Above the fold – Banners?
October 13th, 2008Putting banners above the fold?
The first few seconds of viewing a website or blog are decisive in terms of whether the Internet user stays or not! The area above the fold provides that first impression.
Couple that with the fact that the vast majority of Internet users dislike being blatantly advertised to means that the older style banner is generally not appropriate for an over the fold position on your home page.
The older style banner was brash, colourful and often flashed messages of graphics. They were mainly full page width, graphically based and generally slow to load.
Banners of this type were a popular way to monetize web pages not so long ago and still are in some niche markets. They can generated significant volumes of targeted generate niche traffic.
Monetization was generally provisioned on a pay per click basis and frequently managed by third parties who rotated the banners.
Can banners be appropriate over the fold?
We have used banners successfully in the past when placed over the fold to generate targeted niche traffic to affiliate sites; squeeze pages and generate pay per click revenue.
Banners work but their presentation and integration into a site has to be quite different from the older style.
Banners have to be subtle, visually in keeping and seamlessly integrated into the site. They must appear to be part of the site, not a bolt on component that doesn’t quite fit!
Enticing benefit statements with gentle invitations work well in conjunction with product based content. The same applies to page content based questions with banner based answers.
You can also combine content with a smaller graphical banner in a side bar as a combined page entity
Remember to incorporate keywords and keyphrases that can be read by search engine spiders and capitalise on in the text from SEO perspective.
The content of the page needs to have relevancy not only to your niche market, its keywords and phrases but also to the banner’s statement so the page has a cohesive feel about it and visually has a good fit.
Conclusion
In conclusion, banners can be used successfully above the fold, at the top of the page or in one of the side bars, preferably on the right hand side of the page
Plan carefully so the banner is fully integrated into the page
Banners still have a place and you will be surprised at how well they work and can generate niche traffic that you can direct to wherever you want it to go!
Kind regards Chris Nizzi
January 30th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
What are your toughts on banner blindness?
January 31st, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Hi, firstly thanks for looking at the blog.
It’s a topical area. We have seen a real decline in banner click through rates on client’s sites.
Over the last 6 to 7 months we have been testing different types of banners on one of our own sites that is monetized via affiliate programs to understand how we can improve the click through rates.
We have done this by split testing pages where the only difference is the type of banner and its placement. The optimised textural content has remained the same.
It’s a long painful process changing one aspect at a time but here are some of the aspects that have positively increased the click through rate in recent months.
1) Obviously the key word or phrase must be prominent in the banner.
2) Banners that look to be an integral part of the page work far better.
3) Using the same typefaces and size as the page content definitely helps.
4) Minimal graphics seem to work better.
5) A division around the banner area with a pale grey border to gently outline importance works.
Overall the key seems to be that the banner should not appear obtrusive but just another part of the web page.
I’ll put a post up with the overall results shortly.
Hope that helps
Regards
Chris Nizzi