Internet Newsletter - Use of Graphics

By Balwant Gohil

Internet newsletters are designed to catch the reader's attention and direct them towards your website. One of the biggest dangers of today's online newsletters isn't the lack of good content - it's the way it's content is presented, often in the most boring and unattractive graphical layout. Graphics and photos will make any boring looking text much more attractive. On the other hand, the more graphics you have the longer it will take for the newsletter to load on the subscriber's computer. Valuable subscribers will be lost if your newsletter takes long to load. Remember that your readers want quick and accurate information, and while it's your task to present that in a visually attractive way, it's also your responsibility not to keep them waiting excessively.

Using Graphic Elements in Your Newsletter

One common and effective way of presenting an Internet newsletter is by creating a design that resembles your website's visual aspect. In other words, you can use the same kinds of graphics, separators, column borders, buttons or even headers to make your newsletter look and feel like your website. Of course, all these graphical elements take their share of download time, and things get worse when you add large photos to the newsletter. If you want to approach your newsletter layout like this, try to minimize the number of graphical elements borrowed from your website. Reduce the fancy banner to a thin graphic that houses the name of the newsletter and get rid of some of the column borders and page separators. You can also drop the menu graphics and simply choose a similar background color and text links instead of buttons.

Using Photographs in your Online Newsletter

A newsletter that has no photographs is dull and has less chances of impressing your subscribers. But as we have shown before, photos lead to longer download times. However, you can always process the photos to make them express the same thing but eat up a lot less space. Here are a few tips on hot to do that:

* Try to make the photos smaller - they don't have to stretch on the entire page. In most cases, a 200 by 200 pixel wide photo will have the ability to tell a story without excessive download time

* Use a photo editing software to reduce the quality of the graphics. In many cases, the visual aspect of the photo is almost identical between a high resolution and a lower resolution and smaller image

* If you are using photos taken with your own camera, or scanned from publications, be aware that most are at 300 dpi (dots per inch). Web graphics should be saved to be around 72 dpi - try this with a photo and see the huge difference in size between the two, while the quality stays the same

Using Text Elements to Make your Newsletter More Dynamic

You can also use different text elements to bring some color in your newsletter. You can use larger drop caps, or assign them a different color, for a nice professional look. Bold or italic text can also be used to bring variation in the newsletter design. While playing with font size and color is fine, make sure not to use fonts that browsers won't be able to read.

The newsletter graphics and the visual aspect of your publication play a vital part in the success of your promotion campaign. A newsletter with excellent content and a graphic layout to support it will become a very effective traffic building tool.

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Copyright 2006 � Balwant Gohil. You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made, the author's name is retained and the link to our site URL remains active.