Most websites commit at least one of the top crimes listed below. Do you agree with the choices?

1. Graphic Clutter

It’s obvious this website’s purpose was show as much information to visitors as possible above the fold. While this is a valiant effort, too many graphics can work against you.

A great call to action page will send your eye to a specific area. When you look at this page, your eyes are drawn everywhere and if you were looking for a car, you wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Though this page is not a landing page, it is a prime example of why less is more when trying to increase conversions with web page design. A call to action page should include benefits, features, logos, maybe one or two images and a prominent call to action button. Any more and the page will suffer.

A website home page should follow suit while including clear navigation and an easy experience for visitors. Avoid clutter at all costs. White space is your friend!

2. Blended Call to Action

Though the call to action button on this page is outlined in yellow, it does not stand out enough from the background. The yellow also matches the font above it so it blends into the background even more. The color scheme of the page is yellow, red and orange and the call to action button follows the same color scheme; therefore, it does not stand out enough. A solid color in contrast to the page would work best.

3. Distracting Background

Many businesses want to incorporate their brand colors into their website design. While this is a smart marketing strategy, if the color is overdone or distracting, it can have an adverse effect. The bright yellow background in this web page is very distracting and it draws the eye away from the purpose of the website. If you view this website in its normal size, you will see how truly distracting the bright yellow background is.

It’s good to implement your brand colors in your website design, but not at the expense of distracting visitors away from your purpose. Your background should support your web page and be somewhat neutral.

4. Lost call to action

On this page, the call to action button is not only lost, it is nonexistent. One of this website’s desired actions is to urge users to click and find out more information about the Thank You® Premier card. The current call to action is simply text that says “Get Moving”.

If you really want to lead users to an intended action, use buttons in contrasting colors. Text will never be strong enough to get users’ attention. The button should include a contrasted color that screams “click me” without slamming it in user’s faces.

Also consider the call to action button’s proximity to other elements. For example, with an ecommerce site, the “Add to cart” button would be most effective if it were placed right next to the product. You can also place call to action buttons near places of interest like testimonials, feature lists and benefits, etc. Make sure, though, not to clutter your page with too many buttons. Keep them close to your key points and at a  maximum of 2-3 per page for simple landing pages.

5. Too Much Information

When people offer us more information than we want to hear we often say it is TMI or Too Much Information. Similar to how you would want that person to be quiet, a web page will suffer this same reproach if it is suffering from TMI.

On this example web page, the call to action is not front and center and your eye is drawn to the articles instead of the “Get a Quote” text. This page, while meant to attract visitors to get a quote, leads them towards reading an article which may be too much information for this page. Content is not necessarily bad; great content outlines the pages of some of the greatest websites. But when it blurs the message of the site or distracts users from a clear call to action, profits will suffer.

For this website, a more prominent call to action in a more effective location would draw the eye there first.

The goal with a call to action page is to lead your visitors to click on the call to action button without distracting or boring them with too much information. You should include enough information (features, benefits, guarantees, testimonies) to lead them to take action without overdoing it. If your visitors cannot figure out whether or not your site will be beneficial to them in the first few seconds, they will assume the worst and hightail out of there.

6. Too many Links

This page is actually ranking quite well for competitive mortgage related keywords, but the design of the site unfortunately does not follow suit.

Unless your site is product specific (e-commerce) or purely informational, excessive text links can overwhelm users.

The purpose of this website is to guide consumers to get a mortgage quote. While classifying the links by states is a good idea, the clutter and small font does nothing for visitors’ eyeballs. As stated before, text links are ineffective as calls to action on pages like these and the close proximity of these links jumbles everything together to look like one cohesive blue link.

There is no clear call to action here. This webmaster would benefit from making this page a second page and redesigning the home page to include one or two buttons only, leading people to “Get a Quote”.

Here is a trick: Squint your eyes slightly to blur your vision and look at the page. If your call to action doesn’t stand out, adjustments may need to be made.

7. Button Placement & Location

Though this website is committing many faux pas, I chose it due to improper placement of the call to action button.

If you look on the far right (it probably took you a few seconds to find it, which is a few seconds too long), you will find a small box with a dropdown menu. This is where the webmaster would like a user to click. The only element standing out is the small red arrow and that is even questionable.

The placement and location of your call to action button is equally as important as its size and color. A great call to action will not be effective if it is surrounded by too much text or not enough whitespace, or if it is located out of sight.

Generally, it’s important to keep call to action buttons above the fold (visitors can see it without scrolling), clearly visible and prominent in relation to all other elements. If you have content that is only visible by scrolling, include a call to action button towards the end so users do not have to scroll back up to click on it.

8. Button Size

Your website visitors should know exactly where they need to go the second they land on your website. In this example, though well-designed, this “Buy Now” call to action button seems a bit small for the animation of the site. If you click on the entire website, you will notice a busy background which can distract from the small button as well.

Please note, though, that a bigger button is not always associated with higher conversions. The button should stand out from the other design elements without overwhelming the entire design, which can turn people away as well.

9. Button Text

This website used the word “Go” to urge users to click for a quote. While the design does draw your eye to the quote box, I am not sure the word “Go” is the best choice.

Though there are some basic rules for button text to maximize conversions, it is more of a function of the type of website rather than a general consensus. For example, a business offering a free trial may use “Click Here to Get Your Free Trial” while a service-oriented website may use “Get Started Today”.

General rules of thumb for call to action button text:

• Avoid being too wordy
• Keep it simple
• Add urgency
• Limited availability if applicable
• Use action words like “now” or “today”
• Always split test

When it comes to elements such as button text, the only way to determine what works best is to split test. Sometimes, minor changes can increase conversion rates dramatically.

10. No Clear Message

Many businesses are not clear on their sales funnel; therefore, their visitors are not led to take a desired action. This dealership is trying to push users to perform too many actions at once along with reading text which can be boring for people looking to buy or lease a car.

TIP: The purpose of your call to action is to get users to the next step only. In the case of the dealership, the final goal would be to sell a car, but that should not be the main goal of the website. That is the car salesperson’s job. The website should only urge visitors to take the next step which is to visit the dealership.

Don’t try to sell a car with your website. Just sell the next step!

Have you seen any call to action crimes? What call-to-action crimes have you committed?

Step 1: Visualize the layout

If you are designing a website, it is important that you choose the image while constructing the wireframe as it should fit your overall layout accordingly. Have a look at some examples to get an idea. It is popular to use them like banners or as full body depiction which encompasses the entire page. Some examples are below

Step 2: Sketch

Once you have decided on the layout, its time to work on the image. Start with a few pencil sketches and try to capture the essence of the product. In this case my client was a mobile app company, so I decided to create an image of a lady displaying a standard touch screen mobile phone. To make sure that the original product gets the deserved attention I decided to sketch the lady and use a real phone image so that it remains highlighted and looks like a fun combination as well.

Step 3: Scan

Photocopy the pencil sketch so that the original sketch is preserved and can be re-used later. In this step you can either scan the sketch and add the details digitally (like details of hairstyle, dress etc) using Photoshop and a Wacom device, or if you feel more comfortable on paper, try to sketch the details on the photocopy and then scan it.

Step 4: Digitally enhance

Once you are satisfied with the scan, open it with Photoshop (or a similar editor) and plug-in your Wacom (or similar device). First use the magic wand tool in Photoshop to select as much area as possible from the image and save the structure in a new layer. Now use the pen tool to select around a shape and copy on a new layer. Finally use the brush tool and with careful movements of the Wacom pen add finishing touches to the image.

a. Using the magic wand tool to select and copy areas from the scanned image, and reconstruct them on a different layer (say layer2)

b. Zoom and use the pen tool to copy the finer details on layer 2

c. Use the brush to reconstruct the details on layer 2.

Step 5: Integrate

Add the mobile phone (or any other product) to the image and adjust the size and contrast of the image for smooth integration. Add the entire image to the banner or the web layout. Try a few different backgrounds to see what works best.

The subject of today’s discussion will be the art of marketing and how we seem to take the same for granted. Remember, you must be selflessly selfish while giving away ad spots on your website. Otherwise, your client will give away the money during the first deal but might not renew the same due to negative results.

Why Advertise?

Let me start with the very basic question. This question is applicable to both sides – the publisher and the advertiser. In the case of the latter, advertising is important to promote a service or a product. While in the case of a publisher the debate can really go on forever.

Some of the genuine (and important) reasons for a publisher’s inclination towards advertising will be:

• Money, for starters. You know the quality-content-comes-at-a-price thing? Content will be the king but even the kings need coins to survive. No doubt why a publisher will give away ad spots on his website. Who hates the inflow of money? Really, who?
• Secondly, advertisements on a webpage help the reader dig deep into the depths of the internet and discover rich content. Henceforth, if you are good at heart and are willing to let your readers leave your website in return for some cents then you surely are helping the reader and the advertiser. Just make sure that you are displaying some really genuine ads otherwise your readers might be a bit pissed off.
• Thirdly, precious advertisers help in building the image of a publisher. This can be an amazing add-on if you get lucky. Imagine IBM advertising on your website. A “sponsored by IBM” logo next to your logo can shake a lot of A-listers off their positions in no time. A quick example:

I am from India and some time back I stumbled upon a website YourStory. Basically, they were talking about all sorts of startups in India. The simple blog template and (I admit) no overly flashy stuff made me think that they weren’t the big guns in this industry. I moved on. It was after few days when I again stumbled upon this website and this is when I tried to dig into YourStory. To my surprise, they were the online partners for CNBC TV-18′s Young Turks initiative. It was shocking. TV 18 happens to be the God of media industry in India. They own a share of everything (TV channels, newspapers, magazines, web portals etc.) which stands on the top of media niche in India. And, they were using YourStory to promote their Young Turks initiative? I instantly subscribed to the feeds of YourStory. Now, I am a regular reader of YourStory.

Anyways, all that I want is you to understand that you should know why you are advertising before you take the next step – your target clients.

Who to Advertise?

Now that you know why advertising is important and why you want to get into the world of online advertisements, it is time that you churn out unwanted clouds so that you can see your target clients very clearly.

To be precise, there are two basic types of targets where you should focus your energy:

• Readers - True! Readers happen to be the most important reason for your website’s success. If any section of your website is a turn off for them then it might spread like a plague between your readers. It’s the same case with adverts that show up on your website. The adverts should be helpful and they must target the readers. Otherwise, they will prove to be a turn off for your readers and your advertisers will not get the response that they had hoped for. A usual voting or feedback post can prove very helpful to gauge such scenarios.
• Advertisers - Now, these guys are your bread and butter so you better take them seriously. Imagine an organization wanting to advertise on your website but finds no “Advertise With Us” page on your website. If they are patient enough then they will dig into your website’s contact page and drop you an email. Otherwise, they might start looking for other easier options. Also, it will be a good idea to give advertisers a single point of contact so that they aren’t caught up in between the communication gap. It will help nobody.

How to Advertise (using obvious ways)?

Hmmph! So, you are ready to roll? I guess now you will be looking for some feasible options to open up ad slots on your website and earn quick bucks. I won’t be focusing on the usual ad spots although I want to go through them real quick:

• Ad spots (square or rectangular) on the side bar are one of the most common ad spots available today on almost every possible blog.
• Below heading (and above post content) ad spot is another place which can garner high amounts of attention.
• In header (next to logo) ad spot is something that has been prevailing since long ago and it does attract a lot of attention due to its prime positions.

Just like these three ad spots there are a few other obvious positions where one can open up advertisements on a blog. But, we are here to discuss something new so let us do the same.

How to advertise (the out-of-the-box ideas)?

Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement – Jakob Neilsen

That one line above teaches a lot. It is a sort-of warning to advertisers and publishers. Overly flashy ad spots might have few competitors nibbling around (and doing good) in few websites.

A friend of mine long back sent me a text message which talked about two contrasting lines that had changed his life:

• …but I love you.
• I love you but …

Don’t get me wrong, please. The conventional methods of online advertising still rock and they still help most of the blogs out there to keep kicking the profit margins, they are here to stay. But …

So, what are some out-of-box ways to advertise products on your website without killing the user experience:

• Conduct Interviews - Sounds simple but they can be very effective. We know (from our very own personal experience) that readers tend to ignore anything that looks like an advert. In such a case why not publish ads? Won’t that push that ad-based content right into the feed of your reader just like any other informative post. Hey, I didn’t mean paid posts. Really. Once an advertiser becomes a regular in your blog you can end up conducting an interview with them so as to understand their business and help them connect with your readers. As a precautionary measure, you can add “nofollow” to the outgoing links so that it does not look like a paid post.
• Let product owners write informative posts - This can be another area where you can expand your advertising horizons. Remember, these must not be paid posts otherwise Google will penalize you badly. Rather, you will have to make sure that these posts are in sync with your niche and they do not look like infomercials. It will be your discretion and later on your audience will decide if your decision was a success or a failure.
• Appreciate your clients in a different way - Some time back Honda mowed the name of their fan on their headquarter’s lawn. A recognition of such kind which attracts attention for your clients will surely strengthen the relationship between you and your client.

Nail it, studs!

You got to touch your reader if you want to attract their attention. We have the attention span of a small rodent. The same applies to our readers.

Remember Google’s ads during the 2010 Super Bowl? Google waited for the 2010 Super Bowl to roll and they simply nailed it with riveting spots like Justin Beiber, Dear Sophie, It Gets Better and Lady Gaga. All the videos have more than a million views and all of them have one thing in common – they touch your soul!

The Showcase

Ready to push ads on your blogs? Ready to make money? Ready to network? Below list of amazing ad-networks should come in handy for you.

P.S. – I am NOT including Google AdSense as it happens to be the default ad-network for all of us.

AdTegrity

Advertising

Burst Media

Buy Sell Ads

Casale Media

CPX Interactive

Double Click

Say Media

Tribal Fusion

Value Click Media

The best designers and developers are the ones we don’t know about, the only difference is that they don’t need, don’t know or don’t care about self-promotion, or promotion at all. But if you value your work, you should value the way you are presenting it to the world. So before you sell a product, you need to sell yourself. Tell them why you deserve to be chosen, why you.

“Self-promotion is the act or practice of promoting one’s own interests, profile, work, etc.”

If this sounds obvious to you, think twice and ask yourself if you are really doing everything you should. Why are you receiving 200 visits / month, when others receive 5000 visits / month with similar work and services? Because they are promoting themselves better.

In this article, I will try to give you some insight about how and where you should promote yourself. Take a look below.

How

Have an Online Presence

If you plan to expand your brand and to sell your work, having a professional online presence is mandatory. Building a portfolio is the perfect way to share your experience, knowledge, work and clients, while showing your personality through creativity. Don’t forget to reference your website as much as possible, especially to clients. You can reference it in your email signature, artwork, ads, business cards, etc.

Keep Your Website Updated

Content is slightly more important than aesthetics. If your website looks great, but your last post is dated from 2009, your visitor won’t return because he’s not expecting updates in the near future, and he’s right. Ideally it would be great to update your site daily, if you can’t at least try to update it once a week.

Support Good Causes

More and more charities are adopting online media to raise funds for their causes. If you have the time, supporting charitable causes makes the world a better place, and helps you achieve positive feedback, respect, and influential clients. It’s also a lot more fun than regular work.

Socialize

This is definitely the most important step in the whole process of self-promotion. Actively participating in the community is an opportunity to expand your network of contacts, meet perspective clients, learn new methods, meet agencies and have friendly discussions. Open yourself to others in the business, help people that ask you for advice, and spread the word about your new artwork or website.

Blog

Sharing your point of view about the business in general, gives your clients and readers some an idea about your personality and professionalism. New content like  articles, case studies, tutorials, etc,  transforms your website into a place of valuable information, and keeps your visitors coming back. It’s also a place where you can easily promote your most recent work.

Offer Freebies

The best way to let your visitors know how good your work is, is giving it to them for free so they can try it. offering quality freebies like icons, buttons, layouts, brushes, patterns, textures, etc,  increases your self-motivation, respect and more importantly, exposure.

Showcase Your Work

Personally, I think this should be one of the first things you should do as soon as you launch your website. There are many great showcase galleries out there (especially CSS galleries) with a big impact in your website exposure and evaluation. A gallery can bring you 10 times more visits, and besides they are mainly seen by other professionals, it can be a plus for clients.

Make Sure They Know You Did It

Simply put, never forget to sign your work. If people like the work, they will try to find out who did it, and they will know it was you. You will start to be asked to do the same kind of work for clients, or “how you did it” questions within the community.

Share

Help, collaborate, share your experience and insights, and answer people and clients even if you don’t have the time to do more work. Giving back inspires others to do the same. You can learn a lot and make great friends within the business, just by sharing your knowledge and experience. It also increases your self-esteem, and keeps people coming back.

Look for Work

If you find an opportunity to work with good professionals or big clients, do it. Don’t think twice. It can be a great plus for you and your portfolio. Being a part of great projects or great teams, promotes your expertise and makes it easier to find new jobs and projects to join in the future. So the more experience you have, the more likely is to increase it.

Where

Twitter

http://twitter.com/

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/

Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/

Behance

http://www.behance.net/

Designers Couch

http://designerscouch.org/

Sortfolio

http://sortfolio.com

Deviantart

http://www.deviantart.com/

Concept Feedback

http://www.conceptfeedback.com/

CSS Based

http://cssbased.com/

CSS Mania

http://cssmania.com/

Creattica

http://creattica.com/

Folio Focus

http://foliofocus.com/

Awwwards

http://www.awwwards.com/

FWA

http://www.thefwa.com/

ThemeForest

http://themeforest.net/

Brandstack

http://brandstack.com/

CrowdSpring

http://www.crowdspring.com/

Conclusion

At this point, you should know that building a portfolio is just the beginning, you now need to keep it updated and spread the word. What about starting a blog? or offering freebies? Don’t be afraid of starting new adventures, meeting people, applying for jobs…

Nothing in life is achieved without hard work, so if you want to be a great freelancer, you need to do it right or don’t try it at all.

Here is a collection of the best Coca-Cola Advertising from its early days in the 1880′s up until now. Enjoy!

1800′s

It was the eventful date of May 8, 1886, where it all started. John Pemberton sold his first Coca-Cola drink at a soda fountain in Jacob’s Pharmacy, Atlanta. Subsequently he published the first Coca-Cola advertisement in the Atlanta Journal.

Image by Georgia Info

There is little creativity found in the first ad, just some text. No artsy fonts, no images, no gimmicks. The first newspaper ad showed the company’s first (and definitely the last) tagline: ‘Delicious! Refreshing! Exhilarating! Invigorating!’

Soon afterwards, John Pemberton ran a longer and more persuasive newspaper ad. It still promoted the drink as a ‘delicious, exhilarating, refreshing and invigorating’ drink, but added more promises that the drink is an ‘intellectual beverage’, ‘temperance drink’, ‘brain tonic’, and it even claims to be able to cure ‘headache, neuralgia, hysteria, melancholy’ and more.

Photo by Georgia Info

Of course, these claims are not plausible, but a hundred years before there were no organizations that regulated advertising and the false advertising laws were pretty much non-existent. Newspapers during this era were full of fraudulent advertising by quack doctors and scam artists.

Early 1900′s

Coca-Cola advertising during the early 1900′s relied on young women as their spokespersons. The first spokesperson of Coca Cola is model Hilda Clark.

1930′s to 1960′s

Coca-Cola is often credited for creating the image of the modern Santa Claus as an old, jolly and fat man in a red and white suit. Coca-Cola did invent the red-and-white jolly Santa during the 1930′s, the illustration done by Haddon Sundblom. Before Santa, pretty young women were used to endorse Coca-Cola.

Photo by The Coca-Cola Company

The image of Coca-Cola Santa Claus appeared through their advertisements for three decades. Because of Coca-Cola advertising, the Santa Claus we all know and love today came into being. Before Coca-Cola’s Santa, the image of Santa is somewhat varied, he can be big, small, fat, elf-like, lovable, old, young, etc. He has worn all kinds of suits, even donning a priest’s robe or even huntsman animal skin.

Photo by The Coca-Cola Company

End of 1960′s

Until the 1970′s most people enjoyed cola in ice cream parlors or the local soda fountain. The soda fountain counter was a place for socializing with other people. However, at this point in time the fountain was already declining in popularity as bottled drinks and commercialized fast food quickly rose to popularity. As you can see previously, until the 1960′s Coca-Cola advertising shows people holding their drink in a glass rather than the iconic bottle.

Photo by Dir Journal

Photo by DIR Journal

In 1969, They released their new advertising slogan ‘It’s the real thing.’ The campaign now centers on the Coca-Cola bottle itself.

1960-1980

It was during this era that Coca-Cola went global. The company has now spread to 163 countries worldwide. Year after year, it has captured new markets such as Macau, Turkey, Paraguay, the Philippines, to name a few. Not only this, Coca-Cola has expanded into many different flavors such as Fanta and Sprite.

With the swift expansion, Coca-Cola went with a massive advertising campaign. Coca-Cola always believed in advertising. The international appeal of Coke was shared in their advertising with the slogan: ‘I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke’.

The advertisement appeared in 1971 and later became the basis of the song ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’ by the New Seekers. The advertisement was considered one of the most loved and influential TV ads in history.

1980′s

This decade marked the birth of the diet Coke.

This decade also marked the introduction of the  New Coke. It was a desperate effort after Coca-Cola saw a drastic decline in sales and the increased competition from Pepsi. The company execs responded by changing the formula of Coke. On tests, people favored the new taste. But in reality, people hated it. People missed the classic taste of Coke, and there were 8,000 calls,  complaints and constant angry letters everyday.

New Coke is considered to be one of the company’s biggest blunder in history. The problem was not the taste, but maybe because it broke tradition. Many Coke lovers were attached to the familiar and well-loved taste that was Coke. Thus, Coke admitted their mistake and announced that it will be using its former recipe again.

Photo by SA Steve

1993

Aside from Santa Claus, one of Coca-Cola’s most memorable symbols of the company,is the animated Polar Bear. It came from the Northern Lights advertising campaign. The first ad featured polar bears watching a ‘movie’, a play of aurora borealis while drinking Coca-Cola.

Photo by Presidia Creative

2000 – Present

The Coke Side of Life

The ad campaign was launched in 2006 and it’s main theme centers around people drinking Coke and feeling happy and positive. You drink Coke, you feel good. The campaign has optimistic and positive vibes, and it captures the very essence of life. It encourages people to love spontaneity and to see the world in full color.

Photo by Coca-Cola Art

The Happiness Truck and the Happiness Machine

Among Coke’s most successful endeavors of today is the ‘Happiness Machine’, or in some countries, the ‘Happiness Truck’. Coca-Cola is grounded in its heritage, at the same time, showed that it can keep up with the times. The Happiness machine uses elements of both guerilla marketing and viral advertising by using ‘YouTube’.

Coca-Cola decided to own a word, and that word is ‘Happiness’. Here are some clips of the ad that appeared online:

Coca-Cola implemented the Happiness Machine in various places and campuses including London, India, Germany, Hungary, Hong Kong and more. The Happiness Truck appeared in various countries like Rio de Janeiro and the Philippines. You can see in the videos the authentic happiness the people get when they receive their Coke surprise.

A Coca-Cola Happy Ending

Two centuries ago in 1886, Coca-Cola was born in a tiny pharmacy in 1886. Now, Coca-Cola still continues to provide magic to everyone who drinks Coke. It has expanded globally to the most far-reaching places, offering 500 brands and products to the world. Coca-Cola is one of the most well-loved brand today, and it continues to serve more than 1.7 billion servings in one day.

Coke has now more than a dozen flavors including Diet Cola, Coke Zero, Coke Cherry, Vanilla, Citra and so much more . Products by Coca-Cola are now over 3,500 including A&W, Dr. Pepper, Real Gold, Royal Tru, Lift, Ponkana, Minute Maid, Fanta, Earth and Sky and Eight O’Clock. What is next for Coca-Cola? Who knows.

Spamming – Earliest Form of Online Advertising

The internet was intentionally created as a military and educational tool, and never intended for what it is now: a huge networking, communications and money-making machine.

Thus, the first ‘spam’ was not commercial in nature. The word ‘spam’ comes from a 1970s comedy of a British comedy ‘Monty Python’. In the sketch, a man and his wife are in a restaurant, but everything they ordered has spam on it. While trying to get an order without spam, Vikings from the background sing: ‘Spam, spam, spam. Lovely, spam. Wonderful spam!’

Photo by Wikipedia

You can view the episode here.

The phenomenon later influenced early internet users to flood forums with the word ‘spam’. Soon online marketers got the idea to overpost and flood Usenet groups and emails with junk mail, recounting the repeating the useless presence of spam in the Monty Python sketch.

The first spam email was ‘Arpanet’ on 1978, coming from Gary Thuerk of the Digital Equipment Corporation. The first commercial spam was by lawyers Laurence Canter & Martha Siegel, where they used bulk Usenet posting to promote their immigration law practices. Within a few years, marketers changed their medium of spamming from Usenet forums to e-mail, where it remains until this day. Over 90 million spam emails are sent everyday. 85% of our emails are actually spam. But it’s level of effectiveness in promoting or selling a product is very low—it now barely exists as a nuisance to all.

Photo by First-News

The Era of Banner Ads

The first online advertisement appeared on the web in 1994, prompting the beginning of the online advertising world. The first part was the period of experimentation by the advertisers and publishers, pioneering on ad formats and technology. In 1995, DoubleClick was launched, one of the first ad-serving technologies.

Photo by Ad Week

Photo above is one of the oldest online banner ads, dated October 25, 1994 (so sorry for the bad resolution). The advertiser is A&T, and the ad appeared on Hotwired. Hotwired also launched many online ad campaigns for Club Med, Volvo and MCI, and was eventually acquired by Lycos. Soon after Hewlett-Packard created one of the first interactive online ad, embedding a video arcade game ‘Pong’ into the ad.

From the start advertisers already know that online advertising is very different from traditional advertising. Early on they already did target market research and measurements. However, the media was largely misunderstood. It wasn’t until many years later that the effectiveness and the mechanics of the medium was understood.

Photo by Wiki

There are many forms of old school online ads apart from banner ads. This includes pop-up ads (photo shown above), pop-under ads, hover ads, takeover ads

Online advertising was at its peak in the late 1990s. Investors were dropping billions of dollars into dot com start-ups at an alarmingly fast rate. The internet was the new playing field, and investors fell in love with the novelty factor of it. They have high hopes for their investments–and it made some people very rich–on paper, at least.

by Banner Ad Museum

Back then, ads were in the banner format. Advertisers were required by the clients to provide the standard 468 x 60 px banner ad for their online advertising campaign, like the banner ads on the photo above. Soon, so thousands of entrepreneurs, investors and advertisers are pouring in–nobody wanted to get left behind this brand new money-making machine. In its hey day, it was a lucrative business: Yahoo! could charge up to US $30 to even US $100 to run these banner ads. At its height, internet spending has reached US $8.2 billion. The figure wouldn’t be reached again until 4 years after the dot com bubble burst.

However, banner ads are not effective; it is very expensive but the returns are low. Advertisers were set against the low effectiveness of ads, high prices, and the complex process of online ad auctions. The advertisers realized that the online banner ads pale in comparison to the effectivity of 30-second TV commercial or a full-page print ad.

Dot Com Bubble Burst

Photo by GDS Infographics

Mid-2000, the huge influx of money that created the online advertising bubble started to dry up. Companies now have no interest with online advertising and the online banner bubble burst happened. The stock market collapsed, resulting into a recession. The ‘bubble’ covered for five years from 1995 to 2000. From within that time frame the stock value rose steadily and rapidly at an astronomical rate. And then suddenly in just one day, the bubble burst–everything is gone in a flash.

NASDAQ peaked at 5,049 in March of 2000, and declined on October 2002 at 1,100. One one dot com company after another went bankrupt. Soon online advertising dollars had a dramatic fall of 32%, from US $8.2 billion to US $6.2 billion. As the market went sour, advertisers and agencies lost interest in using this unproven and unstable new medium.

Enter Google: The Era of Google Ads

After the bubble burst, advertising on the internet was in rapid decline except for search, because search engine technology has shown efficiency. Because of its ROI, Search engine market grew to US $2.3 billion in 2003. The search engine technology was highly efficient and dependable.

Google was, once upon a time, just a search engine. Google worked mainly on its functionality, perfecting the algorithm to produce the most appropriate results. Google drove plenty of traffic, but didn’t sell anything. But on the start of the millennium, 2000, Google AdWords was born. Google revolutionized online advertising–instead of using the banner ad format; which is the dominant advertising format of that time, they decided to sell through text ads. These ads are based on search engines, kept separate and on top or on the side of the main search results.

Why did Google’s text ads succeed and the banner ads did not? First of all, Google knew the weight of relevance. They introduced the click-through rate, creating a ranking algorithm to measure the advertisement’s relevance. Google only requires payment when the people click on them. Another stroke of genius from google is Page Rank.

Google did not create search engine or pay-per-click advertising–instead they focused on perfecting it. Google AdWords marked the New Growth Period of Online Advertising. Google has changed how we approach online advertising. Rather than mere selling or marketing, advertisers are now focusing in creating relevant content for consumers.

Ads make use of two different advertising model: the Pay-per-click and the Pay-per-impression. What’s the difference between the two? Pay-per-click requires advertisers to pay the host for every time the ad is clicked. Pay-per-impression is used to measure the cost and worth of the whole online marketing campaign. Both models are used to online ads such as text links, SEO marketing, web banners and e-mail advertising.

Photo by Searchlinqs

In search engines, advertisers bid on keyword terms and phrases relevant to their market. But with content sites, they use a fixed price for every click or impression. Pay-per-click model is perfect for bringing the targeted market into the website efficiently, while the Pay-per-impression is best for building brand recognition. Although these models are open to abuse through click fraud, Google and others have devised automated systems against corrupt advertisers or competitors.

Advertising through Social Media

If you haven’t heard of social media, then you’ve probably been living under a rock for the past five years. Social media, in its simplest terms, is a social tool for communications and networking. Rather than a web site merely providing you with information, social media sites are interactive; giving you the freedom to comment, rate and share information. There are four types of Social Media:

1. Social Networking Tools – Facebook, Twitter, Hi-5

2. Social News – Reddit, Digg Propeller

3. Social Photo & Video Sharing – Photobucket, Flickr, YouTube

4. Social Bookmarking – Del.icio.us, Simpy

One of the biggest advantages of social media advertising is proper targeting of market through the use of the users’ demographic information provided.

Photo by Singapore SEO

Social media advertising is now apparently more effective than traditional advertising! Some even go through lengths as to have a billboard with their own Twitter ID—such as Naked Pizza of New Orleans. Naked Pizza, reputedly the healthiest pizza in the world, erected a billboard prompting viewers to add them on Twitter. It’s not the first time Twitter is featured on a billboard, and surely not the last. It’s a smart marketing move, they will gain more followers and thus increase their marketing and advertising scope and awareness.

Photo by Wikimedia

Nowadays, it is now necessary for businesses to have a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn page. Social media is the best thing online advertising could get: it’s free, it’s far and wide-reaching (500 million users) and it’s viral. The disadvantage is probably measuring effectivity of social media advertising, whether or not the number of ‘likes’, ‘friends’ or ‘follows’ could convert to actual sales.

Online Advertising as of Today

Since 2004 online advertising has recovered. Advertisers have seen (almost reluctantly) the importance of advertising online, and the number of hours consumer used on the internet. Now the web is used by many companies on their overall marketing campaign. Online ads make use of Flash and JavaScript to improve graphics and interactivity. Online advertising is now more sophisticated, the branding tools and technologies are diversified. There are now online blogs, social media, SEO marketing and more.

Viral marketing is now more popular, making use of video ads to market a product or brand. Old Spice (video still shown above) is one of the many companies that have gone into viral marketing. They posted numerous videos on YouTube starring Old Spice guy. It was a huge hit, having 30 million views to date and considered to be one of the most successful advertising campaigns in 2010. Isaiah Mustafah is now a household name. Other successful viral campaigns include Levi’s, Guitar Hero and Super Bowl. We see a regrowth in advertising on the web, which is now equals to the total internet spending.

This does not mean that Online Advertising has now been perfected. Annoying pop up and pop under ads still persist. One of the most annoying and interruptive of ad formats, the pre-roll ads are now used in YouTube. YouTube used to be a free site for uploading and viewing videos. But YouTube has problems generating income–so they added pre-roll ads, or commercials that run before a video that cannot be bypassed. So if you need to watch a 1 minute video you have to sit through a 30-second ad first. Most music videos uploaded on YouTube are now from VEVO, and not from actual users. Which means that there are ads on top, on the bottom and on the background of the page.

So will the internet’s bubble burst again? We are hopeful it won’t. Millions of people are now relying on the internet for advertising, promotions, business and employment. However, one thing is clear; we have learned a lot from the first bubble burst. Only time will tell.

You can see bellow many famous products and surprisingly many more not that famous products and services that gain credibility and they actually have pretty good advertisments.

1. Volkswagen Touareg – Goat ad

2. Bose Noise – Waterfall

3. Pepsi Twist

4. Silan Wrestling

5. Spicy Pringles

6. Magic Scotch

7. Burger King

8. Minery – Foot Care

9. Life Buoy Dog

10. Timotei Hair Care

11. Stop Pain in Africa

12. Toyo Octopus

13. The Big Pipe

14. Shaq Oneal

15. Maglite Gallery

16. Arena Predator

17. Recycling Robot

18. Safari – Gorilla Show

19. Dense Smoke

20. McCormick Fish

21. Verbal Abuse

22. Pasta

23. Big Spills

24. Bad Dog Breath

25. Fight Smoking

26. Gilette Ambient

27. Seat Leon

28. Soho High Heels

29. Breath Right – Train, Band, Bikes

30. Kiss My Glass

31. VS: USA

32. Volkswagen Jetta – A trip to the beach

33. Amnesy International – Changing the world

34. Free Your Sport

35. Symantec Baby

36. Fresh Step – Cross-legged Cats

37. Yoga Position

38. Play Baseball

39. Pattex Glue – Creating Couples

40. Sisal Biliard

41. Decathlon – Better Gear

42. Comedy Central – Now Eco Friendly Format

43. MTV Satellite

44. Ikea – Free Home Delivery

45. Findus Fraich’Frites Granny’s Fries without Granny

46. Eco Coffins

47. Public Toilets

48. Glassex – For Good Magicians

49. WWF Lungs

50. Alka Seltzer

51. Vegetarians Restaurant

52. Pedigree Light Flower

Bye, bye – with this funny advertisement we will end this article! Keep coming back for more!

I really must refer to Colorburned post here – He did a great job by bringing up so many companies and idea, which helped me to directly find related companies, which could sponsor my website too. It’s been a while and now I wanted to take a deep research about current companies, which use and actually buy those advertisement banner places thereby supporting design community in return helping to build good page rank and actually get very targeted design related clients. I listed here all the companies I’ve found advertising on graphic design, web design, blogging related blogs, showcase sites like mine is. Now after research I must say I was surprised, browsing through all those blogs daily I didn’t checked those sites, but now I found many good softwares, services I would really love to try myself! Not always the best stuff available is for free and really what did I see was very reasonable prices for several really good services.

Also it was interesting research which kind of banners different companies use, what design and what did they put into those banners – what kind of text, images, animation. If You are designer yourself you’ll understand me – I don’t see advertisements in real life – I look at composition, idea, color scale, accent distribution and things like that. Here I did the same, because I believe every banner is created by professional designer and here you have to manipulate with limited space to attach emerging customers, clients.

I also added short description from their own sites so you could know what company behind that banner is offering. And short tip – if you have good traffic and good price, but have no advertisers, I strongly recommend you writing these companies explaining why they should choose to advertise there, tell them what your blog is about and show them your stats. I am sure you’ll get

PSD To Html Services

1.W3Markup

PSD conversion to CSS,HTML service.

2.PSD2HTML

PSD2HTML.com provides fast, high quality conversion of graphic Web design into Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and its extensions, as well as skins / themes / templates for various engines.

3.Markup-Service

Markup Service provides hand-coded conversion of your designs into high quality, W3C valid XHTML/CSS in less than 8 hours.

4.PixelCrayons

XHTML.pixelcrayons.com (a specialized division of Pixelcrayons) offers high quality hand coded pixel-precise markup services and implementation into skins, themes, CMS, shopping carts and more.

5.XHTML4U

PSD to HTML hand coding service.

6.FeatherCode

PSD to XHTML/CSS conversion service.

7.PSDslicing

Top notch psd to html coding service.

8.LightCMS

LightCMS is a content management system for web designers. Design sites, upload them to our content management system,and deploy world-class websites your clients can manage themselves.

Web Template And Theme Selling Companies

9.WooThemes

Company selling premium WordPress themes.

10.ThemeForest

At ThemeForest you can buy and sell site templates and themes to skin popular CMS products like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. Files are priced from just five dollars, based on the complexity, quality and use of the file.

11.ThemeLayouts

Premium WordPress Themes & Joomla Templates.

12.DreamTemplate

DreamTemplate offers exclusive premium web content solutions for web developers and webmasters. In addition to website templates, they also offer other web content solutions such as CSS templates, Flash templates, logo templates, photoshop web designs, company form designs, newsletter templates and abstract images.

13.TemplatesFactory

Company selling premium web and flash templates.

14.StudioThemes

Company selling premium WordPress themes for small business companies.

15.ThemeAtlas

Theme Atlas is WordPress premium theme index.

16.WPBest

Company featuring and selling the very best Premium WordPress Themes and WordPress Plugins available

17.ElegantThemes

Company selling premium WordPress themes.

18.Press75

This company offers professional quality WordPress themes with really wide selections.

19.DaThemes

Company selling premium WordPress themes.

20.Templatica

Templatica is a membership based template club.

21. BuyStockDesign

Service which allows You to buy and sell website templates.

Graphic and Web Design Blog Advertising

21.Designers-Revolution

Graphic design resources for Illustrator and Photoshop.

22.WPZoom

WPZOOM is a blog about the latest WordPress premium & free themes.

23.Splashnology

SPLASHnology is an exciting new platform of web community dedicated to Web Design, Web Development, with a focus on Graphic Design, Art, Technology, Blogging, SEO and Freelance. The primary purpose of this site is sharing web related knowledge, resources and ideas. Everyone can register at SPLASHnology and start to post something interesting web stuff in personal or group blogs.

Stock Photography & Vector Art, Icons Marketplaces

24.ShutterStock

Shutterstock is subscription-based stock photo agency, every day adding thousands of photographs, illustrations, and vectors to collection of premium, royalty-free images.

25.StockVault

Stockvault is a stock photo sharing website where designers and photographers can meet to share their images.

26.FotoLia

Fotolia offers huge image bank of free and affordable royalty free photos and illustrations perfect for any medium, web or print.

27.ProtoShare

Collaborative website wirefrime and prototype tool.

28.VectorStock

VectorStock™ Media is an independent Vector only stock agency with focus and passion to creative vector art.

29.Veer Marketplace

Veer provides visual elements for use in professional creative work, such as graphic design, motion design, advertising and filmmaking. Their products include stock photography, illustration, typefaces, and unique merchandise

30.TextureVault

Texturevault is a community driven supplier of royalty free texture images. Unlike the usual stock photo site, texturevault focus is strictly on providing high quality, creative and “top of the class” textures that digital artists and designers can use in their creative work.

31.123Vectors

Free vectors showcase site.

32.IconShock

Professional stock icons for web and software applications.

33. FlashDen

At FlashDen you can buy and sell royalty-free stock files for use in Adobe Flash projects and general websites. Files sell for between 1 and 40 dollars depending on the complexity, quality and use of the file. Anyone is free to sign up for an account and begin trading or purchasing files.

34.BrandStack

Creative marketplace, where you can find professionally designed logos, websites, print designs, find premium domain names.

35.FeedMyApp

Feedmyapp is a Web 2.0 Directory with the best and latest web 2.0 sites, daily updated. Feedmyapp classifies web apps by tagging them and creating a brief description for each one listed.

Online Printing Services

36.Moo

MOO is a printing company printing beautiful products, using images you’ve uploaded directly, or designs from their designer galleries.

37.HotCards

Hotcards is a full service full color printing and graphic design house.

38.RoyalButtons

RoyalButtons create high quality full color 1″, 1.25″, 2.25″ & 2″x3″ buttons and magnets.

39.ModernPostcard

Modern Postcard is your expert source for high quality printing, targeted lists and in-house mailing services, everything you need to successfully market your business with postcards.

40.Taste Of Ink

High quality online printing service company.

41.PremiumCards

Online printing service especially specialized on business card printing.

42.All Time Print

Really wide variety focused online printing service.

43.UPrinting

UPrinting is online printing company that provides high quality printing for very affordable prices.

Website Builders

44. Wix

Wix is a Flash website builder, built to create a simple way for everybody to build and design Flash websites.

45.Artister

It is Joomla template generator and WordPress theme generator.

46.MediaLab

Company distribute currently program SiteGrinder2, which is kind of automated PSD to HTML service, but right inside Photoshop.

Other Design And Business Management Companies

47.Logo Design Team

A Graphic logo design company offering original, custom and professional logo designs.

48.HelpDeskPilot

Help desk software.

49.Page-Flip

FlippingBook flash page flip engine – PDF to flip book convertor or xml-swf version.

50.Boonex

This company produces community software, build a community of customers and operate as a community ourselves. BoonEx explores and introduces the power of collaboration in social life and business relations.

51.Code-Line

Software for creative professionals.

52.KickApps

Use KickApps to power audience growth & engagement on your website. Build your own community with social networking and photo & video sharing; create your own widgets, custom video players and much more.

53. Flowzit

Flowzit is a state-of-the-art file presentation and approval system.

54. MailChimp

This company makes easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. I am sure you’ve heard about this company before.

55.RightBanners

RightBanners is an inexpensive and efficient banner creative specialist.

56.GoodBarry

GoodBarry is a Business Catalyst brand created to reach more small business owners online.

57.Freshbooks

Online invoicing, time tracking and expense service

58.BillingsApp

Professional time billing for anyone.

59.MyEmma

E-mail marketing for agencies and designers.

60.SonarHQ

The easiest way to create your own survey site.

61.TumaSoft

Company selling Preset Viewer, which is Photoshop brush, pattern, shape viewer.

62.LogoMyWay

LogoMyWay connects clients needing design work such as Logo designs, T-shirts designs, Business card designs, Print ad designs and more to a thriving community of talented logo designers exploding with creativity.

And actually interesting approach to banner and looks like it works too.

Job Boards And Services

63.AllDevJobs

Design and development job board.

64.AgencyTool

List of hundreds of top web design and creative agencies throughout the United States.

65.LimeExchange

Global services marketplace connecting businesses and professionals.

66.Webdesigners-Directory

This Web Design Directory is a national directory of 9,109 web designers, job board. Click on a state below to find a web designer in your area.

67.CampaignMonitor

Rebrandable email marketing software just for designers.

Project Management Software

68.ActiveCollab

activeCollab is a project management & collaboration tool that you can set up on your own server or local network.

69. 5PMweb

5pm is project management, task organizer, team collaboration and time tracking software

70. ProWorkFlow

Project management software – Easy control of your projects, tasks & time.

CMS E-commerce

71.CMS Advantage

A professional Content Management System (CMS) for web designers and graphic designers.

72.Shopify

Shopify is for people and small businesses who want to sell great products through an online store that does those products justice.

73.FoxyCart

FoxyCart is not a CMS, but is built to integrate into whatever CMS you like.

Hosting Companies

74.WpWebHost

Very good hosting company I currently use.

75.FireHost

FireHost provides secure hosting without sacrificing the redundancy and speed you would expect from an enterprise hosting provider.

76.Mosso

Cloud hosting.

77.Site5

Web hosting for webmasters.

78.MediaTemple

Hosting company.

Showcase Galleries

79.TheBestDesigns

The Best Designs recognizes the best Flash and CSS web sites from around the world. Websites are categorized by CSS or Flash and also by elements of the design.

80.MixCSS

Beautiful website showcase gallery

To end this article I wanted to share my thoughts and have a little question to my readers.

Here it goes..

I am considering in future to buy and test such services I’ve listed here and give honest reviews how did those tools, companies work and what kind of problems I interfaced. I believe such help with project management tools, job boards, automated softwares and good psd to xhtml service could really ease and help to automate web development, designing, printing and project management process.

Now I just want to ask – do you want to see that kind of articles here?? Because really I’ll try to do my best to satisfy my readers at the first place, and it’s your call. I will be very pleased if you could spare some time to give honest answer here.

Thanks for Your time!