10 Ways to Improve Instagram Ad Design and Increase Conversions

While your social media ad strategy and content are extremely important in making sure your advertising reaches its intended audience, your ad design can actually make it or break it since it’s the first thing that’s supposed to attract attention and capture interest, especially on Instagram. 

Being a highly visual platform, the main focus of your Instagram ad should be to capture the audience’s attention as soon as they glance at your Instagram ad design and make sure there’s something there to get them to click. In the sea of ads that is the current Instagram algorithm, that can present a significant challenge, and we’re here to help you overcome it and create a design that results in high conversions. 

Let’s get started with 5 points to focus on and 5 mistakes to avoid: 

5 points to focus on:

• Lots of contrast

Using your brand colors and identity, or mixing them with colors that are relevant to the content of the design, create an Instagram ad design or photo that contains lots of contrast between the colors. It will make the image pop and direct the eyes of your target audience where you want them, achieving your first target of capturing their attention at a brief glance. 

• Keep it simple

You don’t want to overwhelm your audience with too many details, or too much information, eventually leading to them abandoning your Instagram ad. Another point is that the Instagram algorithm and the Facebook system prefer ads with text occupying less than 20% of the Instagram ad design space. Meaning the Instagram algorithm will favor your content & give it a push. 

Have a lot to cover in your ad or an ad strategy focused on several products/services? Create a carousel of simple uncluttered designs rather than lump everything in one design that won’t deliver results. 

• Center your offer

Whatever it is you’re offering, and whether you’re using a photo or a graphic design, you should make your advertised product or your copy (whatever it is you want your audience to pay attention to) the center of your image. With any other elements directing the audience’s gaze toward the center. 

• Take advantage of video

As we all already know, the Facebook and Instagram algorithm is taking a video-centric approach these days, favoring all types of video content, which is alright since a sudden movement in users’ feeds may get them to stop scrolling and check what’s jumping at them. 

Your ad has a huge chance of capturing users’ attention in the first 3 seconds of your video, so make sure it’s engaging and eye-catching using colors, transitions, camera movement, and a moving subject. 

• Less is more with text

Keep the text in your design to a minimum because, as stated earlier, it’s preferred by Facebook, it’s less clutter, and it gives you the chance to make the text in your Instagram ad design pop. You have the space to create beautiful typography that directs the audience’s gaze where you want it, whether it’s an offer or information about a product, that’s what your audience will focus on. 

Keep it short & to the point, people don’t like being made to work to understand what they’re looking at, it will help your click through rate and conversions to have typography that’s easy to understand at a short glance, leading those who are interested to check out what you’re offering immediately. 

5 points to avoid: 

• Straying from brand identity

To your target audience, your Instagram ad design may be the first point of contact with or awareness about your brand, so it needs to be in keeping with your brand identity when it comes to aesthetics, colors, and design elements. 

Straying from brand identity will result in your brand losing credibility, appearing unprofessional, and lack of brand recognition upon later contact by the audience with your brand. 

• Videos that don’t work without sound 

99% of Instagram users view your ads through mobile devices, and that means a large portion of those will watch videos with the sound off for various reasons. If your Instagram ad is a video, you need to make sure people can understand what your ad is trying to say without having the sound on. If there’s a voiceover or something being said, you definitely need to include closed captions. 

• Ad fatigue 

No matter how great or aesthetically pleasing you think your Instagram ad design is, if your target audience keeps seeing the same Instagram ad over and over again, they will get bored and tired of it and just tune it out completely. 

Once you’ve decided on a format or a design aesthetic that you perceive to be working for you, you need to change the content regularly as well as the layout within that aesthetic to avoid ad fatigue.

• Complex or tiny fonts 

As we discussed earlier, most of your audience will be viewing your ad on a smaller device screen (a mobile device), so you need to make sure the text on your design isn’t challenging or difficult to read, as that will result in your target audience getting annoyed and most likely abandoning your ad. 

 

You need to make sure your font is clear and easy to read so as to capture the attention of audiences interested in your product/service immediately and make your message easy to understand and take action upon. This will result in high conversions. 

• Lack of negative space 

A filled-up, cluttered design will be distracting for your audience and will make it difficult for them to immediately see the object or the focus of your Instagram ad. Negative space (empty space around the focus of the design and between the design elements) plays an important role in directing the viewer’s gaze to the object or text you want them to focus on. 

Make sure to use your negative space in a design strategically to guide your audience’s eyes to where you want them to focus, making sure they pay attention to your offer or product so the ones who are interested are able to easily take action. 

Struggling to create the most effective design for your Instagram ads? Get in touch with our talented design team for a free consultation now.