5 quick tips on advertising banner design

Steve's top 5 web banner tips

Bit short on time today but I just had to rush out a banner for a client. While doing it I thought I’d jot down 5 quick tips that might help you with your banner designs.

Give a reason to click using targeted messages.
If you are trying to drive traffic to your site, don’t stick all the information the user needs to know in the banner. Why would you click on a banner if you know all there is to know. You need to entice the users to click. Many designers say that a great design will get people clicking, but it’s not really true. A great message will get more people clicking. Think about the site you are advertising on. Determine why people are on that site, what are they interested in and how can your brand fulfil their needs. Then determine what message will make want to them click to come to your site. You need to give the user a reason to click on the banner!

Flashing content
Don’t have anything that you want people to read flashing. You can have content flashing to get people’s attention that is fine. But trying to read flashing text is going to give users an epileptic fit. Get their attention by all and any means, and then hit them with a clear, readable brand message or call to action.

Landing page
Make sure the page that your banner is linking to a landing page that reflects the message that was in your banner. If you have a computer deal for $899, then make sure that deal is the first thing you see when the page opens up. Don’t just dump people on your home page. You can further optimise this page as well for more targeted search results.

Include your URL
This is a battle I have with a lot of customers. DoubleClick have surveyed that many users like to ”view through” ads, meaning they will take note of the banner, but instead of clicking the banner, will manually visit the site in question after viewing an ad at a more convenient time. This can cause a bit of havoc with your metrics and is another reason where a specific landing page is very helpful.  If your URL is not on your ad, how can people view through at a later date?

Brand Continuity
Your banner design should reflect the page it is directed to. It helps reaffirm your brand message, and doesn’t confuse the user by throwing up a completely different set of visual cues. I’ve been the user in a few such scenarios myself. I’ve had several browser windows open (as always), clicked on a banner, been distracted (as always), and later came back to the page that had no resemblance to the banner I had clicked. I didn’t recognise the page so I just closed the window. It only occurred to me later on what the page was. Too late – I was onto something else (as always). Once again, this is another endorsement for a custom landing page.

5 tips for quickly Spring cleaning your website

It’s been a long winter here and after months of eating chips on the couch watching movies, I have decided to get fit for summer. I was just at a spin class before, and in between thinking I might actually be sick and pass out, I thought now might be a good time to quickly whip our company website into shape as well. A Spring clean if you like.

Here’s my 5 tips on how to quickly Spring clean your website and freshen it up without undergoing a whole redesign.

1. Opening Paragraph of your home page. If it says “Welcome to our company, please have a look around our site” give yourself a slap. They know it’s your company and they already are looking around your site. How about you tell them what you do! Much better to lead with  “Our company is based in this town and we specialize in this, this and this.” It will help your search engine rankings and it will let users know straight away if they should go any further into your site. If your company has added a service or slightly changed it’s focus, be sure to reflect that early on in your content.
2. Our People  Section – Your most important asset are your people. Make sure your new staff are added promptly and staff who have left are taken down.
3. News Section – do you have a news section – when was it last updated? Time to get honest with yourself, are you going to make the effort to stay on top of it or is it just too hard. Or is there no news!  If the content is over a month or two old – it’s not news any more. Archive the news and get rid of that section, because it is just making your company look like nothing ever happens there.
4. Images on the home page. Well – images site-wide actually, but especially if you have static images on the home page that could be freshened up, do it. It makes a huge visual difference and gives users a sense of things happening within your company.
5. Check your links. Content may have been moved or links to external sites might now be irrelevant or pointing to pages that are no longer there.  Make sure there are no dead links on your site – that is a bad look. It’s also bad for your SEO – so get it sorted now.

That’s it. And unlike my spin classes, it won’t take very long at all to get a good result.