Before you start to design your web banner advertisement, find out why you need a banner. Few of the possible reasons are listed below:
1. You want to show your banner on other websites to promote your own site.
2. You want to exchange banners with other sites.
3. You want to start your own affiliation program.
4. You want to show your own banners and banners belonging to other sites on your site.
The design of your banner is dependent on the purpose of the banner. For example, if your purpose is to promote your company then you will need to include your company logo and website address in your web banner design; and when you zero in on the exact purpose of your web banner ad, select an appropriate file format for your banner.
Most common file formats are:
· GIF
· JPEG
· PNG
· SWF
An SWF file contains animations for the banner. It is used to display high quality animations on the web banner.
GIF is one of the most widely used file formats supported by web publishers. GIF simply displays a series of images.
PNG is a bitmap format that provides lossless data compression which was created to replace the GIF format. GIF and PNG are better choices to display images and text since these are lossless data formats. GIF allows 256 colors where JPEG and PNG allow up to 16,777,216 colors.
Keeping the above factors in mind, you can now start designing your banner. Design your banner according to your purpose and your market. Your goal is to create a design that grabs the attention of visitors. Achieve it by using proper colors and a catchy punch line for your web banner design. However, while designing your web banner, do keep in mind its loading time. A banner with a low loading time will always get more clicks.
You can use online banner design services for your web banner design. Many web designer companies provide such services. They also provide a style guide which includes all different aspects of web banner designing such as banner size, layout, color etc. All you need to do is to select and send your banner specifications to the designer. Some of them also provide free online banner services although their designs are not unique since they employ pre-designed templates for the same.
Another option is to use banner creation software for your web banner design. It makes the entire designing process easy and cost-effective. However, the problem, again, with using such software is that they provide designs based on pre-designed images and templates.
