Top 10 Design tips for your advertising

A few things for you to keep in mind while designing your next advertisement. Remember, the true test is always in your own customers response to your advertising. If they buy - then it is right for them. If not, test another variation.

Things to test:

1) Coupon style borders simulate eyeballs - that dashed border or straight line border around your ad will increase readership

2) Test having a circular border - keep the text straight but the border to be designed like a circle - in a square and rectangular world like most publications are - yours will definitely stand out

3) Reverse print will kill your response - you see it all the time - copy heavy text with white text on black background.  This is proven to decrease readership on text heavy marketing by 50% and more.

4) Colors to use to make certain headlines an subheads standout - blue and then red are the most powerful - and the most profit pulling

5) White background with black text always pulls best response - second choice is yellow background with black text

6) Online fonts to use - Verdana or Arial are most widely received for body copy - Tahoma for headlines and subheads

7) Offline fonts to use - Times new roman and courier new for body copy - I personally like Tahoma for heads and subs offline as well - tests prove buyers do too

8) Never use all caps in headlines or subheads - use initial caps (first letter of each word in caps). Also test in heads and subs using only a capital on the very first letter - the rest all in lower case

Initial Caps: If A Corporate World Flunkie Can Write A Simple....

Regular: If a corporate world flunkie can write a simple...

9) keep your columns fairly narrow - both online and off. It make for easier reading and lesser chance of getting lost in the text

10) 11 point font receives the most favorable readership and action

Again, everything above needs to be tested with your product or service in your market.  It is only your prospects that will say with 100% certainty what they want to see - and what they will respond to.

Comments

[Jay Scott]

This is ridiculous. "11 point font receives the most favorable readership and action"? Who did this research? Where are the focus groups? Who are you to write up these rules as if you're passing down design commandments?

[Ciaran]

Thank you I'm trying some of these design ideas in my production work.
Your site is informative and the design is also nice. I'm offering my proofreading services. Not to be a jerk but I noticed a few typos and I proofread, edit and write for a living.

[bob]

Utter crap! Don't follow this advice...