Color Me Blue

Color Me Blue

by: Rosalind Gardner

Chris, a new consulting client, asked me to help him increase sales on his affiliate marketing site.

As he was describing his site and the problem, I thought, ‘this is going to be a quick fix.ก

How wrong I was!

His site was excellent. Other than a few minor points, it followed all my basic rules for a successful affiliate marketing site.

The site was focused around a single theme in a profitable niche, with an excellent selection of highpriced, highcommission products.

Chris had gone the extra mile to have his site professionally designed, and it was simple, elegant and userfriendly, employing consistent navigation and a nifty databasedriven search results system.

He was working directly with his merchant partners to create ad copy that offered his visitors the best possible deals.

And he was advertising in the payperclick search engines to drive tons of targeted traffic, and using hundreds of keyword listings with brilliantly worded titles and descriptions.

So, why on earth were his sales so low?

I knew I was picking at straws, but during our first session, I made a host of recommendations for improvement, which included:

a domain name change

a background color change

reformatting the page table size

rephrasing offers more positively

adding relevant graphics and photos

dropping poor performing merchants

adding a newsletter

adding new products

redirecting nonbuyers to additional offers

Chris implemented all my suggestions as well as a few of his own. After giving the new version a few weeks to prove itself, we scheduled our second teleconsulting session. I was anxious to hear how well the site was now performing.

You can appreciate my dismay when Chris told me that his sales had actually dropped!

Aargh!

I reviewed his site again, and it suddenly struck me… he should try blue links!

Why?

Because web design convention suggests that links should be blue, visited links purple and active links red. Although nothing written in stone about link color, I believe that those conventional colors should used whenever they compliment site design.

Iกd changed my own site links, SageHearts.com, from maroon to blue sometime before and noticed a nice conversion rate increase.

Sure enough, that WAS the answer to Chrisก site problems…

His conversions increased 1100% almost overnight JUST by changing his link color to blue.

In addition to being underlined, people expect links to be blue, and in some cases visitors may have problems with sites that don’t conform to their expectations.

With the average site visit lasting only about 8 seconds, we don’t have time to waste confusing our visitors with basic site navigation. Use blue links if possible to keep your navigation instantly recognizable, unambiguous and consistent.

© Copyright Rosalind Gardner, All Rights Reserved.

About The Author

Article by Rosalind Gardner, author of the bestselling กSuper Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other Peopleกs Stuff Onlineก. To learn how you too can suceed in Internet and affiliate marketing, go to: http://NetProfitsToday.com.

This article was posted on March 30

by Rosalind Gardner

Two Quick Ways to Make Your Copy of Merchantกs Dat

Two Quick Ways to Make Your Copy of Merchantกs Data Feed Different From All Other Affiliates

by: Konstantin Goudkov

Product data feeds are really popular among affiliates because they can help produce thousands of product pages quickly and easily. Such pages can be used to drive highly targeted search engine traffic looking specifically for those products. But there is a big problem.

The problem with data feeds is the fact that a lot of affiliates use the same copies of feeds in the same exact ways. Most data feed affiliates put just the product names in HTML titles, so they all end up with a bunch of similar pages that have identical titles. And since the search engines give a lot of weight to the titles of HTML pages, those affiliates end up competing with each other for the same highly specific keywords.

Luckily, this problem has a quick and dirty solution. Itกs worse than going over the feed by hand, but much better than doing nothing. What I get from affiliates is that manually modifying feed simply defeats the purpose. But being able to do it automatically can help one differentiate his site from other affiliates without losing the benefits of using data feeds.

There are two basic ways to automatically make your site a little bit different from other affiliates of the same merchant.

The first way is to add some keywords before and/or after the product name in the HTML title. For example, letกs say you pick a phrase กOn Saleก to add after the product name. So instead of กBlue Widget #MN3143ก you have in the original data feed, you would now have กBlue Widget #MN3143 On Saleก in the HTML title of that product page. You simply add that phrase to the titles of all products in the feed. That lets you specifically target people who would search for กblue widget on saleก or กmn3143 on sale.ก

You can also use some arbitrary keywords like กCheapก or กDiscountedก or กQualityก before the product name to have something like กCheap Blue Widget #MN3143.ก The keywords you pick largely depend on the merchantกs product line.

Another variation of this technique is to randomize the keywords that are displayed before and after product names in the titles. You can use a severside technology of your choice to pick a random keyword out of some predefined list and append it to the name of a product to form the title for the page. Your scripts would pick a new keyword for each request for the product page. Of course, that would only work if you are using a database, and do not generate static HTML using Webmerge or a similar program. That way, even though you don’t control the exact keyword that is displayed for any particular page, with enough product pages you can cover a wider market of people searching with different modifiers. You should be able to cover different shopper types the ones looking for bargains as well as the ones looking for quality.

The second way to make your site different from others is a bit more complex, but could yield much greater results. Instead of adding something to the product names, you can try changing the names on a large scale. As I said earlier, modifying feeds by hand would defeat the purpose of using them. But if you perform a findandreplace operation on the whole file then you can get different content without spending much additional time.

The utility you might want to use for feed modification is called sed. You can search for that name using you favorite search engine. Itกs sed the stream editor. Iกm going to skip much of the technical detail on how and why it does certain things in a certain way. Instead, I will concentrate on describing practical application of sed with product feeds.

At its core, sed takes input data, modifies it according to certain rules and outputs the result all done linebyline. It uses regular expressions and can perform extremely complex operations, by for now I just want to concentrate on simple replacements.

The good thing about sed is it can use an external file with multiple commands and execute them one after another for the entire input file (in our case, itกs a product feed). So you can replace as many words as you need. Also, once you define those commands, you can use them for many different feeds with different merchants.

Letกs go over a few examples that should illustrate the true power of this approach.

Iกll assume that the merchant we are working with sells widgets of various kinds. You looked over the feed and saw that the merchant has some porcelain widgets; red and blue, large and small. One of the synonyms for porcelain is ceramic, so first thing you would do is replace the word porcelain with ceramic in all product names and descriptions.

This can be done by adding the following commands to a sed script file before running it against the feed:

s/porcelain/ceramic/g

s/Porcelain/Ceramic/g

Those commands will replace your keywords while preserving capitalization. So that a title like กBig Blue Porcelain Widgetก becomes กBig Blue Ceramic Widget.ก

To make things more interesting, letกs assume that the feed already has some ceramic widgets aside from the porcelain ones. So you do not want to end up with just one kind. Instead, you want to switch them around. Remember, your goal is to be as different from the original feed as possible.

You can achieve that with the following set of commands:

s/porcelain/MYTEMPKEYWORD/g

s/ceramic/porcelain/g

s/MYTEMPKEYWORD/ceramic/g

In the example above, I used MYTEMPKEYWORD as a placeholder. That let us make sure that we are not losing the original keywords.

What happens there is:

all กporcelainก is changed to กMYTEMPKEYWORDก

then

all กceramicก is changed to กporcelainก

then

all กMYTEMPKEYWORDก (which used to be the original porcelain) is changed to กceramicก

and then the same thing should be done for all capitalized keywords.

You can use anything in place of MYTEMPKEYWORD as long as it does not already appear in the feed. You want to use some unique keyword.

Once you are done with those keywords, you can change something like กMetallicก to กShiny Metal Finishก assuming that makes sense for a given product line.

Adding that to a command file would give you:

s/porcelain/MYTEMPKEYWORD/g

s/ceramic/porcelain/g

s/MYTEMPKEYWORD/ceramic/g

s/Porcelain/MYTEMPKEYWORD/g

s/Ceramic/Porcelain/g

s/MYTEMPKEYWORD/Ceramic/g

s/Metallic/Shiny Metal Finish/g

s/metallic/shiny metal finish/g

That would also change กBlue Metallic Widgetก to กBlue MetalLooking Finish Widget.ก

As I said earlier, you can add as many commands as you want for different words and phrases. And with enough such small changes, you will be able to reach traffic that is not already covered by your competing affiliates. While a few hundred affiliates with their data feed sites might be displayed for a keyword กblue porcelain widgetก there might be just a few (if any) covering กblue ceramic widgetก for the same merchant.

Even something like

s/TV Set/Television Set/g

along with diagonal sizes and brand names might help you stand apart from the rest of the affiliates who use the same feed. Any change is better than having the same exact content as others.

I encourage you to download a copy of sed and check it out. Once you get a hang of it, you will be able to automate the whole process. And if you are already using scripts to refresh merchantsก feeds and rebuild sites automatically, then you can plug sed in the middle and modify feeds on the fly.

Also, if you are having a hard time coming up with words to replace, you might want to check out Princetonกs WordNet. You can even download the word database and use it locally on your desktop.

About The Author

Konstantin Goudkov manages an affiliate program with a merchant that carries 2500+ gifts. If you enjoy working with companies that treat affiliates like valued partners then be sure to check us out.

You can find more information about our program at: http://www.genericgifts.com/affiliate_program.jsp

This article was posted on January 21, 2005

by Konstantin Goudkov

How to Effectively Design Your Business Image

How to Effectively Design Your Business Image

by: Faith Seekings

In many industries, image is one of the last things business owner looks at. If business is not booming, they assume there is something wrong with the sales method, as opposed to the image. กIf we just sent out a few thousand more fliersก they say, กwe will get some more clientsก. When in reality, they should be looking at how the message they’re sending to their target market is perceived in the first place. Here are a few pointers to look at:
Color
Colors evoke innate responses, which means not all colors are suitable for all business types. How does red make you feel? Angry, in pain, tense? It’s tricky. In the financial industry red is negative (in the red). In the world of health, red can represent discomfort, not good for people offering pain solutions. In fitness, red is very sporty and stimulating. How about blue? It tends to be calm and soothing. Blue can range from fun and playful sky blue to dark, corporate navy. Green is often associated with natural things, or ‘go’ and money – depending on the shades. Yellow/orange/reds/browns in combination stimulate the appetite think fast food and candy bars. Red is tricky. In some instances red means power and is striking. Purple can very easily go from sophisticated, royal aubergene to kid’s grape (Barney). Orange is still a little weird and often used as a shocker, not as the dominant color. The only industry that can get away with almost any color is Tech.
Personal Preference VS Market Preference
People often let their own personal tastes rule their image decisions Oneกs color preferences and styles may not suit the audience they are targeting. What style of design appeals to you? Now imagine that in the eyes of someone quite different, like your grandmother. For example: being too sporty and athletic when your target is professional businesspeople. Too earthy and organic when your target is average Joes. There may be imagery that means a lot to you in your profession, but doesn’t mean much to your target market. It may even scare them. Step back and look at your business as if you’ve never encountered it before. Imagine what might attract clients, or help explain simply what you do. Realizing that your image needs to portray a certain message to the general public, not the you or your colleagues, is the first step to image success.
Looking กNewก
Just because youกve only been in business for a few days, doesn’t mean you have to look like it. Having a well puttogether public image will build trust and a solid reputation. Taking a little time and care instead of quick ‘good enough’ fixes will help you appear more established. Potential clients may not consciously pin point it, but they will pick up on the homespun factor or the generic Staples business cards. How does that affect your credibility? It is good to get your name and information about your business out there. However, when it comes to points of contact like brochures and web sites, if they are messy and difficult to read, they aren’t doing you any favours. There are professionally designed, inexpensive web templates that can do a great job until you are ready for a custom web site. Find a real printer and ask them have a look at your layout and make sure your type isn’t falling off the edge and that the images sharp.
Looking like everyone else
You have a lot of competition. If everyone in your industry uses the same symbols and goes for the standard solution, how will you stand out? What makes your business unique? Is it the name? The location? Is there something meaningful to you that you could incorporate into your identity that shows your uniqueness, or that speaks to your target audience? Maybe a new take on an industry symbol. It could be as simple as having a blue card with a different typeface. Imagine this amongst a sea of black and white, times roman everything centered cards.
Looking good on a shoestring budget
If you can’t hire a designer there are a few things you can do to help look like a pro. Have things printed professionally – it is much better than your bubble jet. Don’t make all the type gigantic. Give everything some breathing room by not butting up against the edge of the page or pictures. Line things up. Look at the competition. Compare your work to professionally designed material and try to notice the differences that make theirs look cleaner. Put your own tastes aside and ask your target audience for their opinions and then listen to them.
Faith Seekings is the owner of Faith Seekings Design. She works with business owners to help align their business goals with their business image. She can be reached at 416.368.8956 or email [email protected]

About The Author

Faith is a graphic designer trained at George Brown College in Toronto. With more than 8 yearsก experience as a designer and project manager, Faith has created logos, stationery, advertising campaigns, ecommerce solutions, websites and collateral material for a host of clients, including: Rogers Cablesystems, Daniels Properties, Zona Health, Nooro Online Research, Agent Wildfire, Nymity Privacy Services and more. Faith is a skilled designer with a keen eye for the strategic as well as the tactical elements of graphic design.

faithseekingsdesign.ca

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 29, 2004

by Faith Seekings

Bluray: A Primer

Bluray: A Primer

by: Kenny Hemphill

Bluray is an optical disc format which is set to rival HDDVD (http://www.thehdtvtuner.com/highdefinitiondvd.html) in the race to be the defacto standard storage medium for HDTV. The HDDVD vs Bluray battle resembles that between Betamax and VHS and DVD+RW and DVDRW.

Currently, the major Hollywood film studios are split evenly in their support fro Bluray and HDDVD, but most of the electronics industry is currently in the Bluray camp. The key difference between Bluray disc players and recorders and current optical disc technology is that Bluray, as its name suggests, uses a blueviolet laser to read and write data rather than a red one. Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light, and according to the Bluray Disc Association (BDA), which is made up of, amongst others, Sony, Philips, Panasonic, and Pioneer, this means that the laser spot can be focussed with greater precision.

Bluray discs have a maximum capacity of 25GB and duallayer discs can hold up to 50GB enough for four hours of HDTV. Like HDDVD, Blue laser discs don’t require a caddy and the players and recorders will be able to play current DVD discs. Codecs supported by Bluray include the H.264 MPEG4 codec which will form part of Apple’s QuickTime 7, and the Windows Media 9 based VC1.

The BDA says that although blue laser discs and players are already shipping in Japan, they won’t ship in the US until the end of 2005 at the very earliest. It is likely that players will be very expensive initially, compared to DVD players. In Japan, they cost the equivalent of $2000. However, as with all new technology, prices will quickly fall particularly as Bluray will be competing with HDDVD for that space under your TV.

About The Author

Kenny Hemphill is the editor and publisher of The HDTV Tuner (http://www.thehdtvtuner.com) a guide to the kit, the technology and the programming on HDTV.

This article was posted on February 14

by Kenny Hemphill

Why Should You Care About Your Web Site Colors?

Why Should You Care About Your Web Site Colors?

by: Radhika Venkata

**How Colors are Used in web design:**

Demarcates screen elements into groups You can pu a blue background for your navagational bar and white for rest of your page. This tells the visitor that the blue area has different elements and grabs his attention.

You can relate different groups of element on your screen If you want to keep a navigational menu also at the bottom of page, you can use the same blue background. This tells the visitor that both blue areas on the screen has the same information.

Highlights information If you want to make a line of text prominent, you can use different colored text instead of regular text or use a background for that line of text.

Looks nicer Always colors associate with our mood and perceptions. We always feel the colors. Colored objects draws peoples attention.

**One should always use web safe colors?**

Nah… Unless your audience purely rely on 256 colored monitors. Mostly a remote possibility. You can experiment and enjoy in applying colors in your web design. The worst thing that will happen is the colors are shown to itกs nearest color on 256 monitors. They won’t look like exactly as they look on your monitor.

**What colors are best?**

One cannot say this exactly. Because the blue which means professionalism to some is death to some.

Here are some colors:

To indicate necessary action, use warm colors

Red, orange, yellow.

To provide calm and content feelings use cool colors

Green, blue, violet, purple.

Green means growth and vitality.

Red means energy and passion.

Blue means intuitive, cool and trustworthy.

Yellow means enthusiastic and optimistic.

Orange means courage and success.

Purple means passionate and spiritual.

Grays and browns seem dull. But they can take on a more cheerful attitude with compliments of red and orange. Emotions like this will help your visitors to associate your site with stableness and confidence.

**Tips to follow in appying colors on your website:**

1. White background is always preferable to keep your content. It makes easy to read and eye fatigue will be lessen with plain white background.

2. To make the things elegent use one or two contrast colors next to white. Like blue, green, orange etc.

3. Never use more than 34 colors on a page.(unless your site goes with graphics or other multimedia themes)

4. Check the colors and it appears on different browsers using online tools like http://www.anybrowser.com/

5. Background of your web site pages: ALWAYS use a web safe color as a background color to your web site. This makes your graphics and text appear on a clean interface on any type of monitors.

6. Download and use this color picker for your web designs. Easy to use and very good free utility software: http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html

About The Author

Radhika Venkata

Subscribe to กEbookBiz Magazineก which is completely focused on ebook business and Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights every month!

http://www.ebooksworld.com/freetosell.shtml

Webmaster Resources: List Your product, ezine or web site free!

http://www.webmasterscentral.com/

This article was posted on December 22, 2003

by Radhika Venkata

Leave those Links Blue!

Leave those Links Blue!

by: Jamie Kiley

Don’t mess with those links! When you’re designing your site, you should leave your text links in their natural stateblue and underlined. We all want to be creative and not do the bland, expected, normal thing. We want to change our links to red, green, yellow, even blackanything but blue. And we have the urge to take off those underlines.

Resist the temptation. Itกs hard. But thereกs a good reason to leave them alone.

From the earliest days of the web, text links have been blue. People intuitively recognize that blue, underlined text is a link. They know they can click on it.

The combination of blue and underlines means กIf I click on this, it goes somewhereก. We’re conditioned to recognize those distinguishing characteristics. We’re like Pavlovกs dogswe see the link and instantly know what it means. Thereกs no time wasted in trying to figure out whether or not that particular word or phrase is clickable.

If you mess with the natural appearance of a link, you lose that instant recognition. People have to stop and think (and often click) to figure out what your colors mean. I have watched countless people try to navigate websites and spend half their time figuring out whatกs a link and whatกs not. They have no way of knowing.

In addition, people scan a page for links. They like to be active on the internet, and they like to know what they can do. When they recognize a link in your copy, itกs a clear signal of someplace to go. Visitors want to know what their options are. Itกs not a good idea to make life difficult. Theyกll appreciate coming across a site thatกs easy to use and doesn’t try to confuse them (for once!).

It is becoming more acceptable to use other colors for your text links, as long as they remain underlined. But if you can, itกs still best to use blue. This is because so many people use underlined, colored text on their sites that is NOT linked. Visitors have a tendency to get confused. They never know what to expect. With blue, itกs obvious.

Some people have brought up the point that if we stick to the status quo, there will never be any improvements in the system.

My answer: In a medium like the web, forward movement will never be a problem. The web continues to push ahead, regardless of whether your site jumps on the bandwagon or not. There will always be new growth, no matter what your site does.

The question is, when is it appropriate for your site to adopt the latest fads? To answer that question, you must keep in mind your siteกs purpose and your audience.

If your site is technology oriented, and your visitors are technicallyminded and on the cutting edge, then going for the latest trend is more appropriate.

But if your site is focused on an average web user, itกs different. If you’re sellling a product/service, communicating information, or driving any specific action, you need to keep your visitors focused on that goal. You shouldn’t distract them with trying to learn a new set of skills and standards just so they can navigate your site.

Never move faster than your audience is ready to move. At this point in time, people still struggle with being able to recognize links. A majority of people have a difficult time finding what they want. If they are still struggling, your site needs to accomodate them.

As more and more people become comfortable with advances in technology and design style, it will be appropriate to incorporate those advances into your site. Just wait until your audience is ready.

Final thoughts: If the context of your site makes it clearly obvious what is a link and what is not, it is sometimes permissible to use a color other than blue for your links. For this to work, your copy should have no colored text that isn’t linked (with the exception of headings) and no underlined text that isn’t linked. Only use another color if you are sure that visitors won’t have any trouble recognizing your links.

The main point: Visitors shouldn’t have to think about what is a link and what isn’t. Whatever you can do that maintains instant recognition is great. Go for it!

About The Author

There are 580.8 million people online. Can they find your business? Jamie Kiley creates powerful and engaging websites that make sure YOUR company gets noticed. Visit www.kianta.com for a free quote.

Get a quick, free web design tip every two weekssign up for Jamieกs newsletter: http://www.kianta.com/newsletter.php

[email protected]

This article was posted on October 10, 2002

by Jamie Kiley

Extracting Color Functions

Extracting Color Functions

by: Maricon Williams

Colors are as powerful as words. It can communicate though without the use of words. It can be as welcoming as a smile yet can be rude as a smirk. We have different perceptions about colors. They can tend to affect our emotions, memories, imagination especially our vision. Designers often neglect the importance of choosing the right colors. As a result, they’re not getting what they are supposed to get. The viewer’s attention is limited. They can also tend to be impatient. Thus, it is their duty to design not just a good design but a design with the right color scheme which makes it spectacular.

Advertisers and manufacturers on the other hand, must give enough attention to other factors in connection with colors. First is demographics. The market of a particular service may be composed of the young or the adult or simply the elderly. The younger the audience is the more essential the color message should be. Children want neon colors – bright, vivid, trendy and hot. Teenagers like diversities thus they can settle to any kind of color like pastel, neon and solid colors. Adults, on the other hand want solid and formal colors. But if your audience is general then you can be safe with the conventional colors. Colors greatly affect our moods. Warm colors like orange and red make us feel secured and safe. Cool colors like green and blue create a relaxed atmosphere. Now you will no longer be surprised why red is a color which is widely used. This is because warm colors grab attention instantly.

Your choice of color must be linked with gender, ethnic and cultural inclination of your target audience. In China, you wear white when you are mourning however in North America it is used to connote snow, youth and is the color of bridal gowns. Caucasians color for power is red while Hispanic’s blue. We are living in a diverse world thus we have to extract the meaning of every color in relation to every one.

The second factor to consider is technology. It was predicted that the colors bronze, copper and metallic will make it as a ‘high tech’ color. They say these colors are attractive and fresh to the eyes thus may be appealing.

To give you a backgrounder on colors, primary colors include red, blue and yellow. They are pure colors. If you mix one to another the colors produced are called secondary colors. Mixing a primary to a secondary color produces tertiary colors. Complementary colors are those found directly across from one another on the color wheel. These colors came from the scientific palette. Artistic palette of colors, on the other hand, includes additive colors which include red, green and blue. Mixing them in equal quantities produces white. Mixing two of them produces cyan, magenta and yellow, also called the subtractive colors. This system of colors is also called the CMYK where K indicates black.

In order to make the color function, these color basics can help you extract the function that’s in them. You got to find it to experience the power.

About The Author

Maricon Williams

I love reading. Give me a book and Iกll finish it in one sitting. Reading is the chance to be transported to a different world and so is writing. Iกm more enthusiastic about writing however, since you can relay your ideas to someone else. I can only imagine that feeling when I hear a complete stranger talking about my ideas which read on an article somewhere. To relay my message to as many people is the same as touching people with music. Only mineกs less harmonic. I try to make up for it with the color I bring with words. And most of the time, it’s more than enough.

For additional information and comments about the article you may log on to http://www.wholesaleprintingteam.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 25

by Maricon Williams

Breathtaking Color Power!

Breathtaking Color Power!

by: Maricon Williams

Colors convey character, emotion and intention. You are what colors you choose. Thus, your choice of colors should reflect the message or feeling you to hope to convey to the viewer.

Red Red is hot color. It is an established color of love, urgency, courage, danger, passion, blood, intensity, aggression, and competition. It is best used as an accent color. This color does not usually blend well with greens or purples of the same intensity, so if you use red with these colors, modify the brightness or intensity.

Blue Blue is a color of peace, tranquility and wisdom. It also conveys honesty, truth, loyalty, power, coolness, health, harmony, and confidence. Blue is a safe choice for most uses, and goes well with the majority colors. Don’t use blue if your site is food or drink related, since there are hardly any blue foods and drinks.

Beige and Gray These are neutral colors. As neutrals, they can be combined with almost any color and still come across well. Both make for very readable backgrounds, but be sure to use glints of bright colors or the site will appear uninteresting. You can also accent beige or gray with dark colors. It will create an illustrious, professional look.

Black Black entails death, seriousness, solid strength, elegance, sophistication, rebellion, evil, power, and mystery. It can be powerful, aloof and intimidating. However, black is very useful in separating things such as graphic images. Black can make colors explode!

Yellow Yellow is the brightest of all colors and has the greatest illuminating power. It is a warm and cheerful color. In addition to cheerfulness, yellow can also convey caution, optimism, idealism, cowardice, and imagination. Too much yellow can be an eyesore. Be careful using yellow with greens and purples of the same intensity. It might tone down one or the other.

Green Green connotes youth, fertility, ecology, nature, health, growth, money, safety, healing, and food. However, to other viewers, it may connote envy, insects, and reptiles. Green can be well suited as a secondary or accent color.

Brown Brown implies simplicity, earthiness, comfort, durability, and stability. However, like the neutral grays and beiges, a site that is mostly brown can be very dull. However, a site that had a light brown/beige background, a rich brown secondary color, and bright or dark red accents can give the impression of being very professional.

When choosing colors for your web site. Choose wisely because colors have a larger impact on the viewers. To know its impact, try this test: Open your web site and write on a piece of paper as many words and images that you can think of. Now, have another person to do the same. After that, compare your notes. If you made correct color choices, the list should be almost impossible to tell apart.

About The Author

Maricon Williams

I love reading. Give me a book and Iกll finish it in one sitting. Reading is the chance to be transported to a different world and so is writing. Iกm more enthusiastic about writing however, since you can relay your ideas to someone else. I can only imagine that feeling when I hear a complete stranger talking about my ideas which read on an article somewhere. To relay my message to as many people is the same as touching people with music. Only mineกs less harmonic. I try to make up for it with the color I bring with words. And most of the time, it’s more than enough.

For Inquiries and Comments about the article and for additional information about web designs, log on to http://www.webdesignsprovider.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 06

by Maricon Williams

Graphic Design Using Color

Graphic Design Using Color

by: Kelly Paal

Color is everywhere and conveys a message even if we don’t realize it. While this message can vary by culture it pays to know what colors ขsayข in your own corner of the universe, and even what color means to your target market.

If you don’t think that color speaks just complete this sentence, ขred means and green means –ข even a child will know what red means stop and green means go. If such simple ideas work for all of a given culture or market what could it mean to the graphic design of your website, brochure, or product if you know some of this information.

First let’s start with the basics. The color wheel. We’ve all seen it. The color wheel shows the basic colors, each wheel is different in how many shades of each color is shown, but they are essentially the same.

Color harmony, colors that go together well. These will be colors that are next door to each other on the color wheel. Such as blue and green. In reference to clothes these colors match each other. Instinctively most of us know which colors go together when we dress ourselves every morning.

Color complements, colors that set each other off, they complement each other. These are colors that are opposite on the color wheel. Such as blue and orange.

Color depth, colors can recede or jump forward. Remember that some colors seem to fall back such as blue, black, dark green, and brown. Other colors will seem to step forward such as white, yellow, red, and orange. This is why if you have a bright orange background it may seem to fight with any text or images that you place on it. The orange will always seem to move forward.

Now you have the basics so let’s go further. Just because to colors go together or complement each other doesn’t mean that yo necessarily want to use them on your project. I opened this article with the meaning of colors now here is an example, keep in mind this is one example from western culture.

Color Survey: what respondents said colors mean to them.

Happy = Yellow

Pure = White

Good Luck = green

Good tasting = Red (tomato)

Dignity = Purple

Technology = Silver

Sexiness = Red (tomato)

Mourning = Black

Expensive = Gold

Inexpensive = Brown

Powerful = Red (tomato)

Dependable = Blue

High Quality = Black

Nausea = Green

Deity = White

Bad Luck = Black

Favorite color = Blue

Least favorite color = Orange

So in designing your project it’s important to know what colors mean. You can now see why a black back ground with green type would be bad, beyond being nearly impossible to read, if your target market thinks that black represents mourning and green makes them sick. There are exceptions to every rule of course.

So you may want to include some research in what colors mean to your target market. Colors that would get the attention of a teen would probably annoy an older person and the colors that appeal to the older person wouldn’t get a second look from a young person.

Color may be one of the most overlooked aspects of design.

About The Author

Copyright 2004 Kelly Paal

Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

This article was posted on August 03, 2004

by Kelly Paal

Are You Choosing Your Website Colors Safely?

Are You Choosing Your Website Colors Safely?

by: Maricon Williams

Many designers are overlooking the vitality of colors in creating a web site. Why is it vital? It is because it creates a mood – it can annoy, irritate or interest and uplift the spirit of the visitors. Your site can end up plain and boring or chaotic if you don’t take a look at your colors minutest details.

If you are not an expert in colors, you can consult the color wheel to achieve safe colors. You can opt for complementary colors, those that are found across another color, for safe choices. Orange and blue implies excitement. Green and blue on the other hand, implies unanimity and agreement. You can also opt for monochromatic colors or in the web design parlance – the monolithic approach. It is the approach which uses different shades of the same color. Experts are saying that monoliths is best suited for business sites because of their classy and subtle appearance. Just a word of caution to web designers, this approach can sometimes result to boring colors and may in turn, need an addition of black or other solid colors.

As a general rule, use colors that are pleasing to the eyes and will complement to the subject matter. Thus, it can be concluded that rich, classy and traditional colors like blue, gray, brown and burgundy can be best suited for business websites.

You can also use the conventional black texts with white backgrounds to ensure readability. To grab attention to the subject matter, you can use the bold color red. In order to make your website dynamic yet still readable, you can use contrasting colors. You can have the trial and error method to get best results.

To further guide you with what colors can do. Here are some of their portrayed identities:

Blue means water, peaceful, sad and masculinity.

Red means passion, love, hot and fire.

Yellow conveys happiness, caution, construction, and slowdown.

Green connotes jealousy, envy, beginner, fertility and spring.

Purple may mean royal, grand and comedy.

Orange conveys warmth, Halloween, fall and seasons.

Brown may mean warning, dirty, fall, earthy, environmental and grounded.

Pink entails femininity, cute, softness and weakness.

Your choices of color represent you. It must also represent your products or services. It must be used as a tool to attract visitors and not to irritate them. Another rule of thumb that you must consider is that you MUST use web safe color. What do I mean web safe? It means that the colors must appear sound and clear on the monitor. That way you can be assured that what the visitors are seeing are the exact colors that you want to convey thus, the exact identity.

Indulge in the enthralling world of the powerful colors and you will be delighted with the positive output.

About The Author

Maricon Williams

I love reading. Give me a book and Iกll finish it in one sitting. Reading is the chance to be transported to a different world and so is writing. Iกm more enthusiastic about writing however, since you can relay your ideas to someone else. I can only imagine that feeling when I hear a complete stranger talking about my ideas which read on an article somewhere. To relay my message to as many people is the same as touching people with music. Only mineกs less harmonic. I try to make up for it with the color I bring with words. And most of the time, it’s more than enough.

For Comments and Questions about the Article you may Log on to http://www.printingshoppers.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 22

by Maricon Williams

The Color of Success?

The Color of Success?

by: Bibi Liew

Color should be one of your first concern when it comes to website design. Colors creates mood. It is immediate and memorable. It conveys character, expresses intention and emotion. Colors play a vital role in websiteกs impact. It reflect the message and identity you want to convey to your viewers and can heavily influence the decisionmaking process. Your site will end up either plain and boring or chaotic and hard to look at. Thus, it must be carefully considered.

Colors affect us psychologically. They can make us excited, happy, irritate, angry or sad. For example, if you owned a restaurant, try to use some orange color for your interior, or a red color table cloth to increase customers appetite. A good color combination that create a relaxed atmosphere and a big appetite are the perfect environment for a restaurant. Itกs the same for a website.

Choosing safe color for your Website.

Thatกs my advice! If you are not an expert in colors, you can refer to the color wheel to achieve safe colors The Complementary colors or the Monochromatic colors. The reason for choosing safe colors is because the web browsers shares 256 colors, but bear in mind that not all browsers share the same 256 color pallet. They only share 216 colors in common (Mac or PC). If you go outside the 216 color pallet, that means you are using the color that does not exist in the browser.

Lets take a look at some of the color meaning:

Red the color of passion

Red is the warmest of all colors. It represent passion, energy, desire, excitement, love, strength, courage, leadership and power. It also symbolizes fire, danger, blood, anger and war. Red reflects energy and can increase enthusiasm and interest. It enhances human metabolism, raises blood pressure and increases respiration rate. It has very high visibility, which is perfect for กClick Hereก or กBuy Nowก button in a website. Use this color to stimulate people to make quick decisions.

Blue the color of peace

Blue is the coolest color. It represent calm, truth, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, harmony, heaven, sincerity and trust. Blue is considered beneficial to the mind and body which slows down human metabolism and produces a calming effect. Blue is often the chosen color by conservative people. It also symbolize coldness, depression and obscenity. According to studies, blue is highly accepted among males. Dark blue is associated with expertise and stability.

Yellow the color of joy

Yellow is always full of creative and intellectual energy. Yellow symbolizes wisdom, happiness, wealth, hope, cheerful, and intellect. It brings clarity for decisionmaking and awareness, sharper memory and concentration skills. You can choose yellow to promote childrenกs product. Men usually perceive yellow as a very กchildishก color, so it is not recommended to use it when selling products for men nobody will buy a yellow business suit or a yellow business bag. Yellow also symbolizes sickness, jealousy, and unstable.

Green the color of nature

It symbolize the master healer, well being, life, fertility, freshness, ambition, growth, stability and endurance. It is the most restful color for the human eye. Dark green is always associated with money, banking, and the financial world. It is best when you want to promote health products. On the other hand, it can denotes lack of experience and cowardice. Green is a safe color and if you don’t know what color to use, use green.

Orange the color of energy

Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, success, attraction, encouragement, and determination. It is always associated with sunshine, joy and autumn. Curiosity is a driving characteristic of orange when it comes to explore new things. It is said that people who like orange are usually thoughtful and sincere. It has a high visibility as well, so you can use it to catch attention or highlight an important elements in your website.

Purple the color of power

It is associated with royalty. Purple symbolizes luxury, ambition, magic and mystery, inspirational and imagination. It is also a color of good judgment. Being the combination of red and blue, the warmest and coolest colors, purple is most favored by children.

White the color of purity

It means cleanliness, innocent, goddess and safety. It is considered to be the color of perfection. White can represent a successful beginning. In advertising and design, white is associated with coolness and cleanliness. You can use white to suggest simplicity in hightech products.

Gray the color of neutrality

Gray is the color of sorrow. It is the symbol for security, maturity, dependability and reliability. Light hues of gray make a good readability and backgrounds. Gray with more silver in it can be a very active color.

Black the color of stability

Black is the most misunderstood color. Black is a mysterious color associated with fear and the unknown. It is also associated with power, elegance, formality, death and evil. Black is considered to be a very formal, elegant and prestigious color. A black background diminishes readability. It contrast well with bright colors. You can use a black background when designing photography to make the other colors stand out.

Do not take colors for granted. Your choice of color represents you and your products or services. Colors can emphasize the theme of your website. It must be used as a tool to attract viewers. Keep in mind what the different colors symbolize during website design and you will be delighted with the positive output.

Have fun!

About The Author

Bibi Liew is an Interior Designer and a webmaster of http://www.eBusinessinsights.com. Visit her website if you want to start an Online Business and get your ecommerce website set up FREE on your own Domain with 400 Days EzineInABox. Don’t miss it!

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 05

by Bibi Liew

Top Five Most Profitable Color Combinations Used I

Top Five Most Profitable Color Combinations Used In Cover Design!

by: Ovi Dogar

‘two days ago, an old man stopped me on the street and asked me who my stylist is.
I was surprised at first by the situation. But after a couple of seconds, my answer was:
กกI don’t have a stylist. I dress myself!กก
Thatกs when it occurred to me that there are many people that match their clothes colors in a bad way. And guess what: the same thing is happening with many ebook covers that are on the internet today.
There are some covers so bad that you want to live a certain web page the very moment you see the cover.
I know you don’t want to end up with a cover like that so here is the Absolute Top Five Most Profitable Color Combinations.
5. Red black white
Sample: http://www.absolutecovers.com/5/show.php?n=148
Red and black combined with white create a nice impact to the eye. These covers usually jump into the visitorกs eyes through their simplicity. Gradients of red and grey can turn out pretty profitable also.
4. Black white gold
Sample: http://www.absolutecovers.com/5/show.php?n=138
This is another killer combination. The simplicity of black combined with the richness of gold helps you create a cover that makes people turn their heads just to see it. Usually these colors are ideal for conservatory institutions that deal a lot with money.
3. Red white blue
Sample: http://www.absolutecovers.com/5/show.php?n=152
You should take good care not to have redblue bordering areas, or if you do, one of the colors should be really dark while the other is lighten. Blue and white is another good combination that derives from this one. It is used more and more in the internet marketing new technologies field because of the trustiness the blue color implies.
2. Red orange green
Sample: http://www.absolutecovers.com/5/show.php?n=156
Orange seems to be a color preferred by the customers. Psychologically speaking, orange gives a sense of affordability and combined with red, which is a strong motivator, subconsciously influence your leads to act. The green color brings in a little freshness into the picture so it fits well for ecological and sport projects.
1. Red orange blue
Sample: http://www.absolutecovers.com/5/show.php?n=194
Based on numerous split tests and feedback from my customers, the absolute combination was formed from red, orange and blue or, to be more specific: dark blue. 🙂 The blue color adds the touch of confidence needed by each of us before we make the buying decision to the redorange combination.
This being said, I wish you much success with your venture and be aware next time you hire a cover designer.ก

About The Author

Ovi Dogar is specialized in the creation of professionally custom made covers that really sell. You can view some recent samples of his work at http://www.AbsoluteCovers.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 30, 2004

by Ovi Dogar