...webdesign for small business owners

If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you'll want to put some thought into how you'll integrate them. Poor integration of ads into your web site will cause visitors to click away fast.

Successful integration of ads into your site can be highly profitable. Before I show you where to position ads, I want to mention a few important points about ads.

How many ads should you place on your web site? There is an optimum ratio of ads to content. If your website has too high a proportion of advertising relative to content, the traffic on your web site will suffer and you will lose money. If your web site has too low a portion of advertising relative to content, the sales on your website will suffer and you will lose money.

What is the optimum ratio of ads to content? I can't point to any studies, but I feel the optimum ratio is somewhere around 20 to 25 percent ads relative to content. Go much above that ratio and, despite more ads, the revenue from your site goes down. But, there are ways to exceed that ratio and still make more money.

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 best value to the visitors to your website. These are ads where the value is so good you might respond to the ad yourself. This type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

Another example is ads for gifts around the holidays. People expect and are not turned off by an increase in ads around the holidays. Finding gifts for everyone on your list is difficult work, and people appreciate gift ideas. Again, this type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

You can safely exceed the normal ratio of ads to content if you hide the ads in the content. An example of this is product "reviews". For example, computer magazines are almost 100 percent advertising posing as product reviews.

I have seen websites that display the exact same banner on every page. If I didn't respond to the banner on the first page, what makes them think I will respond 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 preposition for you. Keep your ads fresh. Ads are boring enough without repeating 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.

Ad type relative to response rate

I have heard claims that text ads receive the highest response. 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 usually placed in the more responsive areas of a web page. All thing being equal, a graphic ad will always get better response than a text ad.

A graphic ad will get higher response than a text ad, and an animated graphic ad will get higher response than a static graphic ad. But animation can be taken to an extreme. Some types of animation are annoying and not only does the ad get a low response, but it also causes visitors to click away from your web site.

Examples of annoying animated ads are banners that flash or jiggle or do something else that distracts the visitor so they can't read the web page content. Those visitors that don't click away will scroll the web page so this type of ad goes off screen while they try to read the web page.

A secret few advertising designers know is that the graphic that will get the most attention is a picture of a human face. People are genetically predisposed to look at a human face in their view area. Try it yourself while you're browsing the web. If a web page has a human face on it, that's the first thing you will look at.

Where to position ads on a small business site

To discuss where to place ads on a web page, we need to divide a page into five sections as listed below.

1. Header
2. Footer
3. Left Margin
4. Right Margin
5. Center column

Note: There is a sixth area of the web page which is the popup window. There are many 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 much less effective today, and, from my own experience, when I tried using popup windows, the page views on my web site dropped by 50 percent.

The most common position to place advertising banners is in the header section of a web page. Web users have programmed themselves to ignore banners in this position. The response rate of banners in the header section of web pages has dropped to something like .0001 percent. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has tried to overcome this problem by defining giant (what I call "battleship size") banners. I don't know of any studies that show this works.

Using banners in the head section of your web page is a waste of processor time, but most web pages still use them. Making a sale this way is a long shot. Banners in the footer section of a web page are even less responsive.

Actually web users have programmed themselves to ignore all advertising on the web. However, from my own experience, you can get some response from ads in the left and right margins of a web page.

The most responsive position to put your ads is in the center column of the web page along with the content. As visitors are reading the article on the web page, they come upon the ad. It's unavoidable.

If you imagine the center column of your web page divided into three parts; top, middle, and bottom, the most responsive position for your ad will be right in the middle. As the visitors are reading the article on the web page, they are forced to look at the ad as they continue to the lower part of the article. This might be a little annoying to the reader, but let's hope your content is worth that slight annoyance.

I would recommend placing your ad at the bottom of the center column. As visitors read the article on the web page, they end up looking at your ad. This is almost 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 web pages has a major impact on your ability to produce revenue from your website. Poor ad integration will cause visitors to click away. Proper integration can make your web site highly profitable. But, ad position is not the only determining factor, don't forget the ratio of ads to content, ad management, and ad type relative to response rate.

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