The Truth About Web Site Banners

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The Truth About Web Site Banners

A banner is a graphic or image used for advertising on the Internet, that you can find almost on every site that you visit, at the top or the bottom of the pages.

Web site banners have an advertising message, and very frequently come with animated images. Their intention is to capture your attention with their blinking animation and bright colors.

But after a while, you will start identifying web site banners with ads, and stop paying them attention.

Let me ask you a straight question: Do you click over web site banners very often? I bet your answer is NO, because as a matter of fact the average clickthrough ratio for web site banner ad is nowadays around 0.3%, what means that on a run of a thousand web site banners you can expect to have only 3 visitors to your site.

Today's clickthrough ratio is a tenth of what it was in 1997, so there are two questions that will probably come to your mind

* Should you use web site banners?
* What's the best way of using web site banners?

The answer depends on how much profit can you make from each visitor to your site...

IF YOU CAN CREATE SIGNIFICANT PROFIT FROM EACH OF YOUR WEB SITE'S VISITOR...

Then you can consider web site banner ads as one of your promotion means

* Start out small, and test the effectiveness of your web site banners with small campaigns
* If it shows to be profitable, then go to big web site banner advertising.

Web site banners are a good promotion method for sites with high profit/visitor ratio.

IF YOU CAN'T CREATE SIGNIFICANT PROFIT...

If your site is a personal web site, an affiliate program site, or you are planning to sell advertising space... Forget about web site banners!.

HOW CAN YOU INCREASE YOUR WEB SITE BANNER'S CLICK THROUGH RATIO?

A web site banner isn't good just because it has a fancy graphic

Your web site banner's purpose is not to look cute, it's to get people to click on it.

Once they click they arrive to your site, and there you can show them all you that you have to offer.

An ugly web site banner that brings people to your site, it's better than a pretty one that doesn't!

* Include the words "click here" in your web site banner

Why?

Because web site banners that contain the words "click here" get more clicks than those that don't.

You must be aware that thousands of new users arrive Internet every month, people that have never "surfed the net" and just don't know what to do when they see a web site banner. And if you don't tell them "Click here" they just don't know that they are supposed to do it, in order to know more about your offer.

* Animated web site banners are better than static ones

Web site banners that blink or move, sometimes can be an annoying thing, but catches the eye better than a web site banner that is completely static, and to catch attention is exactly what you are looking for.

The downside of the animation is that it will increase the file size of your web site banners, and make them take a longer time to load. If your files are too big, and take too much time to load, that will increase the chance that your visitor has already scrolled past your web site banner, before it even appears on the screen.

* Make sure that your web site banner's text states clearly what you are about

Using pictures or your company logo could be a very good idea if people already knows about you, but if they don't... make sure that there's enough room left for text.

* Use a large font size

You'll have to get noticed and small text just doesn't stand out the way that bigger text does.

* Get right to the point and be brief

Don't try to explain in detail what your site is about, you should explain it at your site. You must use web site banners just to get the click to your site.

* Outline the benefits

To get the user's click you must give him a good reason to visit your site. Words such as "free" or a beautiful woman and a hint of sex usually attract more hits.

But your web site banners must talk about what you really offer. If there's nothing free at your site, you can't use the word free in your web site banner, or you'll get the wrong audience.

So be careful with the tricks,. they can be very useful, and can cause problems as well.

* Better small

The faster your web site banner loads, the more time it has to attract a response. So you should always remember to optimize your web site banners for size reducing the number of bytes your web site banner takes is CRITICAL to increasing it's CTR. Ideally, your webb site banner should be 6000 bytes or less:

* It is often a good idea to remove excess graphics or heavy animation.
* I recommend OptiView as the best online tool you can use to reduce the size (in bytes) of your web site banners (and other graphics). It will compress your graphics up to 90%.

* Trick web site banners

Web site banners that only have text and don't look like banners, pull quite a lot better than the standard ones.

The reason is that this kind of web site banners doesn't really look like a web site banner, and many people just think that they are part of the navigation system of the site and click it.

Trick web site banners receive a very high clickthrough ratio when compared to normal banner ads, but their downside is that the traffic they bring can be of lower value, because visitors are tricked into coming to your site.

* Target your audience

Try to place your web site banners on places that attract the type of people who might be interested about your site. The right audience is the one that will give you the higher clicktrhough

WEB SITE BANNERS STANDARD SIZES

468 x 60Full Web Site Banner
234 x 60 Half Web Site Banner
392 x 72 Full Web Site Banners with vertical navigation
120 X 240 Vertical Web Site Banner
125 x125Square Button
120 x 90Button # 1
120 x 60Button # 2
88 x 31Micro Button

WEB SITE BANNERS EXCHANGE

If you can't afford it or just don't like the idea of paying so much for an advertising campaign, you can opt for a web site banners exchange program, where you display web site banners on your pages for free and in return, other members of the program show your web site banner ad on their sites.

This sounds like a good idea, because it doesn't cost anything. But is it?

* Most web site banner exchanges have a 2:1 ratio

So for every 2 web site banners shown on your site, your web site banner gets shown once on other sites, and there are programs with a 3:2 ratio

* Many exchange programs don't offer targeting

So your web site banners will end being displayed on sites that have very little in common with your site and that leads to a low CTR for your web site banners.

Let's make some numbers

* You join a 2:1 web site banners exchange program
* You get 10000 new visitors a month to your site that will see other people's web site banner
* You earn 5000 impressions a month. Your web site banner is shown in 5000 places
* As you have created some killer web site banners, you beat the industry average clickthrough rate of 0.3% and your web site banner receives a 1% Click Through Rate, so 50 visitors come to your site each month.

So you exchanged 10000 hardly earned visitors for 50 visitors to your site!

My advice: Forget about web site banners exchange programs. Only display a web site banner ad on your pages, if they pay you for doing it. And even though, make sure you earn more than you spent to bring the visitor into your web site..

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi

Learn how to increase your monthly income! Easy Home Business http://www.easy-home-business.com is the best internet marketing training site that you will find on the web. Dr. Roberto Bonomi is a successful writer that shares his home business experience at this site, and invites you to post free your own articles, or find free articles for your web site or ezine at http://articles.drbonomi.com

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