Do you have a banner for your website or blog? If not, create one right now! In order to do this, I summed up a few basic tips.

1. Be professional: A banner is your virtual business card. People are getting their first impressions of your website based on your banner ad, so you must to be sure that it presents you in the best possible manner. This means you should be very careful with using correct spelling and grammar. Also, choose font sizes, styles and colors that maximize your banners readability. If you don’t do so some people might get a bad feeling of your site.

2. Ask for an action: What do you want people to do when they see your banner? Most probably you want them to visit your website. Write something like “click here” or “enter now” on it. On the Internet you can see many examples of this strategy.

3. Keep it simple: Most people are looking at a banner for less than a second. You must be sure that the message of your graphic can be easily understood. Organize your banner/advertising clear and concise to increase the possibility that the viewer gets your message. It’s very important to use just a few plain words because you can provide the user with more information on your website.

4. Raise attention or emotion: Use words like free, secret or other to raise the user’s attention. Make the viewer curious in your website. Maybe use a pun or contrast.

5. We want benefits, not features: What’s the difference between a feature and a benefit? A feature is the service you offer your visitors. A benefit is the effect on your visitors. What seems to be most appealing to you? - “We are specialized in finding deductions” (feature) or “Pay less tax” (benefit)? It is only important to say how your service improves your visitors life and not how you do that.

6. Test it: Design several ads and think about different slogans. Then run them for a short time and compare the traffic you get by the different ads. Use the most successful one and be sure your banners are always up-to-date!

7. Other important things to know: Be sure that your banner isn’t bigger then 20kb that it loads quickly. Also use the common formats as you can see at the bottom of this post.

If you don’t know where to place your banner, take a look at Google’s “AdSense Ad-Locations Heatmap”

• Ads closer to the center of the page tend to perform better
• Ads above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold
• Ads placed at the end of articles tend to do well, even though they’re below the fold
• Ads placed near site navigation or by images or other rich content tend to do well, too

Standard Internet Ad Sizes:
Ad Size Ad Type
468 x 60 Full banner
392 x 72 Full Banner/ Vertical Navigation Bar
234 x 60 Half Banner
125 x 125 Square Button
120 x 90 Button #1
120 x 60 Button #2
120 x 240 Vertical Banner
728 x 90 Leader board
160 x 600 Wide Skyscraper
120 x 600 Skyscraper
300 x 600 Half Page Ad