Integrating Advertising into Your Web Design
by:
Stephen Bucaro
If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you'll want to put several thought into how you'll integrate them. Poor integration of ads into your website wish cause visitors to click away fast. Eminent integration of ads into your site can be extremely
profitable. Before I show you wherever
to position ads, I want to mention a few important points just about ads.
1. Quantitative relation
of ads to content
How many a ads should you place on your website? There is an optimum quantitative relation
of ads to content. If your website has too high a proportion of advertising relative to content, the traffic on your website wish suffer and you wish lose money. If your website has too low a portion of advertising relative to content, the sales on your website wish suffer and you wish lose money.
What is the optimum quantitative relation
of ads to content? I can't point to any studies, but I feel the optimum quantitative relation
is somewhere about 20 to 25 pct ads relative to content. Go more above that quantitative relation
and, despite more ads, the revenue from your site goes down. But, there are route to exceed that quantitative relation
and still do more money.
Ads as a service
Advertisements can provide useful information, as well as content. In that case, the ads become content. Here's an example. Rather than post ads that pay you the highest commission, post ads that provide the better value to the visitors to your website. These are ads wherever
the value is so nice you power respond to the ad yourself. This type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.
Another example is ads for gifts about the holidays. Folk expect and are not turned off by an increase in ads about the holidays. Finding gifts for everyone on your list is difficult work, and folk appreciate gift ideas. Again, this type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.
You can safely exceed the normal quantitative relation
of ads to content if you hide the ads in the content. An example of this is product "reviews". For example, computer magazines are all but 100 pct advertising motility as product reviews.
2. Repetition of ads and ad management
I have seen websites that display the exact same banner on every page. If I didn't respond to the banner on the 1st page, what does them think I wish repond to it on the second, third ... hundredth page?
Displaying the same banner on every page of your website is annoying to your website's visitors, and a money losing propostion for you. Support your ads fresh. Ads are boring enough without continuance the same ad over and over. Display a variety of ads, and use an ad management system. An example of an ad management system is a banner rotator.
3. Ad type relative to response rate
I have detected
claims that text ads obtain the highest reponse. I'm sure these results are not related to whether the ad is text or graphics, but more likely related to the fact that text ads are commonly placed in the more responsive areas of a webpage. All thing being equal, a graphic ad wish always get better response than a text ad.
A graphic ad wish get higher response than a text ad, and an animated graphic ad wish get higher response than a static graphic ad. But animation can be taken to an extreme. Several types of animation are annoying and not only does the ad get a low response, but it as well causes visitors to click away from your website.
Examples of annoying animated ads are banners that flash or jiggle or do thing
else that distracts the traveller
so they can't see the webpage content. Those visitors that don't click away wish scroll the webpage so this type of ad goes off screen patch they try to see the webpage.
A private secret few advertising designers cognize is that the graphic that wish get the most attention is a image of a human face. Folk are genetically susceptible
to look at a human face in their view area. Try it yourself patch you're browsing the web. If a webpage has a human face on it, that's the 1st thing you wish look at.
Where to position ads on your webpage
To discuss wherever
to place ads on a webpage, we need to divide a page into five sections as listed below.
Header
Footer
Left Margin
Right Margin
Center column
Note: There is a sixth area of the webpage which is the popup window. There are many a forms of popup windows; pop-over, pop-under, delayed, and exit. The polite way to use popup windows is the self-closing popup window. Because of popup window blockers, popup windows are more less effective today, and, from my own experience, once
I tried mistreatment popup windows, the page views on my website born
by 50 percent.
The most common position to place advertising banners is in the header section of a webpage. Web users have programmed themselves to ignore banners in this position. The response rate of banners in the header section of webpages has born
to thing
like .0001 percent. The Cyberspace Advertising Bureau (IAB) has tried to overcome this problem by process
giant (what I call "battleship size") banners. I don't cognize of any studies that show this works.
Using banners in the head section of your webpage is a waste of processor time, but most webpages still use them. Fashioning a sale this way is a long shot. Banners in the footer section of a webpage are even as less responsive.
Actually Web users have programmed themselves to ignore all advertising on the web. However, from my own experience, you can get several response from ads in the left and right margins of a webpage. Most websites are designed with the menu in the left margin and possibly ads in the right margin. This means if the user has a low solution display, depending upon the dimension
of the webpage, the advertising may be off the screen.
Place your menu in the right margin and use the left margin for advertising. This places the user with a low solution display in the positon of having to scroll to view the menu. Too bad. They should get a bigger display. Website revenue comes first.
The most responsive position to put your ads is in the center column of the webpage on
with the content. As visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they move upon the ad. It's unavoidable.
If you imagine the center column of your webpage divided into three parts; top, middle, and bottom, the most responsive position for your ad wish be right in the middle. As the visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they are forced to look at the ad as they continue to the lower part of the article. This power be a little annoying to the reader, but let's hope your content is worth that slight annoyance.
I would-be recommend placing your ad at the bottom of the center column. As visitors see the article on the webpage, they end up looking at your ad. This is all but as effective as placing the ad in the middle of the column, and a lot less annoying to the reader.
As you can see, how you integrate advertising into your webpages has a major impact on your ability to produce revenue from your website. Poor ad integration wish cause visitors to click away. Proper integration can do your website extremely
profitable. But, ad positon is not the only deciding factor, don't forget the quantitative relation
of ads to content, ad management, and ad type relative to response rate.
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Stephen Bucaro
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