Banner Ads Are Flash Applications, Too
The following banner ad, probably a PointRoll ad or some such, left detritus on the screen when its animation played and did not close when the user moused out:
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But, Director, what are you supposed to do? Test the banner ads? Perish the thought! With the new technologies and dependence upon browser plugins, you need to test them. I’ve done it, and so can you. So could your damn hipster designers if they weren’t so caught up talking about what they saw at Burning Man.
Off the top of my head, here are some of the things you need to check:
- Animations are smooth.
After all, that’s the point of all this wizardry, ain’t it? Mouseover the hotspots that expose panels; make sure they slide out pleasingly. Make sure that the animation in the banner itself doesn’t jerk (unless you’re going for the Blair Witch effect). - Words are spelled right.
Believe it or not, your crack design team might err here. I mean, perhaps they took the brown Ecstasy instead of the red Ecstasy at lunch. Or perhaps they just cannot spell, since being “creative” doesn’t involve “being smart enough to not look like a fourth grader when writing.” - Hotspots behave appropriately.
When you click a link, it takes you to the right place. When you mouseover a spot that should trigger a panel rollout, I don’t know, maybe the panel should roll out. When you roll off of a panel, the panel should close. I realize some ad specs allow the damn thing to remain open until the user clicks some sort of close control, but have pity on the user. Never mind, if you’re trying to sell something, obviously your powers that be are happy annoying 1000 users to make it easier for the 1 who will click through and then abandon a transaction later.Regardless, though, links should link and panel triggers should trigger panels. - Hotspots are placed appropriately.
This is more subtle. Make sure places where the hotspots are make sense. The whole banner should link to the advertised site, not just a “click here” bit of text. Make sure that the “close” control on a panel doesn’t lie on a place where the cursor’s presence will trigger the panel to roll out again; I’ve seen my share of banners that play that prank. Close it? Open it! Close it? Open it! - Banners work with different versions of Flash.
As I have mentioned before, checking compatibility with earlier versions of Flash is always a good idea. Your banners should work in a backwards-compatible fashion as well. - If your banners have actual form controls, you test them like forms.
I understand that validation logic and whatnot aren’t normally the purvey of people who are only doing Web work until their mixed media installations pay the bills, but your users don’t care. Neither does the art world. Remind your Flash designers of this fact constantly. - Make sure your banner ads have appropriate tracking. Most links in banner ads carry tracking data on the querystrings. Make sure that, when you click the links, your banner ad carries through data that the destination Web site can consume.
- Make sure user interactivity is limited to what user should do.
As with any Flash stuff, you need to make sure that the user cannot use the mouse or other keystrokes to make the banner ad behave differently than planned. Try clicking, right clicking, clicking and dragging the elements within the Flash animation.
Remember, the houses that dish up these banner ads do some encoding of their own, so it’s entirely likely that your inhouse QA will pass, and then the content deliverer will muck it all up. So you should run one more set of tests after they’ve done their number on it. Sometimes, you’ll pass placeholder tracking information in your hotspots for the end house to replace; make sure they replace them. And don’t let them monkey with the controls because their designers are worse than yours.
So remember, the banner ad is a Flash application in its own and deserves the same amount of testing you would dedicate to any other application. No, not the amount of testing your company would dedicate to any other application (that is, none). Use your better judgment.
