If there’s one common theme across e-commerce design teams these days, it’s that they are being asked to do more than ever before. More graphics production, across a great number of platforms, and in more formats and layouts. Meanwhile, as consumer Internet usage continues to increase, brands are looking for innovative and faster ways to deliver their messages online.

When it comes to creating online banners for e-commerce, brands face at least three key challenges:

1) Limited resources

2) Lack of fresh content

3) Challenging deadlines

Limited Resources
Some brands have in-house design teams. Other brands are asking their marketing managers to double as graphic designers. Still others work with outside agencies. Regardless, the challenge remains the same: graphic designers are being asked to handle more requests than ever before. These requests come in the form of promotional materials for new product launches, graphics for direct-to-consumer web sites, banners for e-commerce web sites and more.

Each request typically has multiple variations or iterations that go with it. For example, if a brand launches three new flavors of chips, promotional materials are required for all three varieties. Multiply that by multiple layouts and languages, and the variations increase exponentially. What’s more, if an update is needed for banner copy, no matter how small that change, graphic designers need to add such changes to their already overloaded todo lists.

Lack of Fresh Content
Many brands would love to refresh their online content more often, but feel constrained by a lack of new product for them to market. How can they keep their content fresh while working with existing products and product images? The answer is to update product backgrounds and brand copy while making use of the same product images. But that’s easier said than done given limited design resources.

Challenging Deadlines
At the same time that the demands on graphic design departments are increasing, the speed with which these teams must execute is also increasing. Consumers are consuming digital content at an unprecedented rate, and brands want to fill that content vacuum as fast as possible. Brands are also launching new products more frequently as they look to experiment with new digital channels and get ahead of their competition. And retailers are asking for faster turnaround on changes as they review brand-submitted content and provide feedback that must be addressed before new banners can go live on-site.

Accelerate Your E-Commerce Banner Creation with Rapid Ads
Fortunately, there’s software available to free up your resources, help you refresh your content, and enable you to meet your deadlines. Rapid Ads lets you create e-commerce banners quickly and easily. It was built with input from some of the world’s leading e-commerce graphics designers. But no design experience is required! Now, Marketing and Sales team members can generate their own banner ads in a matter of seconds. Some of the capabilities that make Rapid Ads a win for marketing, sales and design teams alike are:

• Integrated templates for retailers like Amazon, AmazonFresh, Kroger, Target and Walmart
• Easy-to-use web interface
• Library of product images with transparent backgrounds for use in banners
• Quick lookup by ASIN, GTIN or UPC
• Built-in History so you can quickly find and refresh your banners

Unlike other tools, Rapid Ads generates banners in both JPG and PSD format, not just JPG format. You can use the JPGs directly on retailer web sites or social media. And designers can edit those same banners in PSD format in tools like Photoshop.

Contact us today to find out more!