Top Ten Banner Design Tips

Increase your banner's click-through rate using these 10 simple ideas.

Banner design is critical to your web-site advertising's effectiveness. Not only does it impact click-through rates, but it also determines the kind of people who visit your site. This page is for those with ad budgets of 2 figures or less who can't afford to hire someone to design banners. Here are 10 simple ideas to improve banner effectiveness. The example banners from Link Exchange are some that have public click-through statistics, and the CTR ratios shown are as of July 26, 1997. The first banner in each pair uses the particular technique for that section - the second doesn't.

10. KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. Many banners are too busy. Use a maximum of 7-10 elements in your banner. A word is an element. Avoid the temptation of tiny type trying to cram in all that info. Look at the banner 6 feet away from your screen - can you read everything? Don't waste time perfecting the ultimate ray-traced, photo, animated, all-singing, all-dancing super-banner. Go with something trivial initially, measure response and then improve it relentlessly.

CTR = 16.7 : 1 (6.0%)
CTR = 110.6 : 1 (0.9%)

9. Include something that is out-of-whack or incongruous. The backwards "R" in Toys "R" Us is a good example. Certain brain cells fire when they detect something unusual such as motion and this can strongly attract people to your banner. Animation is coming even to Link Exchange and it may be necessary to keep pace. Certain graphics and color combinations like red text on a blue background also attract the eye. Once people get used to any particular technique, its effect diminishes and you should move on to something else.

CTR = 10.8 : 1 (9.3%)
CTR = 155.5 : 1 (0.6%)

8. Be mysterious. Engage a surfer's interest by mentioning the main topic of your web site in a general way. Giving too much information can allow people to decide they wouldn't be interested in your site. E.g. if your site is about photography, try something like "Free photography stuff..." rather than "Dave's 35mm Foto Vacation."

CTR = 25.9 : 1 (3.9%)
CTR = 122.3 : 1 (0.8%)

7. Track your banner viewings and click-throughs. Link Exchange provides this info free. Figures are often surprising. Do not jump to conclusions based on a small number of click-throughs. Wait until you have at least 50 click-throughs or 1000 viewings. Allowing a banner at least a full week will eliminate any strange variations due to day of week or time of day. Here are some suprises: the first banner breaks many rules, and the second obeys most.

CTR = 28.3 : 1 (3.5%)
CTR = 99.7: 1 (1.0%)

6. Tell the surfer what to do. Use words like "Click here" or "Enter" with an arrow. Many highly successful banners are simply text that reads "Click here if you XYZ..."

CTR = 18.0 : 1 (5.5%)
CTR = 97.5 : 1 (1.0%)

5. Use words with strong emotional appeal, such as free, power, money, sex, action, play, fun, hot, cool and so on, but avoid hype - especially SCREAMING CAPS and !!!exclamation points!!! About the only time this may work is when you shout "FREE STUFF!!" Choose keywords that apply to your page carefully - the broader the appeal the better.

CTR = 13.0 : 1 (7.7%)
CTR = 74.9 : 1 (1.3%)

4. Be funny. But get someone else's opinion. There's nothing sillier than an unfunny joke. You can base a whole campaign around a series of jokes on similar-looking banners, and people will seek them out. Putting the punchline on the web site where the user needs to click through to read it is good. Just make sure they realize the first part on the banner is a joke. Avoid offensive stuff unless your site is also offensive (intentionally that is).

CTR = 41.9 : 1 (2.4%)
CTR = 95.5 : 1 (1.0%)

3. Choose colors and fonts carefully. Use browser standard colors (RGB values that are multiples of 33 hex). Make sure text is easily visible - either black on a light color background or white on medium-dark color backgrounds. Avoid fonts that are hard to read, even when the font matches the site content. If you must use font like OLD ENGLISH, limit yourself to a single word. Avoid multiple styles, colors, and sizes of text.

CTR = 18.9 : 1 (5.3%)
CTR = 109.0 : 1 (0.9%)

2. People get to know your banner and know they've already been there and done that. Research shows that click throught rates drop from around 3% on the first viewing of a banner by a particular person to under 1% on the fourth and subsequent viewings. So, how often do you need to change your banner? It depends on your level of traffic and level of repeat traffic. For most small sites the best policy is to monitor your CTR. Note this doesn't apply to brand names - if you are fortunate enough to have one, use it. Renew the freshness of your banners by adding new twists frequently. Link Exchange itself has a large problem of banner exhaustion which they address by having a banner design contest to come up with lots of fresh banners at little expense. [No example - see any banner advertising Link Exchange].

1. Break the rules. Be unusual. Stand out from the crowd. For example there have been several very successful banners that say "Don't click here." Curiosity clearly gets the better of many surfers. But only break the rules after you have mastered them and you know what you are doing.

CTR = 8.5 : 1 (11.7%)

0. Just for the nerds among us who understand that even top ten lists have zeroth elements here's a simple animated banner that is highly successful.

CTR = 7.9 : 1 (12.7%)

Links to other banner design and web page promotion sites that we rate as excellent.

Web Site Banner Adverting: Banner Ad Networks & Brokers - great site that exhaustively details just about every web page promotion scheme, scam, and success that has been tried, and then some.
Four Corners Effective Banners - excellent site with lots of useful info and links about web page promotion in general and banner advertising in particular.
GSAnet Top 25 Banners constantly updated to show the best banners on GSAnet (banner swap) based on click through ratio. Highly informative.
Submit It!, probably the best way to simultaneously submit your site URL to many search engines.
DoubleClick's Ten Tips on banner design that are mostly different than mine.
Microscope: Best Ads On The Web dissects and rates different successful ads each week. Good place to find out all the latest ideas. And steal them.

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