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Getting a Website - Extra Tips
Your Website's Aura
Do you attract or repel your visitors?
By Jim Moore, Owner of Phoenix Technologies
Member - International Assoc. of Webmasters & Designers

     Your website may have the perfect combination of product/service and words that sell it, fast-loading pages, etc. - but you could still be driving visitors away because of your website's "aura."

     What do I mean by aura?

     Color schemes.

     Some psychics claim they can see an aura around other humans, animals or even inanimate objects. In fact, through Kirlian photography, this aura can even be photographed.

     Basically, an aura is that outline of color shining from the surface of a being or object, and to psychics the specific color has meaning. For example, a red aura signifies passion.

     The effects of colors are not limited to psychics. They are widely used in marketing by such companies as IBM, GE, Westinghouse, Microsoft, the federal prison system and virtually all the major corporations. They've spent millions in research - but you can take advantage of the results for free. Why, for example, is IBM's logo blue and gray?

     The first thing a visitor is struck by when visiting your website is the color scheme - background, text, graphics.

     These colors affect your visitor's mood, emotions, feeling and behavior. The same colors will have different effects on different people, depending on their culture, location, environment and life experiences - but there are some basic rules.

     Let's take a look at some of these colors and how they affect your visitors - and you!

     YELLOW: If people are in a good mood, they generally buy quicker - and yellow can create that happy mood. Aren't you in a better mood on a sunny day than a cloudy one?

     Some of the things commonly associated with yellow are: gold, daisies, sun, lightning, cheerfulness, light, idea, corn and brightness. Note the very subdued yellowish tint to the background of this page.

     PINK: Pink is a "friendly" color. Radiating this "friendliness" outward can trigger your visitor to beam it right back to you, perhaps by purchasing a product. Many prisons use a pink color scheme to cut down on prison violence among inmates. On your website, it can make a good background color if you're running a romance or relationship-oriented site.

     People associate it with love, romance, pigs (pigs?), sex, pink roses, etc.

     BLUE: This is IBM's latest pick - against a gray background. It's a "power" color that relaxes and calms and can make people linger at your site longer.

     People associate darker blues with authority (businessmen in blue suits, policemen, etc.) Other studies have shown people buy quicker from authoritative figures, so if you have your picture on your website, wear a blue suit.

     Things we think of when we see the color blue are running water, blue skies, rain, ocean, policemen, and business suits.

     WHITE: White is always a good background color for your web pages because people associate white with trust and honesty, both of which can help you sell more products.

     White is associated with purity, peace, doves, surrender, milk, and innocence.

     RED: Red gets people excited, just as it does bulls. Use it sparingly or it becomes overpowering. Red headlines and sub-headlines grab our attention, just as stop signs do.

     Use red in your closing "call to action" when you ask visitors to order your product or service; it's a persuasive color.

     When we see red we think of love, romance, fire, sex, stop signs, fire engines, blood, war, roses and so on. Note on this CD how and where red has been used.

     ORANGE: This is a warm, comforting color (think sun) that mentally takes us from cold to hot. It can literally "warm up" your customers to the idea of buying from you.

     We think of sunshine, oranges, pumpkins, Halloween, warmth and sunsets when we see orange.

     BROWN: Brown can enhance credibility and trust because it triggers images of earth, stability, wood and leather.

     GREEN: This is a secure color that makes us feel safer. Money is green - and don't we feel safer when we have more of it? It's a good color to use when stressing the money-saving or income-producing benefits of a product or service.

     It's also a good color to use on any page used for ordering, presenting your privacy policies or guarantees.

     Green makes us think of luck, spring, life, money, grass and trees. This makes it a good color for health-related sites.

     BLACK: While black text on a white background is pretty much always a safe bet, don't overdo black. It frightens people away, especially women and children.

     On the other hand, it conveys professionalism and sophistication. It can also signify power (many SWAT teams use black uniforms for this reason).

     Things we feel or associate with black include night, evil, death, cats, etc. In fact, the color is believed to be a significant factor in ongoing racial problems because, no matter how hard people may try to overcome their prejudices against people of darker skin color, there is a long-buried fear of the dark.

     Many web pages with a black background deal with sinister topics such as conspiracies, crime, aliens and so forth.

     While black has been used in this CD's design, note that it appears only around the edges and a bit at the top to provide contrast to the artwork.

     PURPLE: Purple is and always has been the color of royalty ... and we've been conditioned to respect royalty, even if the emperor is wearing no clothes. The judicious use of the right shade of purple can help enhance respect for your website and your business.

     You may notice that our bigger headlines at the top of the page are purple.

     GOLD-SILVER: This one is almost obvious - money! Gold and silver are valuable commodities and, again, these are colors associated with royalty, power and wealth.

     As metals, silver and gold are rare - and people like to own rare things, so you might consider using those colors on your product's packaging to make it look more valuable.

     Use it on your website in ad copy that has a limited time offer.

     We associate jewelry, wealth, rarity and power with gold and silver. When trying to use silver, you will be using a gray tint. We've made very judicious use of gold in this CD - see the top of the page.

     The darker shades of a color may be more appealing to men, while the lighter shades will attract women. The darker shades are also more powerful in their effects than lighter shades, and should be used more sparingly.

     Women don't like being intimidated, but prefer being "courted" with gentleness and subtlety.

     To get a man's attention, you must often use more powerful means (colors); someone once said that you have to hit a man over the head with a 2x4 to get his attention. Or was that for mules?

     These are just some of the most basic colors and their psychological effects. They can be broken down into more refined shades, and thus more refined interpretations.

     In this presentation, I have used a black background (something I rarely do on an actual website) to convey authority. Quite simply, I want to convince you I know what I'm talking about.

     Notice, too, that I use green, gold and blue - green to highlight words that have to do with money-saving tips or benefits of my services, gold to really highlight money-related techniques or some of my most valuable tips, and blue to help you feel more relaxed and comfortable, and to help keep you interested in the content.

     Don't be afraid to experiment. If a certain combination isn't working, then feel free to change it.

     How do you know if it isn't working? If everything else seems to be designed to achieve the result you want - and you aren't getting any.

     Change one thing at a time and track it for awhile, just like you (should) track your advertising on radio, print or TV.

      Recently I was asked to look at a website that sold a product to schools - a board game that featured local businesses who paid to appear on the map on which the game was played.

     The site was well organized, the copy well-written and the navigation simple and easy to see. The site appeared to answer any questions the visitor may have. But business was terrible!

     The reason, in my opinion, is that the color combinations were atrocious! The site used heavy, solid blocks of contrasting colors - blue, pink, green, etc.

     It looked amateurish from a designer's point of view - and it had an immediate and negative impact on me as a first-time visitor.

     Put as much care into designing the color scheme and layout of your website as you would into your home or office. It must be not only functional, but inviting and comfortable.

     Use complementary colors - and various shades of the same basic color ... such as brown and tan with a gray or blue.

     Here's another important factor that has an impact on the visitor's gender - a factor I've never seen discussed before in web design, but one which I learned long ago in designing advertising.

     Men prefer square corners and bold lines, while women prefer rounded corners and light, breezy lines.

     Does your site look soft - or aggressive? The answer determines how friendly it is to gender. Are your customers primarily men or women in the real world? Design your website for the same market.

     Some sites are obvious - a hardware store or lumber yard caters to men and so it needs strong, bold lines and colors. A lingerie store, on the other hand, needs to be soft, sexy and feminine (think pink). Other sites may be a little harder to pin down.

     Health sites, for example, are going to be visited by more women than men ("real men don't get sick" - haha!) and so it should have a friendlier, softer, more rounded look.

     For ideas, look at your competition - especially the bigger companies with money to spend on market research. Study the catalogs, mailings and websites of companies in the same industry as you.

     Yeah, I know ... this gives you the perfect excuse to peruse those Victoria's Secret catalogs!

     Have fun with it and put yourself in your customer's shoes.

     Get advice from friends, family - even real customers. They'll be flattered you asked, and their input could spell the difference between online success and failure.

     One final word of caution - there are basically 256 so-called "web safe" colors to work with. These are colors that generally look like they should on web browsers. True, your scanner may scan 16 million colors - but stick to these 256.

     For a pretty comprehensive color chart, CLICK HERE.

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