Banner ad design

A banner ad design is basically a visual promotion on your website which links to some form of promotional page.

It might be a link to your own product page or a link to another website, via an affiliate program.

Often the link to the promotional page is a tracker link ie a link that has a special code in it so that you can monitor how successful your promotion is by counting the number of 'hits' it gets by users.

A simple banner ad design

The most simple type of banner ad design is shown below.

It is created from an image - the countdown graphic - and some simple black and white promotional text to get my message over.

There are no animations involved - I do suggest that you try to avoid these as they are very distracting on a page - and when you click on the banner it takes you to a promotional page.

The tracker link on that ad is:

http://www.web-work-at-home.com/banner

When you click on the banner it actually takes you to this page:

http://www.web-work-at-home.com/start-a-home-internet-business.html

Using my website hosting tools, I get data about how many times people click on the banner and that allows me to judge how effective my banner ad design is.

An affilate banner ad design

Most of the time you will use banner ad designs from affiliate partners, and they will provide these to you in a variety of sizes and with different graphical options.

This means that you don't need to understand coding or have any abilities to put together your own graphics using Photoshop or a similar editor.

You simply cut-and-paste the code into your page, as I have done below:

The code for that banner ad looks like this and is provided for me by my website host:

<p align="center"> <a href="http://order.sitesell.com/websiteacademy.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://graphics.sitesell.com/snippet/promo-468x60.gif" alt="Special SiteSell Promotion" border="0" width="468" height="60"></a>

This ad also has a tracker link in it:

http://order.sitesell.com/websiteacademy.html

However, when somebody clicks on this tracker link, not only does it tell the affiliate company that the click came from my website, if a customer goes on to buy, it also means that I take a commission.

Top 10 tips for banner ad design

# Clarity: Your text should be clear and easy to read. Your promotional message should be equally clear and prominent. Stick to one key promotional message, don't mix or confuse your messages.

# Watch your file size: Don't use huge graphics that take a long time to download on your user's PC. Go for as small a file size as you can without compromising the clarity of the text or graphics in your website banners.

# Say it simply: You have a small space and your banner ad design is competing with countless other things on a page. Make your message a simple one, don't confuse the issue. Use a limited number of words to convey your message.

# Be careful with images: Go for eye-catching, but don't overwhelm. Think about your marketing message and how a single image or graphic will complement it. Use quality website images from a stock photography website like Stockxpert.com, do not help yourself to other peoples' images from the web.

# Use active writing: It's important to write in an active way when writing on the web which means that you should make calls to action ('Buy now', 'Find out more ...', 'Sign up now ...') and you should communicate your ideas clearly and concisely. So 'Sign up and start the course now' is better than 'Read the page about our new web course, have a think about it, navigate to the sign-up page, fill it in, then start the course'.

# What do you like? Look for examples of what you like and what you respond to best as a customer. Get a feel for best practice and avoid the things you don't like. Copy the things you do like about other campaigns.

# Font use: Don't go crazy with the fonts. There's a reason why most ads and web pages are in plain text, and that's because they can be read easily by your web audience (as well as browsers being able to cope with them).

Don't mix fonts on a page, use clear and easy-to-read fonts and take care when colouring fonts in an ad ... don't use all of the colours of the rainbow, unless your business is called 'Rainbow Paints' or something similar.

# Careful use of animation: Always ask yourself, 'what is the purpose of my website?' The purpose of this website is for people to get quality information and hopefully read to the bottom of the page.

They do not want to be distracted by moving and flashing graphics everywhere, which is why you'll see that I have avoided obtrusive animated images throughout this site.

If you do use animations, look for those which have a slow-to-moderate speed and preferably ones which come to rest after a couple of animated cycles.

Remember, your customer is on the page to read your article first and foremost.

You want to make a sale of course, but overwhelming them with sensory inputs will not achieve that.

Does the animation enhance the ad? I think the ad below is a good example of animation, because the animation itself creates the message that is integral to the promotion:

# Aim for contrast: Don't use text that is all the same size, use a bold and striking single image, use colour effectively.

# The big rule: The general rule of thumb on the web - across the board - is 'less is more' ... keep your banner ad design simple, clean, sharp and uncluttered.

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