Mar 2019: Spotlight on…digital banners

International Construction is pleased to share some best practise ideas to maximum your investment from digital advertising. Lets first look at design:

Effective banner ads are designed to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website and based on three basic components:

• Company identity – normally your logo. Important for brand awareness.
• Value proposition – showcasing the product or service calls attention to itself with attractive offers and prices
• Call to action – this is the text or button that invites visitors to click. Phrases like “Learn more” or “Watch now” are good examples. This should be the clear focal point of the ad. 

Please pay special attention to colour and size:

• Every colour has a different association, and it’s important to consider what types of emotions you want to evoke in your audience. Colour will be the first thing a user notices in your banner ad. Colours are also subjective and have different associations in different cultures. Make sure to study your target audience when making your colour selections.
• Keep file sizes small – the ad needs to load fast before viewers scroll down and miss it
• Don’t use Flash file format – use JPG, PNG or GIF files

Lets make the banner attractive to readers:

• Use animation - Animated web banner ads usually out-perform static banner ads, and can be very effective in website banner design, but you have to make sure that they don’t distract from the message of your ad. Use simple animations that last no more than 15 seconds, and make sure that they don’t loop more than 3 times. Consider making the last frame of your animation a clear call to action.
• Complement, but stand out - If your ad visually blends into the sites where it’s featured, you’re more likely to earn your viewers trust. However, don’t make it blend in too much. Banner ads always needs to be visible and clickable.
• Instil a sense of urgency - Bring a sense of visual urgency to the text by using contrasting, bold colours. Banner ads are not always meant to be subtle.
• Use imagery well - Choose relevant graphics and photos that enhance your message and are directly related to your product. It’s not always necessary to use images in your banner ads. Killer copy and nice typography can create equally effective results

And lastly, please keep it simple:

• Keep content and visuals simple. Viewers are probably only going to glance at your web banner ad for a second
• Use buttons appropriately - Depending on the type of banner, buttons will often increase the click-through rate (CTR) of your ad. If you’re going to use them, place them after your copy on the lower right side in (tastefully) contrasting colours. Always keep them consistent throughout the set of ads.
• Have a clearly defined frame - People’s eyes are naturally drawn to a subject inside a frame. Effective banner ads have a clearly defined frame with graphics extended to the edges of the box. If your ad is white, it’s a common practice to put a 1 pixel grey border around the ad.
• Make your text instantly readable - Make your headline and body copy different sizes. All copy should be four lines or less. Avoid using cursive/script fonts, extremely thin font weight and font sizes smaller than 10 pt.