User experience plays a big role in how we design digital ads at globalHMA. For example, the way an online web banner is displayed and designed can play a large part in the effectiveness of an ad. To create an effective web banner, the ad design needs to remain professional and attractive enough so it is able to capture its targeted audience’s attention.
From Adobe Flash
For a long-time, designers used Adobe’s Flash software to build the web’s most complex animated web banners. Animation plays a large part in the battle toward grabbing a website’s visitor’s attention. With the growth of new technologies and mobile devices, web vendors’ Flash support has slowly decreased. Some sites still accept Flash web banners, but many no longer support this type of technology.
Without Flash ads, designers are looking for new ways to build animated web banners. Today, many vendors are starting to accept HTML5 web banners. As wonderful as this sounds, there are a lot of designers who have used Flash for a long time and do not have a solid working knowledge of code. New technologies are being created to solve this growing problem.
To Google Web Designer
Google Web Designer is one of these new emerging HTML5 web banner-building technologies. While still in beta, Google Web Designer is still a powerful tool. The software is currently free, yet it is still a professional-grade software. The program’s name can be quite deceiving. Google Web Designer should be used to create web banners, but for the most part it should not be used to actually build complete webpages or websites.
Google Web Designer is software that you need to download and store on your computer. Once opened, this software is like other motion programs with a timeline, featuring key frames, general transparency settings, layer scaling, alignment and other motion tools. Every motion created in Google Web Designer utilizes HTML, JavaScript and CSS. If you are web developer and want to do some of your own coding, this software also provides its users with a code view. Like Adobe’s Flash and Animate, Google Web Designer has a nicely supported in-app asset library. Like swf and animated gif files, I would suggest that all images uploaded in Google Web Designer are sized and prepared properly for the web.
As with most web banners, the number one thing to think about is the call-to-action. Google Web Designer has created several nice features to make links interactive with events and software components. However, a common bug with all elements found on the web is browser support. Lastly, on export/publish, Google Web Designer actually cleans up the files and prepares the files in a nice format. It places only the necessary files in a folder, renaming the html file and compressing it for an upload to Google AdWords or to send it off to a publication.
On the whole, thanks to software like Google Web Designer, shifts from Flash to HTML5 are now a little smoother.
Do you use Google Web Designer? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.
3 Comments
We are in the midst of adding a lot more animation to our ads. Looks like HTML5 is the way to go, trying to decide between Adobe Animate and Google Web Designer… thoughts?
Since the industry is changing so fast, we are still currently experimenting with several different technologies. We are currently using Google Web Designer to build some of our display ads, because the UI is pretty clean.
As you will see when downloading Google Web Designer, this program is still in beta. It is still pretty well built. What is nice about this software is that it is free. As for Adobe Animate, I have used Flash (now Adobe Animate), but I do not have too much experience with their HTML5 features. Adobe Animate also requires a subscription to Creative Cloud.
While the support for HTML5 is growing, you might want to see what you expect out of your ads and that the support is working for your targeted audience. So, right now I would just say do some experimenting, and see what works for you.
I think that Adobe Animate is on the best framework for HTML5 Banners, for both creating advertising, simple animations or motion design. The program itself is smoother and makes the entire workflow faster. check also my animated HTML5 banners with Adobe Animate
https://www.adsspirit.com/