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Valuable Success Tips for Displaying Affiliate Marketing Banners
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By Elizabeth McGee
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Banner links can be a powerful promotion tool for advertisingyour affiliate products. Almost all affiliate programs offerthem and smart affiliates take advantage of their advertisingpower by using them on their affiliate sites.
Using banner advertising is a valuable resource but how you usethem is key. The success of a banner's click through rate isoften determined by where a banner is placed on your site, howit is worded, its eye-catching ability, colors, etc.
So what makes a banner achieve a high C.T.R.?
There are several things ...let's take a look.
Keep Your Banners Focused. Don't use your home page for banners.Keep your banners focused on the page designed for thatparticular product. For example, a gardening site should displaya fertilizer banner on the fertilizer page. Keep your banners,and text links for that matter, on relevant content pages.
Size of Banners. Size does matter. Research has found thatbanners, normally those around 468 x 60 (pixels) are morecatchy, gaining more clicks than the smaller pixel banners.
Banner Animation. There have been studies that suggestedanimation can increase response rates by up to twenty fivepercent. It is important to note however, that flashing,obnoxious banners can have quite the opposite effect, especiallyif it remains in a position that is annoying to someone tryingto read text.
Using animation banners would be better placed out of the rangeof text where a viewer can become distracted by it.
Banner Phrases and Wording. A banner's choice of words iscritical to its success. A good banner will demand a click byusing attention grabbing words and phrases. Words such as 'Clickhere now', 'Buy Now', 'money back guarantee' all create a callto action . Words such as 'Last chance', 'only 24 hours left',or 'limited time offer' create a sense of urgency.
Asking questions that generate emotions such as 'Want to savemoney?', How would you like to be 10 pounds thinner?', 'Wouldn'tyou like to be debt free?' all are successful in promotingclicks. Be careful of using the word 'FREE'. While 'free' mightgenerate a high C.T.R., the click to sales, however, is not ashigh.
Banners that ask questions instructing visitors to interact withthe banner such as flashing an icon where the visitor can pointand click has also shown to increase click through rates by asmuch as 18%.
Website Positioning of Banners. Banners at the bottom of a pagehave almost three times the C.T.R. than at the top of the page.This is primarily because most viewers to a site are looking forinformation. Once they read the information they are morereceptive to clicking on the banner after the information.
It's also been noted that banners placed on the lower right handside next to the scroll bar had over a 200% increase in C.T.R.
Banner Loading Time. Use fast loading banners. C.T.R. increasesto nearly three percent when using banners that are about 3,000bytes vs. banners over 10,000 bytes. You will miss out on clicksif it takes too long for a banner to load.
Refresh Your Banners. Refresh your banners on a regular basis.I've learned that banners tend to lose their giddy-up afterprolonged use. Even Yahoo! has mentioned that banners 'burn out'after about two weeks of use. Allow your site to change its lookoccasionally when promoting a particular product.
In conclusion, it's all about testing. No one can say for surewhat works best. Tests are conducted all the time and theoriesare published, however only you can determine what really worksbest for you by testing it.
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