Why call-to-action is needed in banner ads?

Every banner ad is designed with a simple purpose. That is to bring visitors to click on your banner, to visit certain site or share their personal data. A banner advertising simply asks visitors to do certain activity which is termed as call-to-action.

Why call to action is needed?

Call-to-action is needed so that the banner gets immediate clicks or more number of clicks from visitors. A call to action can increase your click-through rate (CTR) on the target website.

How a banner can be designed with strong call-to-action? You need to keep in mind the following approaches while designing your advertising banner:

• Purpose: Your banner design ideas should be professional and should clearly tell the purpose of designing. Your banner ad should clearly reflect what you want to do, to collect data of viewers, showcase your products or company brand, generate clicks to your website or drive the visitors to affiliate website.

• One call to action: Don't put too many call-to-actions on a single banner ad. Think about the single end result or call-to-action that your banner will serve and design your banner accordingly.

• Graphics and font: The graphics and text content should persuade the visitors to do an action. The font should be quickly readable and graphics will support the messages in headline, benefit sentence or question.

• Interactivity: The banner ad can contain false form elements in graphic format like, text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons etc. Visitors try to fill data on them and instead they click on such banner ads. The advantage of 'interactive looking' banner ads is they convince visitors to click on them.

• Button text: Text within buttons is written in short. Button texts use strong call-to-action messages. These help the visitors what action to take. Texts like 'Sign Up Today', 'Join Now', 'Apply Now', 'Be A Member' narrow down the purpose and quickly drives visitors for the end result.

• Time duration: If you can convince your customers that the offer shown in the banner ad is a limited time offer, then that will make visitors more interested for a call to action. Validity of great offer duration actually raises the urge to do something in consumer's mind.

Call-to-action should be properly designed so that after seeing the banner it gets an immediate click. A banner with successful call-to-action will generate more traffic to your website. And once your banner ad has a call-to-action, you will be amazed by the large number of clicks it gets!


Author Bio: Steve Saha a designer by profession specializing in website, blogs, minisite, banners, ecovers and flash designs. He has created hundreds of minisites for his clients all over the world. You can find more details of his work and articles at Design4banners : website for banner and other web graphics design

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