A web ad banner design should possess certain elements to attract the attention of the surfers and convince them, so that they click the banner within seconds. The first and the foremost thing to keep in mind always is: Never be satisfied with the advertising material. You can only make good guesses on the real interests of a target audience and the reaction to it. So develop a banner that you feel is attractive and repeat the process again and again.

“Impression” is a term used to count the views of a banner and “click-through” denotes the clicking on the banner by a surfer. When you divide the number of click-throughs by the number of impressions and multiply this by 100 you get what is known as “click-through –rate” or in short “CTR” which is taken to measure or test the effectiveness of a banner. Using this CTR, assess the effectiveness of the banner and try to improve it by developing different better banners. Do not keep high expectations at the beginning. A CTR of 1% is average and it is OK for a beginner.

Usually banners are displayed at the top right corner of the website and almost all the surfers are more or less accustomed to it. But strictly speaking it is not the proper place to display a banner because a viewer might unconsciously blur the parts of a website where an advertisement is expected. A banner will get much more attention if displayed at different places and so change the place from one to another throughout the website.

Visitors scan websites, they do not waste time on analyzing every detail of a web page. This is one of the important reasons for the banner creator to add only a few elements on the banner. In the case of too “noisy” graphics, i.e. usage of too many colors and are stuffed with text, they get less attention as they fade into other elements of a website more easily. As such, “simple” is the best choice in the creation of a banner.

Also always remember that there are only one or two seconds to convince a viewer to click. At a glance a visitor must understand what makes the website unique and useful. To achieve this, take your own time to write down one sentence that clearly describes your service. You may try using less word in this sentence and even less when you are successful.

Regarding the text to be written on the banner, better try to talk to your target audience about solutions. There is a number of websites out there a visitor can choose from. Offer a solution and give maximum emphasize on the uniqueness of your web page while creating a web banner design.