How would I go about effectively advertising my own website

�

A. The most popular way of advertising a website is via banner advertising�- this is the strip across the top of the page that is usually an advert, sometimes it is animated and it often includes some type of movement within the advert to draw your attention to it. Lots of websites sell this space and it works for the advertiser because their website will be connected to the ad, and traffic will be diverted to a site by clicking on the advert.

�

Q. What are the benefits and pitfalls of using banner advertising

A. There are pros and cons to using banner advertising. On the plus side they potentially draw people to your site, they are quite easy to create and are relatively inexpensive. On the negative side, web surfers have seen so many of them that they are often ignored, they don't always work (i.e. they don't create enough extra revenue via increased traffic to cover the cost of advertising) and it is often difficult to monitor the amount of extra traffic a banner ad has created.

�

Q. Do you have any tips on making banner advertising work

A. The best tip for placing any advert is to place it in the right place, you may get a really cheap deal for placing a banner ad on a site that is not connected to your product or the subject of your site - but this will probably mean that the people that see your ad won't be interested in your site at all so the ad won't create any extra traffic. So it is best to place your ad where you know it will reach an interested audience (even if that means paying more for it) - this way you will increase your chances of having a high click-through rate (a high number of users clicking through to your site).

�

Recent research into Internet practice states that increasingly, it is only new surfers on the Internet that will click on a banner ad because experienced surfers are tired of seeing them. This doesn't mean that banner ads won't work it just means that you should try placing them on sites or portals that are attracting new surfers e.g. if AOL or Virgin is conducting a massive High Street initiative to attract people to the Internet for the first time - you should try to get a banner ad on their home page as lots of new surfers will see it.

�

Another tip is to buy an ad via a banner exchange programme - this works by having your ad carried on a non-competitive site, and in exchange you carry their ad. This is an attractive proposition if you dont have a lot of money to spend on advertising, as you won't have lost out if it doesn't attract a lot of traffic. You can find out more about banner exchanges on the following sites (these sites can also create a banner advert for you): www.bannerexchange.com and www.ukbanners.com.

�

As your potential audience is becoming more savvy about banner advertising, a good way of attracting new people to your site could be to buy a hidden banner ad on a search engine. This ad will appear when a keyword (that relates to your product) is typed into the search engine, and it will appear before the list of results to a search e.g. if you're selling swimming trunks on your website and someone types in the word 'trunks' into your selected search engine, your ad will automatically appear before any listing, which will encourage the surfer to click on your ad immediately. It sounds impressive, but such adverts are also quite expensive.

�

Q. Is there a way of getting rid of banner advertising on your screen

A. Unfortunately for advertisers there is through filtering software, an example of this can be found at www.adkiller.com

�

Q. What other ways are there of promoting your website

A. The other main way is via search engine placement, this is done by opening up any search engine and following its instructions for registration - but it can take up to six months to have your site listed.

�

An expensive (you will have to pay �100 per month on average) but guaranteed way of getting onto a search engine is if you pay an agency to do it for you. Severina is one such agency that does this for a fee and they can be contacted at http://www.severina.co.uk, they will also guarantee placement in the top 10 or top 20 listings on certain search engines. It may well be worth investing in search engine placement if you're really serious about promoting your site as a recent study carried out by NPD stated that over 55% of online purchases resulted from search engine placement.

�

Other ways of promotion include PR - a press release to your local newspaper or a relevant specialist magazine may result in editorial coverage (which is free) or even better, a good review of your site. Alternatively, you could try to get your site talked about in a chat room or newsgroup - word of mouth is a very popular form of marketing that always works. Old fashioned advertising�- in newspapers etc. with your web address printed in the ad can attract traffic -especially if you connect it to a competition that can only be entered via your website. Also, remember to print your web address on all email and paper correspondence.

�

If you have any other Internet and Technology related questions, please click here

�

By Karen Anderson

�