7 Tips For A Web Banner
Whether it is for encouraging to sign a petition or just to promote a website, web banners should be made carefully. A lot of people may depend of the quality of your work after all!
(Example of web banner)
Visual appearance
- Color and tastes : You have your own judgement ;) But don’t forget that your banners may be used on very different pages. So it’s better to offer multiple choices!
The (x)html code
It’s good practice to provide high quality (x)html code that won’t break other people web pages.
The following is advice concerning the img element :
- Width and height attributes : Do not ommit them! It’s a shame when a page can’t render quickly just because the server providing one picture is too slow/busy.
- The “alt” attribute : It’s useful for blind people, useful when the picture can’t display, and useful for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You have no excuse to forget it!
- Close the img element :use </img>. It’s html compliant, xhtml compliant and it works with nearly all web-browsers.
Hosting the banner
- Once a banner is available, avoid modifications : In particular, you should never modify the picture’s size because it may break something for people who have used the old code. You should avoid modifying the content too : people who have included your banner may don’t like if you modify what appears on their site without asking first. If you want to modify the picture, consider making a copy of it (under another filename) and then modify the copy.
- Availability of the picture over time : You don’t want that something breaks in the sites of people helping you, right?
- Consider encouraging people to use a local copy of the picture instead : It may help you to reduce traffic costs and some webmasters may prefer it. (Note: it reduces what you can log too, but you’re not very interested in gathering personal data, are you?)
Internet is not a paradise
If you use some banners that you’ve not done yourself, do check first (and fix?).
