Creating an Eye-Catching Advert
Posted in Banner Design
One of the best ways to advertise a product or service, and also one of the most popular, is banner advertising. Banners can come in all shapes and sizes, meaning that they are flexible and can be adjusted to accommodate the needs of the user.
Most people would consider a banner advert as being a 468×60 image, so this article will focus on that particular size and type of banner.
The key to creating a good advertisement is to focus as much of the user’s attention as possible on your advert, while, at the same time, making the content of it interesting to potential viewers.
One good way to do this is to have a black background on it, as this will keep the user’s focus on the centre of the banner. Also, using contrasting colours, i.e. white text, can also greatly help the click-through rate of your advert.
It is not usually a good idea to have a flashing banner as an advertisement. This is due to the fact that a lot of internet users associate them with spam pop-ups and find them highly annoying. As a result of this, they very rarely click on such adverts.
However, it is a good idea, and also highly recommended, to have a slide-show effect on an advertisement, meaning that effectively, you can have multiple banners advertising the one product inside the one image.
The same also applies to excessively bright colour schemes. For example, it is a very bad idea to have a yellow background and white text on a banner as this is not only almost impossible to read, it can also have adverse effects on a viewer’s eyesight.
There should be a minimal amount of text on an advert. The key to getting the right balance for the amount of text on a banner is to put just enough text there to make user’s want to find out more, and therefore get them to click on the banner.
Also, it is never advisable to actively encourage users to click on your banner, for example, by writing the words “Click here” or similar. This is mainly because as with flashing adverts, most internet users associate this text with spam advertising, meaning that they would be highly unlikely to click on a banner containing this text.
Finally, one of the most crucial parts of a banner advertisement is the Alternate (or alt) text contained within the website’s HTML code. This is because this text is displayed to any user’s who cannot display the image for some reason, i.e. they are on a slow connection such as that used on some mobile phones.
