“You cannot bore people into buying your product only interest them”. David Ogilvy
There is no escape from advertising! You have probably noticed a huge increase in the amount of advertising you are being exposed to daily from your online activities, your daily shopping expeditions, and even when you use a public bathroom.
The average person is exposed to a couple of hundreds to a couple of thousand advertisements and marketing messages every single day.
Of the brands that you have interacted with today, which ones did the best job of marketing to your needs or interests? Do they have a clear message? How did they connect with you?
Digital ads have historically been given a bad rap, primarily due to poor user experience (UX), bland creative, and limited metrics to validate the success of campaigns and the invasive nature that ad users looking for a close or mute button at first notice.
However, with users today consuming more digital content, especially on mobile. More on any other media source including TV and radio, mobile & desktop has become the quickest growing platform for advertising.
With over 12 years’ experience in digital, Big Mobile’s UX Led Creative experts are here to ensure your desktop and mobile campaigns deliver the strongest engagement, viewability, brand awareness and consideration possible.
Digital (Mobile & Desktop) Design and UX Best Practice
Repurposing your existing assets for multiple screens is unlikely to drive strong results. Great Desktop & Mobile ad design is design, combined with data intelligence and a focus on the UX. At BIG our best-in-class, in-house creative team of designers are willing to share some of their secrets to designing successful digital campaigns.
- Ad Engagement
- The first thing about engagement is to understand how the consumer will view and interact with their content. The best way to do this is to look at what device the user will likely view and intact with the ad. Devices such as desktop computers will be limited to keyboard and mouse inputs. Alternatively, mobile and tablet users will use touch-screen gestures such as swiping, tapping and two-finger scrolling to view and interact with their content. These inputs must be taken into consideration when designing digital ads.
- Brand Awareness
- This might seem obvious, but logo presence is an often-overlooked principle in digital creative design. With digital, especially mobile, you only have a very brief window of opportunity to capture a user’s attention. So whether users see your ad for one second or a minute, you want to be sure they know the ad is promoting.
- Product Centric
- Another obvious but overlooked principle is having your product featured front and center. This is especially true when you are looking to drive consideration and purchase intent. When users see your ad, you want to ensure that there is no doubt as to what it is they are buying or what you want them to do. Having your ad product-focused is a key element in your mobile creative design.
- Clear Messaging
- Ensure that your creative has clear and distinct messaging and avoid multiple messages. Stick to your campaign’s key message and reduce clutter.
- Call to Action
- At the moment that you’ve captured your audience’s attention with your clear messaging and excellent mobile creative, you want to invoke some action. Having a prominent and clear call to action helps invoke a response from your audience. Providing a place for them to click to “buy now” or “learn more” ensures users know how to respond to your offering.
- Animation & Interactivity
- Gone are the days of plain static banners. Digital ads live within the web structure called document object model (or DOM for short) but can now freely utilise HTML5 rich animations. Adding effects such as imagery animating into view or creating is a very effective way to catch the users attention from static body copy and the website UI from within the DOM. Digital ads are also unique compared to traditional advertising as they can offer a more personal experience by the use of interactivity. By offering enticing content that the user ‘wants’ to interact can significantly boost ad performance.
- Beautiful Imagery
- With the quick-scrolling nature of the mobile device, users are more likely to notice the beautiful design and artwork versus lengthy blocks of text. Show the user, don’t tell.
- High Impact but Non-Obtrusive
- There is a fine line between engaging and obtrusive and an annoying advertisement is likely to devalue a brand and make a user less likely to revisit a website again. Your choice of High Impact and Engaging Creative needs to respect the user.
- Keeping the User Experience at the Forefront
- A great ad unit blends seamlessly into the content that users are actively engaged with while capturing the attention of the user. The biggest “hotspots” on a mobile device are in the middle or towards the bottom of the screen. Primary functions, such as swiping through a product carousel should be kept near the middle of the screen. While secondary functions, such as tapping or clicking a call-to-action, should be kept near the bottom. The ultimate goal is to ensure users are able to easily interact with the unit without frustration.
