Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Five Design Tips for Animated Banner Ads

Creating a great animated banner ad takes even more time and work than creating a static advertising banner. The reason being is that animated banner ads rotate frames and each frame needs to be created so that the reader thinks they are seeing something in one fluid motion. There is a huge difference between a good animated advertising banner and a bad one. Let’s take a look at some design tips to help you create a great animated advertising banner.

1) Rotate your animated banner ad at a relaxed speed. A good online banner design will not be something that flashes a thousand times a minute or jumps, runs or hops across the screen as soon as the web page opens up. That will only serve to annoy your potential customers. Instead a successful animated banner should be tastefully done with frames rotating at a medium speed.

2) Make sure it downloads fast. Sometimes potential customers don’t wait for an entire page to download before they move on. It is important that you create an animated banner design that downloads fast, so that potential customers will actually see it before they move to another web page.

3) Put your most important information first. Because you will only have a reader’s attention for 3 seconds or less, it is important to grab their attention and give them your information fast. Be sure you put your most relevant information in the first few frames of your animated custom web banner.

4) Make your animation stand out but not clash. You want to think about what web pages you see your animated banner being placed on. The goal is for your advertisement to stand out, but not clash with what is on the web page. Your potential customer is originally seeking the information on the web page, not your banner ad, so try to make your advertising banner stand out in a way that still flows with the web page.

5) Limit how many times your animation loops. Another way to annoy a potential customer is if your information loops over and over and over again. Limit it to 10 or less times and then have it freeze on the most important information in your advertising banner.



Jane Stone, VP Marketing PointBanner.com
jane@pointbanner.com