10 Banner Ad Design Tips to Help You Stand Out
As digital design experts, we at Infintech Designs get asked a lot about our ad design best practices.
It’s not quite as easy as one would think. For us, creating the best banner ads is as much a science as it is an art.
Effective banner ads are very important as they increase brand awareness and traffic for a site.
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Banner Ad Design Best Practices that Helped Us and Will Help You, Too!
Here are 10 banner ad design tips to help you stand out and help your business achieve its goals.
1. Know the Brand
The first rule in creating the best banner design is to know the brand.
While most brands provide us with brand guides, we still like to do additional research.
We find out their history, their mission and vision, and their goals for the banner design.
Is it for a product launch? Is it for brand awareness? Is it for a specific event?
Knowing these things guides us in creating the most effective advertisement banner designs for our clients.
2. Communicate the Unique Selling Proposition
One important thing to note about the brand is their unique selling proposition (USP).
In our banner designs, we communicate very clearly what sets the product or service apart from their competitors. Words like “Delivered in 30 Minutes”, “Guaranteed Organic”, or “Biggest Sale Ever” may be used in communicating the USP.
3. Know the Target Market
The next step would be to know the target market.
Who do we want the web banner design to resonate with? How old are they? What do they enjoy doing?
By knowing our target market, we use fonts, colors, photos, and copies that appeal to them.
This is a very important step that a lot of designers overlook. For example, the way we would design banner ads for multivitamins for athletes would be very different from how we would design banner ads for multivitamins for the elderly.
Here’s how to target your audience with web design.
4. Keep Banner ad File Sizes Small
Keep banner ad file sizes small but in high resolution.
The smaller the file sizes are, the faster the images will load on a page. In the fast-paced digital age we’re living in now, consumers will not wait for ads to load before deciding to go to another site altogether.
If your file sizes are too big, you might miss the chance to get clicks from consumers, which are essential in the success of any campaign.
5. Choose the Correct Size
There are many banner ad sizes to choose from, but as per Google, the most effective ones are:
- Large Rectangle – 336 x 280
- Medium Rectangle – 300 x 250
- Leaderboard – 728 x 90
- Half Page – 300 x 600
6. Make it Catchy
The first five seconds are vital in banner ads. This is just about how long it takes for a customer to decide if he or she will click on an ad or not.
We use several styles to make banner ads catchy, such as animations, relatable photos, or colors that stand out.
Animations are a great way to attract clicks. Most of the time, animated banner ads are more effective than static ads.
Make sure, however, do not lose the ad’s message with too much animation.
In instances where animations are not optimal for the design, we use photos that our target market can relate to or colors that contrast well with the page design.
If used correctly, these styles may be as effective as animations, and with smaller file sizes too.
7. Have one Simple Message
Once we have the client’s attention because of our catchy banner ad, he or she will still have to click the ad for it to be considered effective.
To do this, we keep in mind to always have one simple message.
We keep it to one USP per banner ad. The message has to be something so simple that the client can understand it in five seconds.
We use keywords like “Now in New Orleans”, “50% Off”, or “Free Shipping”.
8. Have a Visible Call-to-Action Button
The call-to-action button is the part of the banner ad that invites the customer to take the desired action.
This part of the banner ad must have a clear contrast against the rest of the design and must be highly visible. We use words like “Shop Now”, “Donate Now”, or “Subscribe Now” for the call-to-action button.
The customers must be compelled to not just see the banner ad, but to actually do something after seeing it.
9. Link to a Functional Landing Page
A functional landing page is necessary to complete the process of any campaign.
This is essential for a company’s success measures. We make sure that all the links and buttons of the landing page are working properly.
10. Keep it Relevant
Customers will get bored by seeing the same banners ads, so we always advise to keep them relevant.
We like mixing designs up to include thematic, functional, and real-time ones, observing current seasons, holidays, and events.
Banner Ads Drive Traffic and Engagement
Effective banner ads are a cost-effective way of building brand awareness and traffic for any site, and we highly recommend using them.
They have done wonders for several of our clients. When done poorly, however, banner ads will just get lost in all the clutter in the digital world.
If you are not a designer, consider outsourcing this task to a professional to achieve desired results. Infintech Designs offers web design services for banners, infographics, and site redesign.
Make sure to keep in mind these tips to get the most out of your banner ads–and make your customers happy, too.
