How Do You Judge How Effective..

The promo tools your sponsors provide you with are?

Whether we're talking about banners, buttons, half page ads, full page ads, hosted galleries or free site?

How do you judge if you are going to continue using a specific type of ad that your sponsors provide you?

Also, in your opinion, what makes a good promo tool, is the amount of sales it generates, how many clicks it generates or how nice it looks?

I must admit to me, if an ad doesnt get a certain amount of clicks on a set amount of traffic ill typically swap it out, after 2 or 3 rotations if the ads still dont seem to be working ill consider creating my own or ill drop the sponsors site from my lineup.

What about the rest of you folks, what in your view makes a good promo tool and how do you judge how effective they are?

Regards,

Lee

The times I am able to track how well a particular banner is doing, I've never gotten enough clicks and sales to do a statistically significant comparison. So I just fly by what I think works or will work best.

From a sponsors perspective we develop FHG and video ad designs according to the ratio of hits, click thrus and resulting sales.

A promo 'tool' itself doesn't help very much, because a 'tool' can be used by anyone who wasn't born with two left hands. And even those people manage it to use the 'tool' every now and then.

I get the best clicks and conversions from websites which provide news about updates on a regular basis, including sample pics and videos, or websites which allow me to go to their member area and tell my site visitors what's new and exciting there.

Simply putting up banners, links to tours that don't change for weeks and months, and providing galleries with sometimes years old content are just a waste of time in my opinion. Potential members see those same 'tools' all over the place nowadays.

To make a difference you have to show regularly new, fresh faces and tell them what's happening behind the shopping window, if you want to entice customers to pull out their credit cards.

A good promotion is only a good promotion when it generates a good amount of sales. I can get ten thousands of clicks without making a sale when the product behind isn't worth the effort that was put into that promotion. Same goes for nice looks. But of course a nice look can do a lot to make a promotion successful. So in my opinion, creating a nifty, splendid promotion is just a waste of time and money if the product behind it isn't something that keeps the customer happy. Recurring customers which stay for us for months, if not years, is what we strive for, I'd think.