Tips & Tricks for making banners with high CTR
1. Banner size: The best performing banner ad dimension is unstandard one (bigger=better), for standard banners the best is 728x90px or 300x250px – above the fold.
2. File size: if your file size will be too big your banner will need few seconds to load, in this time the visitor may scroll the site and never get to see your banner – in this case smaller is better
3. Text: Try to put at least one benefit of your product. Tell people why your product will make their life better.
4. Pictures: have to be a high quality.
5. Call to action: is very important. You have to test what would be the best call to action for product/service you advertise. Even a little change of text can increase your CTR. Think about what would you click on? You have to write something that gives a visitor urges to do something now. Good call to action definitely improves the effectiveness of a banner.
6. Colors: The best colors to use: yellow, green or red; yellow and black, red and black.
7. Design:
– make a banner with 1px red or blue border around the white banner – this is very popular to use on small banners;
– make a banner with background color like the color of the site – fill the banner with background color; put only colorful elements on banner and text – so banner looks like a part of a website;
– try to use familiar elements on banner, elements of the niche you are advertising; for example if you are advertising health product (pills) put a health or pharmacy cross – so when people will scan the website they will notice those elements first and this will definitely increase your clicks;
– try to make small animation; animated banner can attract the visitor more then static banners do;
– put some »fake« elements on your banner; fake text, email, sumbit, selection boxes,… For example if you collect emails and you put email box on a banner people will think they’re clicking to insert email. Important: You have to make banner look like your site because you don´t want to confuse them;
– try to use countdown timer;
8. Don’t make fancy flash banners. Those banners are for branding and definitely not for converting clicks. This banners are the reason for ad blindness.
9. Don’t make shity looking banners because they look like scam – even if you have high CTR the conversions are bad so it’s not worth it.
10. If you can buy banner place directly from a website owner – try to offer them more money for more space to use unstandard banners. Almost every website have an option to change banner place to a bigger one (728x300px, … ). Those banners definitely look like a part of a website so your banner will be more noticeable = more clicks = high CTR = more conversion
11. Every website is different. What converts on one site doesn´t mean it´s going to perform well on other.
12. Spy on your competiton – what are they doing?
13. Making just a few small changes can increase your CTR as much as 200 to 300%.
Remember that the banner with small CTR doesn’t mean it’s a bad one. High CTR doesn’t mean high conversions. The most important thing is to meauser conversions from each banner ad. The banner with small CTR can make you more money (more conversions) than banners with high – because a lot of people click on banners just because of their curiosity.
Finnaly test, test, test and you will definitely get the best performing banner ad.
I wrote one more post about how to design banners, and if you have any questions, you can ask at iamaffiliate forum!