The Main Elements of Banner Ads
Posted in Make a Good Copy
Two rules of thumb when creating copy for a banner ad: keep it interesting and keep it short. There is a landing page where you can be more verbose, but for the banner you need to keep your content precise and brief, as a little addition to the punch line and containing strong text like “Free”. The copy needs to give out relevant information in a concise manner so the user wants to know more and responds to the call to action.
Make a Relevant Copy
The image in your banner and the text that follows has to be relevant to your business and landing page. Having the image of a hot woman in the shower might attract attention of some users but when they get to your landing page and find that you duped them into getting to a site that sells pest repellent services, they are going to leave as fast as they arrived. The end-intention of the campaign, ie, the sale, will remain unclosed.
Use Calls to Action Wisely
Users are nobody’s fools. They do not want to “Buy Now” or “Order Now” as soon as they happen to glance on your banner. No matter how visible or popular a brand, every user will want to know more details before they actually buy something from the brand. Realize this and edge out the competition by using more non-aggressive calls to action like “Click to Know More” or “Visit Us”, and even statistically the most effective call to action “Click Here”.
Animated and Flash Banners
Static ads generate 30% less clicks than animated and flash banners. But static ads load faster, which means that animated or interactive banners slow down the user’s computer, and can therefore, be annoying and ineffective. Be judicious in the use of animation and avoid an overkill of those in a banner. Too many things moving around in a banner will distract the user to another ad that is easier to navigate.
In addition to these, fake elements work by making users think they are navigating to another page on the same site when they are actually clicking on the banner. Also a smaller file size means faster loading time so the user gets to see the banner before the page loads completely. Banner ads can work effectively when you combine all these elements in making them. Till the next trends in banner design are predicted, these are your best bets for making banners that work for you.
