Upcoming Facebook Fan Page Tab Design Changes

We wanted to inform you about some upcoming changes to the way campaigns are rendered on Facebook Fan pages. Facebook has announced several changes to the look and function of Fan pages, one of which can affect the way campaigns are displayed within your fan page. Fan Page tabs will shrink from 760 pixels wide (current) to 520 pixels wide to accommodate a slightly revised design. This change has been scheduled for Early 2010, but more specific timing details have not yet been announced. We will certainly post an update once the official dates have been released.

What follows is a pictorial explanation of the expected changes.

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What it currently looks like to run a promotion on a Facebook Fan page from Tab View.

 

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Pictured below is the same promotion running in the new Fan page Tab View format, at 520 pixels wide. The header  banner has been adjusted to fit the width of this display, and it can  be seen that some of the details and pictures within the banner are no longer visible past this point. To make sure users see everything you want to show them, we suggest that in the creation of your custom 760 pixel header banners, to leave the banner past the 520 pixel mark without any messages or pictures.

 

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This change only affects the Tab view. When the user enters deeper into the page, like to view the rules, or to submit their entry, they are directed into canvas view, which has not changed in appearance, and remains at the full 760 pixels wide. For this reason, we are not changing the upload specifications of the Header Banner in the Wildfire Promotion Builder tool, and keeping the upload width specification at 760 pixels.

 

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What this means for your campaign:

Because the width of the tab display is decreased to 520 pixels, the display of the header banner will be affected. Uploaded header banners which are 760 x 100 pixels will be cut off by the display at the 520 pixel mark. This is a design change that our developers are working on adapting the Wildfire tool to. However, in order to adapt to these display differences rapidly, we recommend that any custom header banners uploaded to the Wildfire Promotion Builder tool be adaptable to both sizes. In other words, you should still upload a 760 x 100 pixel header banner image, but design your image so that if 240 pixels are not displayable off the right side, none of the message is lost.

Our developers have already adjusted the Promotion Builder tool so that the rest of the characteristics of your promotion will not be affected by the Facebook display changes.

As always, we value your feedback and welcome your comments. Feel free to email us at any time if you encounter questions while setting up your promotion.