bit more detail.
Small file
Call to action.
Animation
Good ad copy
Fake factor
- Small file
This is one of the most important things you have to get
right when designing a banner, if the .gif or .jpg file
is large it will take a few seconds to download and by
then the visitor might have scrolled down the page,
meaning he or she doesn't even get to see your banner.
If people don't see your banner they definitely are not
going to click on it. So make sure your file stays below
10K, 15K at the absolute most, it's sometimes hard to
do, but if the others can do it, we can do it too.
- Call to action
This is one of the easiest ways to increase the CTR
(click through rate) of a banner, on this all the
experts agree. Using a call to action simply involves
having the words 'click here' or some other words such
as 'sign up now' or something similar. My thoughts on
why using a call to action increases the CTR so much
include the fact that there is so much advertising
off-line, such as TV, Radio, billboards etc. etc. With
advertising on these off-line mediums, target audiences
are generally just required to watch or read the ad. All
ads online have a link and the purpose is to get people
to click on the ad and visit the advertisers website,
however with the world being so used to off-line
advertising many people just see banners and think
that's it, they don't realize that they are actually
meant to click on it to find out more. That's way having
click here or another call to action improves the
effectiveness of a banner.
- Animation
Banners with moving elements attract the eye a lot more
than static banners do. The whole idea of designing
banners is to grab attention of website visitors, using
small animation help to do this. I say small because I
don't want you to go overboard and fill a banner with
lots of animation, this is a bad idea because, one it
increases file size, and two it is generally annoying to
people after a while especially when they are trying to
read an article or tutorial. If your banner annoys them,
they will most likely just leave without clicking on it.
- Good ad copy
This one is kind of a given, but you should always
include good ad copy in your banner, lots of fancy
animation and pictures won't entice them to click, they
look after grabing the attention of the visitors. It's
the actual text that will get people wanting to check
out your product. Try to emphasis the benefits, not
features of your product or service. Tell people how
your product will make their life easier. Keep your
wording short and concise, if you can use words that
have be proven to attract people such as 'free','proven'
and 'secret' do.
- Fake factor
Many of the very successful banner ads of late have
incorporated some kind of fake elements in them. There
are various fake element's banner designers can use,
such as fake scroll bars, fake text links, fake
selection boxes, fake text boxes, fake submit buttons to
mention just a few. Banners with fake elements perform
so well because people think there clicking on a link to
go to another page on the current site (as in the fake
text links) or they think they are click on a button,
but in fact they are actually clicking on a banner with
a picture of a button and text link.
These fake banners are made using the Print Screen
button usually found on the right side of any standard
keyboard. Simply open a webpage or application and press
'print scrn' then crop the image around the button or
scroll bar area (the area you want to fake) and then
paste it into your banner, and that's it, you have fake
elements in your banner. Alternatively designers simply
draw buttons, scroll bars etc. using their graphics
program.
Well there you have it, the five most important pointers to
remember when desiging banners. I'd normally end the article
now but before we end, I want to talk about targetting your
banner. Always, always place your banner on sites that cater
for your target audience (ie - the people most likely to buy
your product). There's no point putting a banner for a new
golf club you sell on a site dedicated to software, visitors
to the site simply are not going to be interested and you're
just wasting your money. You should be aiming to place the
golf banner on golf course websites, sites like PGA.com,
generally golf related sites, this way you are much more
likely to make money. If you are not exposing your banner to
your target audience, none of the above tips and tricks can
save you.
Article by David Callan -
admin@akamarketing.com
David is the webmaster of
http://www.akamarketing.com.
Visit his site for free internet marketing articles, advice,
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