Use The Power Word "FREE"
If you offer something free, e.g. a software demo, samples, the word
"FREE" must display on the banner. Offering something free is very attractive
and can prompt visitors to click. Anyway, people like get something free.
Also, do you know the word "FREE" is a very popular keywords in search
engine? If so, you must now understand why the word "FREE" can increase
CTR.
Give A Reason To Click
You must explain clearly why visitors must click your banner. E.g. If
you offer low cost holiday plan, you can add "Limited budget but want
to enjoy your holiday?" or "Reveal the most inexpensive holiday plan in
U.S.A." in your banner. If there's no convincing reason to click your
banner, you can expect a low CTR.
Keep The Message Short
Although your banner can be as big as 468x60 pixels, you must still
keep your message short, focused, and use catchy font sizes and font types.
Keep Your Banner Fresh
Some studies in Universities show that CTR will drop after a banner
displays for more than 2 to 3 weeks. This may due to visitors feel boring
or those who would click your banners already did it. Thus, you need to
prepare more than 1 banner for your promotion program.
Sizes Matters
If your banner size is large, the download speed could be very low.
Visitors are highly likely to press stop button of browser. As consequence,
your banner is not seen. In addition, many websites are reluctant to host
banner size greater than 12Kbytes because of the speed issue. Just bear
in mind, your banner size must keep smaller than 12Kbytes although some
other experts said lower than 15Kbytes is still acceptable. Anyway, smaller
is better.
Make a Direct Hyperlink
You must directly link your banner to the page offering what has been
said in your banner. Don't link your banner to your homepage and let visitors
to search for what they want.
Animation
Strangely, some studies show that animation decreases CTR although you
may think that animation can draw people attention and thus increases
CTR. I think that it is because people misuse animation. Your animation
should not be too complex otherwise your banner size is too large. Second,
your animation should not loop infinitely that tends to irritate visitors.
You can leave the main message on the last animation frame. E.g. You can
raise a question in the first animation frame and then gives the answer
in the last animation frame.
Style
The banner style should be carefully chosen. If you choose a wrong style,
the banner may adversely affect your company image. For example, your
site is a medical consulting site but your banner sounds like a fun site.
Do you think that your target visitors will click your banner? I think
that they tend to click a more professional look banner.
