Website Banner Blindness

Updated January 13, 2023

Website Design Tips To Cure It

Even if you don’t display ads on your site, visitors may still experience a phenomenon called Website Banner Blindness. It’s human nature to tune out some areas and zero in on others. The Web continues to evolve, including how visitors pay attention (and interact) with advertising. In general we’ve become so accustomed to banner ads — special offers that can appear at the top and/or in sidebars — that we unconsciously (or consciously) ignore entire areas of content.  Good Web designers utilize an F-layout.  They capitalize on human nature, constructing a website’s layout to take advantage of eyes scanning left to right and top to bottom. So how can you cure banner blindness on your website? Easy peasy. Follow these 3 tips:

Putting The Visitor First

This is User Experience 101.  When a visitor comes to your site, what are they looking to do? Then make it easy for them to do just that. Use Google Analytics to better understand your visitor behavior. Indicators that you’re offering a not-so-stellar user experience are:

• Low Conversion Rates – the ratio of visitors who move to the next step (e.g., fill out a form, buy something)
• Poor Funnel Optimization – this metric shows you where visitors drop out
• Weak In-Page Analytics – points to pages where visitors click (or don’t), showing interaction with content and your sales funnel
• High Bounce Rate – a general metric alerting you that a high percentage of visitors have this perspective: “I came, I saw, Yuck, I’m out of here.”  Sadly, this means you’ve got serious work to do on your website.
• Low Page Views – visitors aren’t reading more than one page of content. Check to see if you’ve got too much on one page. Scroll intensive or text without visual breaks like subheads and images can overwhelm a reader.
• Short Visit Length – while they may not have bounced, they didn’t stick around very long either. Could be an indication that your meta description’s promise doesn’t match your content.

One Prominent Call To Action

If you give too many call-to-action choices, visitors tend to not choose anything. We recommend keeping each webpage clear and concise. Content should be on target, optimized for one keyword. Offer one call to action, one that is in a complementary color so it attract the human eye. We are naturally drawn to contrast. If there is one thing on the page that’s different, we zero in on it. If you’re not sure what offer, color or graphic that will get you the most clicks, then do an A/B test.  Let the best button win.

Website Banner Design Testing

Most visitors expect your brand (aka logo or mark) to be located in the website banner area. Why? They look for confirmation that they’ve landed in the right place. Since we read left to right, the top left corner is the first place on a website to be viewed. If your branding isn’t quickly identifiable, you’re risking a bounce.

Banner design is where graphic design and UX (User Experience) meet. While a Web rule of thumb is to keep design uncluttered and focus on one Call to Action, actual visitor behavior can vary. That’s why we’re big fans of Google Experiments. It makes it easy to test various designs and configurations.  Doing so will provide you the data needed to optimize which offers and designs entice more clicks and conversions.  Heat maps – captured by software programs like ClickTale – can measure where your website banner design is hot and cold. It’ll highlight where your website design is missing the mark.