Great Minds Think

Like clothing to a body, your web site design portrays the style of your business. It’s all about appearances.

As the new year approaches, business owners around the globe who are considering a site redesign and are faced with the ultimate decision of how their web site will look to in order to attract customers. For an easy answer, web templates exist to satisfy the organizational elements of your creation, however the color scheme and interactive parts are entirely up to you. How will you answer the challenge?

Color plays an important role in marketing.
The colors you choose invoke feeling and provoke thought when users are cruising your website. Do you find yourself buying things because the package was pretty cool? Your web site has the same effect. When users see an element that sparks their attention, they’re more inclined to stay on your site and browse your pages. Staying longer means potential sales.

Color is interpreted differently depending on the culture.
It’s important to understand your target audience, but know that because of the openness of the internet, untargeted audiences may be attracted to your site as well. I recommend using a theme and color scheme that is acceptable to most audiences. To do this, you’ll need to explore a little bit. For example, in some cultures, the color red represents vitality and energy. In others, it symbolizes rage and anger.  Black, a color of power and authority, is widely used on entertainment sites like MTV.com (http://mtv.com), but in other scenarios can be associated with death and evil.

Color helps to emphasize or highlight.
Remember back in your school days when you used a yellow highlighter to outline your textbooks? This is just one of many ways in which we use color to highlight or magnify a subject. It is not uncommon to use one color text, making the more important parts bold or italicized to draw attention. Consider the use of color to do the same thing. Users will be able to scan your pages more easily to find information. A perfect show of this concept is on the Oprah website (http://www.oprah.com)where blue bold text is used to signify both links and headlines.

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The right colors for your web site are as important as the clothes you choose to wear. Give your web site the benefit of an overhaul using the points discussed in this blog and see what a difference it makes in your marketing efforts.
And of course, if you want me to help you personally, send me an email and I’ll help you to demystify the rainbow!

Color Resources:
http://www.colormatters.com
http://www.colorvoodoo.com     <~~~ cool stuff here!
http://www.v7n.com/colors-for-marketing.php
http://www.precisionintermedia.com/color.html
http://www.web-design-uk.biz/web_design/psychology_color_marketing.htm