Are Your Ads Distracting?

Posted on 14. Dec, 2009 by Isaac Yassar in Blogging

feedbackHello!

I have an interesting experience to share with all of you regarding ads and distraction.

A while ago, I asked for some feedback regarding my new animated header image on WordPress Forum. You can view my thread here.

The feedback I got was quite surprising.

I got some response saying that my site was overly-animated and distracted. It was quite contradictory with the feedback I received from my buddies here. None of my buddies complained about my animation.

However, I noticed that I and my buddies have good relationships. They are already familiar with my site and know what I’m writing here. I guess they pay attention more to my articles rather than my layout.

On the other side, the people who gave me the feedback in WP Forum were not familiar with my site. This is interesting, because their feedback were honest first impressions. Good chance that it was their first visit to my site.

After thinking for a while, I agreed that my buttons were too actively animated. It could distract people visiting here, especially the time first visitors. They can get annoyed and leave before reading any article of mine. That is not good.

I personally thought animated buttons were more interesting, so I was quite confused of what to do. Then I went to ProBlogger.net, a successful example of professional blogs with animated button ads.

After I observe the buttons there for a moment, I found out that most of them were animated. But they were not very active, they had slow animation. So they were not very distracting.

Then I decided to edit the animation of my buttons. I host all of them here, so I can edit them to suit my needs.

The buttons you are seeing now are not very active in animation, they are calm. Most of them have 5 or even 10 seconds duration on their main frames. If you still see some buttons with extra fast animation, may be you need to clear your browser cache.

In sum, the lesson is we got to watch our ads. Animated buttons / banners are nice, but they can distract visitors if too actively animated. We need to be careful with it, right?

Tags: ads, Blogging

19 Responses to “Are Your Ads Distracting?”

  1. George Serradinho

    14. Dec, 2009

    Some users like animated images and others not. It was actually nice of you to ask and get others opinion on that.

    One has to balance the content with the rest of their theme.

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      14. Dec, 2009

      Thanks. Yeah, feedback is important. We need to regularly search for it so that we can regularly improve our website.

      Reply to this comment

  2. Burhan

    14. Dec, 2009

    Animated pics tend to spin my head around! :D

    Reply to this comment

  3. BestofBlogger

    14. Dec, 2009

    i agree with you, genrally people dont like animated buttons or banners, these buttons sometimes cause eyestrain.

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      14. Dec, 2009

      Yeah, we got to be careful in defining their animation. Otherwise, they will distract and annoy people. ProBlogger.net has good examples of nicely animated buttons.

      Reply to this comment

  4. Dana @ Online Knowledge

    14. Dec, 2009

    I surely is not distracted by it because i did not able to see it from first time. I think it is because compression image that my internet provider use.

    Reply to this comment

  5. Blogging Tips

    14. Dec, 2009

    I agree with you, many people do not like that and also it decreases the load time.

    Reply to this comment

  6. Jim Clary

    15. Dec, 2009

    I like the way the header works. I think any faster would be a distraction.

    Reply to this comment

  7. Sarge | beginnerblogger.com

    15. Dec, 2009

    I think the main purpose for animated ads/banners is to grab peoples attention.

    Perhaps a good thing to do is to run any animation once (ie don’t repeat) that way you grab the persons attention (hopefully) and don’t annoy them.

    You can do this easily in photoshop by setting the repeat of the animation to once. Or you could make a flash animation but that may be a bit more technical for some.

    Just make sure the last frame in the animation is a frame that holds all the information or most important information that you want your visitors to read (as the animation isn’t starting again)

    Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      15. Dec, 2009

      Hi Sarge. That will do. Or my favorite way: slowing them down (in animation). So we give the frame with the most information a really long duration, such as 10 seconds. People who don’t pay close attention will think the image is static. I mean who will wait for 10 seconds just to find out whether an image is animated or not? ;-)

      Reply to this comment

  8. S.Pradeep Kumar

    15. Dec, 2009

    Cool.. kind of you to share your feedback with us.. lovely one though.. ;)

    Reply to this comment

  9. Codrut @ Blog Post Ideas

    20. Dec, 2009

    That’s a smart move. I have yet to see other bloggers who’d actively ask for feedback and meet their readers interest.

    Distracting readers from your content to watch your ads is like hunting for a quick buck, and this could be seen from a mile away… by your readers, and advertisers.

    Reply to this comment

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