Test Your Awareness
This is a great video and very relevant to the world of online advertising.
How many moonwalking bears have you put into your rich media executions, only to see the interactions associated with them never exactly delivered as you had hoped? They are not always moonwalking bears, but I have seen my fair share of really amazing, compelling, engaging, interactive elements in a banner get ignored because of extraneous animation, graphics, copy, you name it.Plain and simple - users are not on the page to interact with your banner. If you can make sure whatever you are trying get them to interact with is apparent and not hidden, your campaign will go from meh to magnificent.
Show your call to action quicker - cut the copy down, remove frames from the animation and make it clear what you would like the user to do and what they will get for performing the action.
Mouseover for More sounds a lot less appetizing than Mouseover to take the quiz and to print a $5 coupon. Obviously I’m not a copywriter and you don’t need to rewrite the production brief, but clarity should not be a rarity for call to action copy.
I used to love the Where’s Waldo books when I was younger, but there is no better way to lose a potential user than hiding the call to action. It’s just not that much fun, nor is it very effective. All to often I see a button or some copy hidden away in a corner or camouflaged amongst crazy graphics that makes very little sense.
If you’ve got something as cool as a moonwalking bear, make sure you let the user know and don’t have them counting the number of basketball passes.