When designing a banner, there are many things to think about, and we are going to talk about all of them here, in this thread.

The first thing we will talk about is making sure the size of the banner is good.

the size means the dimentions AND filesize

typical banner sizes are:
468 X 60
160 X 600
720 X 90

The thing to remember with filesizes are, the smaller the better. This means that banner will load faster for the user, thusly speeding the whole internet.

Try to keep your filesize under 10k, but 15k is acceptable for larger (160 or 720) area ads.

To keep a great banner under these filesizes there are tricks with the number of colors and compression that we will talk about later.

SoM

Taglines:

When choosing a tagline, try to be brief, descriptive and catching.

Tom's Widgets would obviously sell widgets, so a tagline of 'widgets of all colors' would work, but isnt very effective. 'any color, size or shape' would be better.

Remember, you are tyring to get their attention and repeating words, giving vague descriptions, or trying to advertise too many products with one banner can lead to confusion (will talk about tageting ads later)

When choosing a tagline, try to keep it between 4 and 8 words, not repeat words, and make the user want to click the banner.

Tom's Widgets
Any Size, Shape or Color

SoM

Clarity

Have a very clear, viewer-friendly banner is extremely important. There are so many banners I see out there that are "fuzzy" or just look bad. The more professional looking your banner is, the more people will want to click on it.

... just my two cents worth

Good advice, will have to redesign my banner as it's crap !!!

Specifics

when you design a banner, it is important to decide what you are advertising, specifically.

say you sell 3 different types of widgets, you could do any of these:

• A banner for the site that says you sell widgets


• Specific ad about widget 1


• Specific ad about widget 2


• Specific ad about widget 3

if your store has widgets sampo's and corn, you might make a banner that says all 3 and links to storefront, but a more efficient system would be to make 3 banners that link to each category. doing this keeps your stats seperate, so you know if people click your banner for sampo's more, then you can focus your advertising on that item, because of higher demand.

SoM