Not many people have discovered that you can use multiple background colors on your banners, which is just too bad since that will add some extra life to your banner. The banners you create will also attrack the eyes of the visitors much easier and therefore result in better conversion rates

In this article I will show you how to create banners with multiple background colors that blend into each other.

First visit the banner creator at CreateBanner.com and select the banner size of your choice. Then scroll down to the background color choice and select "gradient color".

That will give you two color selection boxes, one for the upper background color and another one for the lower background color. As default they two colors are gray and white, which is kind of boring.

It's easy to select the background colors to use, just click on the colors you want and the banner will be updated with the background color you clicked on . If you know the HTML code for a color you would like to use just fill in the color code in the boxes under the color tables. That will update the background on your banner to use the color code you selected instead of one of the pre-defined in the color table. This option is great if you already know the color code, or if you want your banner to match your company colors or web site design.

By playing around with the color tables you can create some nice and "interesting" backgrounds for your banners. Just look at the examples I created:

What kind of backgrounds did you create?

A couple of days ago we asked for suggestions for new banner sizes and we got two really good suggestions from our visitors:

We need the 250×250 square and some of the other rectangular banners.

This is a fun website. I have never created a banner ad or anything else resembling website stuff. But I am willing to learn how. However, the banner I need to create is for an ad in a magazine called Invision. It is presently not available on your list of sizes on your website. The ad they have offered me is 180 x730 pixels. It would be great to get one of your free VIP memberships for this and greatly appreciated.

Since we said that if we implemented the suggested banner sizes we would give you some VIP memberships as thanks we've sent both Dave and Raphaelle a coupon each for a one year VIP membership

We didn't only implement the suggested 250×250 and 180×730, but we also implemented the following banner sizes at the same time:

• 250×300 – Big button 1
• 300×250 – Big button 2
• 180×180 – Square 1
• 250×250 – Square 2
• 300×300 – Square 3
• 180×730 – Extra wide skyscraper 1
• 250×730 – Extra wide skyscraper 2
• 300×730 – Extra wide skyscraper 3

As you can see suggestions can pay off sometimes

Try the banner creator for free at www.createbanner.com you too.

We're planning to expand the banner sizes we let you all create so we need you to suggest new sizes.

Is there any special size you're missing or do you think we got them all covered? At the moment we offer the following banner sizes, but is that enough?

• 468×60 – Banner
• 728×90 – Leaderboard
• 120×60 – Small button 1
• 125×60 – Small button 2
• 120×90 – Medium button 1
• 125×90 – Medium button 2
• 125×125 – Medium button 3
• 120×600 – Skyscraper
• 160×600 – Wide skyscraper

Anyone suggesting a banner size we're implementing in the banner creator tool will get a free one year VIP membership as thanks so hurry up and suggest new banner sizes.A one year VIP membership is worth about $35/year.

This could also be a great opportunity for you to tell us what you think about our plan to let our VIP members to select any size they want, i.e. to make up their own sizes directly from the banner creator. Is that a good idea?

Also what do you think will add value to the VIP membership? What would make you pay for a membership? Anyone suggesting a feature we implement will get a lifetime VIP membership, a value of about $1750 (calculated on 50 years life expectancy multiplied by $35 so if you live longer it's worth even more).

CreateBanner.com is the first of Xavier Media's  services to use our new API for making long boring link short: 2ve.org

The feature we've added to use 2ve.org is a Twitter button found in both the VIP area and the banner designer where you can Twitter your banner. The link to your banner will be shortened with the help of 2ve.org, causing the links to be even shorter then TinyURL.com so you can Twitter more text . We're doing this to give you even more options to share you banners with friends and family (and to give you a chance to show us and the world how good you are at designing banners).

To Twitter about your banner you simply just click on the Twitter icon after you've saved your banner. You will then be sent to Twitter with a short link to your banner pre-filled in the message box at Twitter. Easy isn't it?

As a small side effect of all this you can now follow CreateBanner.com on Twitter. Just click here to follow @CreateBanner. As a follower you will get updates from our blog and a few other banner creation tips and tricks. Later we'll even give away some trial VIP membership to people who follow us, so make sure you start following us as soon as possible: @CreateBanner