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Is Your Website's Aura Repelling Visitors?
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Jim Moore
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Dec 22, 2002 21:11 PST
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Your Website's Aura
By Jim Moore
10:47 12/15/02
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?
Colors 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 is not limited to psychics. It is widely used in
marketing by such companies as IBM, GE, Westinghouse, Microsoft and
virtually all the major corporations. They've spent millions in research
- but you can take advantage of the results for free.
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.
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, sex, pink roses,
etc.
BLUE: This is IBM's latest pick - against a grey 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, poplicemen, 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.
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
touse 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.
PURPLE: Purple is and always has been the color of royalty ... and
we've been conditioned to respect royalty, even if the emporer is
wearing no clothes. The judicious use of the right shade of purple can
help enhance respect for your website and your business.
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 offers 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.
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.
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?
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 se. 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 think about
getting sick") 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 and mailings
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.
Jim Moore is manager of Phoenix Technologies, a website design and
promotion service in Williamsport, TN, where he also serves as online
editor of TennTimes - the News (http://westviewnews.virtualave.net),
America's largest online newspaper. He has won numerous writing and web
design awards, is a member of the International Association of
Webmasters & Designers and for eight years produced, directed and hosted
"The Omega Report", a popular hour-long TV documentary cablecast into
1.5 million homes from Nashville to Boston.
He publishes a free monthly newsletter, "On the Go!", for busy people
like you. Subscribe here
(http://www.topica.com/lists/OntheGo/subscribe/?location=listinfo) or
send an email to Ont-@topica.com. He may also be reached at
te-@mindspring.com.
Copyright 2002 by The Phoenix Foundation. All rights reserved.
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