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Those Damn Banners...
(Article Contributed By Dino - Posted on January 06th, 2009)
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I’ve done a few articles on PhotoShop in my time here but they’ve normally concentrated on full-page design. Banners (“standard” or odd-shaped) are still needed for a lot of applications on the web, even if their effectiveness is sub-standard in some webmaster’s eyes.
This is all down to design. Banner design really follows the same rules as a full-age design – i.e. you’re looking for three things:
- Make the surfer notice the banner
- Generate some kind of “call to action”
- Incentive to click
Clicking a banner is what it’s all about. You want your surfers to become interested by the message the banner dictates to them, not ignore it as a pretty waste of space. While it may be argued that banners have become so commonplace that their effectiveness is greatly reduced, this simply isn’t the case. If you take any other form of mass-view advertising (such as paste billboards or vehicle advertising), you can see that simply having them out there is not enough – they’ll just get lost in the noise.
A good layout is one that will stand out on pretty much any page it’s placed on. Animation, however small here is the key. The eye notices movement very quickly (how many times have to caught a fly in your vision or seen that tiny little spider crawling on the wall?) no matter how small. In fact, the smaller the animation the better – at least to start with.
Building your message on top of this is the key – keeping them interested enough for a few seconds to actually click something is the job of your call to action.
Elicit a Response
“Call to action” - I tout this phrase a lot in my articles, but sometimes it’s not exactly clear what you can really do with it in the scope of the adult business. Most mainstream advertising relies on brand names to get the point across with a few “deals” thrown in for good measure.
If you’re looking for ideas on CTA’s, there’s really no better place to start than late-night TV. Wait for the commercials and take notes during them. After a while you’ll notice every wildly different adverts for different products use pretty much the same tactics:
Time Sensitive
“Order now within the next ten minutes…” or such. Of course it doesn’t matter when you order, but it gives a sense of urgency to the prospective buyer that the time is running out for them to get out their credit card. You could push this a stage further with the adult biz – a simple countdown in the banner, for instance.
Raise their Price
Tell them that when the time runs out, the price will go back to it’s usual value. This is a sideways approach at generating “sales fever” – most people assume that everything is on sale all of the time now, and will be interested simply because you’re predicting a price increase. If they were thinking about a purchase but holding off until another time, this could tip the scales in your favor.
Something for Nothing
If you add something along the lines of “Become a member now and get our VIP package benefits at no extra charge”, you’ll find them beating down your door. No one can resist something for nothing. Of course, you’ll actually have to deliver your promise, so every membership you sell will be of this nature – just given a fancy name.
Something for Nothing - AGAIN!
On top of this, you’ll see just about every late-night TV advert offering something extra for the same amount of money; “Buy now, and receive item XXX, valued at $29.99 for free!”. Why not use this in your banners? Tout a second paysite membership at half-price for 6 months, a free trial of a partnering site or whatever. Give them something for nothing – or at least make it look that way.
Making them Click
I’ve seen a lot of banners that are basically worthless – they have all the elements I’ve described above, but they’re lacking in the most important aspect of the design, an actual target to click. When you design your banners, think of them as a very small webpage. On a regular sized page, you wouldn’t expect to have the entire document linked to a site, would you? Nope – you’d have text links or buttons to click. The same goes for banner design – give them a target to click on. Even a simple “click here” button can help, but if you can work it into your design in such a way as to make it “rewarding” (remember those striptease pens? You get the idea) then your CTR will skyrocket.
Till tomorrow, pimps!
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