Blog training touches only peripherally on aesthetics, that usually being the domain of your web designer. But, that being said, your approach to site design needs to be more holistic in approach, a thorough evaluation of every element that appears on your home page or landing page - and that includes the often overlooked consideration of color.

Color Can Trump Content

Have you ever clicked on to a site only to be defeated by the colors or distracting design and quickly moved on?  When initiating a search, your customer has hundreds of choices and they will quickly click to the next option if displeased. Your content is central to your blog marketing efforts but not a word will be seen if your reader can’t get past your choice of colors.

“Another important psychological aspect of your website is the often over looked and definitely misunderstood marketing strategy of colors. The same as we use words and phrases to describe and express our intentions color can be used to convey similar messages in more subtle and concealed ways.”

Color triggers anticipation. A montage of citrus colors suggests cheer, a pleasant experience, something clean. Somber tones suggest formality or serious subject matter. Color used properly attracts our attention and can influence perception positively or negatively.

A financial advisor would be well advised to stick with shades of blue as it is associated with “trustworthiness, success, seriousness, calmness, power, professionalism.”

A natural foods retailer will include green, commonly associated with ” money, nature, animals, health, healing, life, harmony.”

Color Choices Should Support Your Message

Your color choices should be harmonized with your overall message, further encouraging your reader to absorb and act upon that message.

“It is important to identify your market and ensure the psychological message you are trying to get across with the rest of your site design… Often it can be wise to run samples of the same site with slightly differing colour schemes past a test audience and see which has the best impact or you can even run differing coloured sites to visitors and track conversions to your goals.”
(Source)

Tags: blog, Blog Marketing, Blog Training, choice_of_colors, color_choices, color_triggers, influence_perception, marketing_efforts, marketing_strategy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Blog Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.