Some best practices and tactics for getting the most out of your banners and creative optimization:
* Create a benefit matrix around products. People typically think, “How will you help me?” and “What do you have for me right now?” List those genuine benefit statements and catalog the offers you can make right now.
* Choose the measure first, then the message. Decide how you’ll measure the banner’s success, then focus the banner’s message, offer, and call to action on achieving that metric. (That may seem obvious, but we see disconnects between those two factors all the time.) If you can’t map your message to your metric, chances are it won’t work.
* Looking for leads? Sell the lead conversion event in the banner and landing page. Tell them why they want to download the whitepaper and give you their info, not why they should buy your expensive technology product or service. Let your marketing escalation and salespeople do that.
* Keep it short. Don’t make people cycle through 20 seconds of slides to get the point of your offer. Make it three frames, max, two to three seconds each frame. If it takes more than three seconds to communicate your message, you’re too verbose. Get right to the payoff by using reverse-pyramid style copywriting. Start with the payoff and follow with the lead in or supporting facts.
* Use the power of suggestion. Tell people what you want them to do. Do want them to click now, download now, access now, get now, or sign up now? Tell them.
* Use a static call to action. Your call to action should appear on all slides, not just the last slide of a looping animation. On horizontal banners, place the offer or call to action on the right side. People read left to right, so their eyes will end on the offer or call to action. On skyscraper banners, place your static offer or call to action on the top and bottom of the banner. And be sure to use large fonts and contrasting colors.
* Treat your banner like a billboard. Your banner must stand out and communicate your message as if people were passing it in a fast-moving car.
* Use variety. Use a wide variety of graphical treatments so all your banner concepts look very different from one another. Even with different offers, if all your banners look similar at first glance, chances are they’ll perform at the same level. If one tanks, they’ll all tank.
* Keep offers simple. One benefit, one offer. Don’t put multiple offers in one banner.
* Deliver on your offer right away. Land people on instant conversion pages that deliver on the offer.

Do photographic images get old on the web ?
What I mean is, photographic images placed in a prominent area of a web site like the header, seen by repeat visitors, time and time again. Does the recognition of this one (1) photo get old quickly for our site visitors ? Would it be more effective to use graphic images ? What is the psychology behind this ?

The psychology behind image recognition is simply this:
A photographic image is immediately recognizable to the web site visitor. The visitor sees the image for what it is, literally, because we have spelled it out for them (whell, not nearly as much as using words). The mind works subconsciously recognizing the image and not needing to work very hard to fill in any missing information…in other words…we get it ! Conversely with a graphic image, the site visitor fills in some of the information due to the image’s nature…beacause it is a bit more abstract. When the visitor “fills in the blanks” their mind is stimulated, they “make it their own” personalizing the content on even greater levels. One byproduct of this relates to repeat visitors…they end up not seeing the same old site.

So, to sum it all up, when the site visitor’s imagination kicks in, it allows them to see slightly different things (using graphic images vs. photographic images)in the same image each time they visit. It also allows a visitor to make the content more…”their content”. If your going to design using photographic images in the most prominent place on a website (like a header), one solution for “freshness” would be to cycle a few images using a random rotation. Similar to reading the book vs. watching the movie (a movie spells it out for you)…the book is always better , or at least that’s what they say.