When creating banner advertising to promote your content, website or product, marketers must curb the temptation to make the ad too busy or cluttered.

" Often times marketers try to jam as much selling points in to the ad as possible without realizing that this contributes to the message being lost all together in the ad. "

The 5 true and proven ways of creating banner ads that increase click through rates are as follows:

1.) Initiate user action and entice site visitors to click the banner by asking questions! Example of Your questions can be structured such as, "Do you need...?" or "Have you any...?" or even "Are you looking for?" This strategy allows users to answer the question sub-consciously or consciously and often times initiates a click through.

2.) Call to actions tell users to take action. the most common call to action we've all experienced while browsing the web is "Click Here!". Other Call to action also include, "Go to", "Find Out.." "Last Chance". Try not to bombard your users with too much of these cause if you do it would eventually lead you banner ads be less effective which is the opposite of want you really want.

3.) Animation is something that marketers once believed received higher click through rates than static ads. However, static adds have been changing this model since the file size is smaller it can be downloaded at a faster rate. Yes it's true that broadband is almost everywhere but web

"users are enticed to click clean well designed static adds with one to two text transitions rather than an annoying flash animated ad with integrated sound"

that distracts users as you search for your desired content.

4.) Visually attractive ads that keep a consistency to the company's brand and posses a high quality look will generally generate higher click through rates. This is because brands sell and when customers are greeted with a banner that has clean, clear, visually pleasing colour combinations, layout and brand identity, they would be enticed to learn more.

5.) Do not claim something on your banner that is not what users will experience if they click your banner. Such false claims would only frustrate web users, who would most-likely click the back button and not stay on the page after the clicked your banner.

It may even be helpful to place a mouse over hover effect on the border of your banner image. This could be achieved with the use CSS(Casdaing Style Sheets) with the hover property for the banner image set to show a different colour on mouse over. This would assist novice web users to realizing that this image is a hyperlink and is indeed clickable.

Labels: Effective Banner Design