While banners have lost the appeal of many marketers on the web, they are still an effective means of pulling in traffic. The key is to have a visually appealing banner with an enticing offer. Here’s what you need to do:

Before you start, decide exactly what you want your banner to do. Decide the action you want your prospect to take. Keep this in mind at all times when you’re designing the banner!
Who are you making this banner for? Stay focused on your target market
Generate curiosity, Create excitement, Make it urgent!
Write about BENEFITS


Make sure you tell people what action you want them to take! If you want them to go to your website, put a box that says CLICK HERE. This will dramatically increase your traffic. This works even better if you underline text in your message and make it look like a link.
Promote Free Reports, Free Samples, Free Ebooks - Free Always Pulls Well!
Use bright colors that draw a person’s attention. Yellow, blue and green tend to pull the best.
Make sure your banner is fast loading. Keep it under 10K. You want your banner to load fast for everyone, even people will slow 28.8k modems!
Animated banners tend to catch people’s eyes better than static ones. Just don’t overdo it! Remember, you want a fast loading time.
Surf the web for a little while and look at banners that catch YOUR eye. This will give you ideas for designing your own banners.
Change your banners on a regular basis to maximize effectiveness.
Test all your banners! A good way to do this is through banner exchange programs. Once you establish which ones have the best response rate, you can place the ‘winning’ banners on targeted private sites.