Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Website Colors That Turn Off Customers

Since a number of my customers and reader design or are designing their own websites I thought I would shair this article with you. It covers the effect web colors have on potential customers, I found the article on website colors that turn of customers here: http://news.boconline.com/article.asp?artid=1138 Here is the article: Website Colors That Turn Off Your CustomersBy: Christie TurleyUsing too many colors or the wrong combination of colors could alienate or turn off customers completely. Out of any form of non-verbal communication, color is the quickest way to communicate a message and meaning. Many studies have been done on the psychology of color and the subconscious emotions that they create. Studies have shown that color can help improve recall, comprehension, and understanding by 75%. In fact, color accelerates the ability to learn by 20% by keeping readers focused and improving retention. Choose Colors with Care. Marketers spend oodles of time and money determining the colors to best market their product: the colors that will prove the highest amount of return on investment. You may want to hire a professional web designer to help you. Make sure the web designer you hire is not just a programmer, but also a graphic designer and/or marketer. After all, the reason why 99% of all websites fail is because it was created by a technician, rather than a marketing expert.So, What Colors are Best for Your Website? That is hard to say. Again, you may want to hire a professional to help you. However, the following tips will help you understand the underlying meaning behind color so you may be guided to make the right choice. Keep in mind that depending on its value or intensity, one color can give very different emotions.Red - Stimulating. Exciting. Energizing. Appetizing. When you eye sees red, chemical responses in your body cause your blood pressure, pulse rate, and adrenaline to increase. Fire engine red is more energetic than a more traditional burgundy.Pink - Happy. Romantic. Spirited. Youthful. Best used for less expensive and trendy products. Vibrant pinks are common in the cosmetic industry. Bubble gum pink can be considered immature, but fuchsia or magenta are considered more sophisticated. Orange - Friendly. Adventurous. Energizing. Inviting. Of all the colors, orange is the hottest. Similar to red’s arousing effect, orange is often associated with bright sunsets or fall foliage. Orange contains the drama of red with the cheeriness of yellow. Neon orange tends to be load and is the most disliked color, but a more tempered vivid orange is highly effective for point-of-purchase graphics and specials.Yellow - Warm. Sunny. Cheerful. Vibrant. Yellow is equivalent to enlightenment and imagination. This color is especially effective for food service industries because of the -association to bananas, custards and lemons. Pale yellow is an excellent choice for point-of-purchase materials (materials at the cash register or reception area) because the eye sees the highly reflective yellow before it notices any other color.Brown - Rich. Sheltering. Durable. Sensible. Brown is an earth tone and is related to the earth’s nurturing qualities and stability. Generally speaking, brown provokes a positive response, but the wrong shade could lead to customers relating it to dirty, which could be detrimental for a product in the fashion industry, for example. Brown works well with food products since customers also relate it to root beer, coffee and chocolate. Blue - Cool. Trusting. Serene. Consistent. Similar to the earthy color brown, blue is related to the sky and water, both dependable constants in our lives. Blue is an ideal color for websites, especially e-commerce websites. Many banks and financial institutions use blue in their marketing because it makes customers feel more trusting. Blue also can generate a cold, distant, corporate feeling, the opposite of generating a personal relationship with the customer.Green - Refreshing. Healing. Fresh. Soothing. Green offers the most variety of choices out of all the colors of the rainbow. Green works well for personal hygiene or beauty products because of its soothing and flattering tones. Most people link green to nature; they think of foliage or grass. Mint green is seen as fresh while bright greens are associated with grass. Emerald greens are elegant and deep greens are linked to money and prestige. Green is also combined nicely with many other colors and can also work as a neutral.Purple - Elegant. Sensual. Regal. Mysterious. Purple is seen as sensual and spiritual as it combines the sexuality of red and the sereneness of blue. It is best used with creative products, new products, or cutting edge products. Deep purple is associated with regal sophistication and lavender has a more subtle nostalgic appeal.Neutrals - Classic. Quality. Natural. Timeless. The neutral tones of beige, gray and taupe emulate the psychological message of dependability and timelessness. They are regarded as safe and non-offensive and will not go out-of-date as they are always in style. White - Pure. Bright. Pristine. Simple. While white can signify clean elegance, it can also be considered generic and stark, unless you have stylish graphics to compliment the white. Black – Strong. Classic. Mysterious. Powerful. Black is most closely associated with the night. Black is seen as powerful, dramatic, elegant and expensive. In food packaging, a customer will actually pay more for a gourmet image. Although black is associated with mourning, its positive associations far outweigh its negative. Warning: too much black can be overkill. --------------Christie Turley is a web marketing expert and author of the Not-So-Dumb Blond Internet Guides. http://www.colorcombos.com

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Sunday, October 08, 2006

Why You Should Cloak Your Links

I did believe in cloaking links a while ago, but I now strongly advise that you don't. If you do want to cloak you links Click Bank has a forwarding script that works, and I have tested that is does work.
Thanks for viewing

Have you ever wondered if someone could steel your commissions when using your affiliate URL link? The answer is a yes. There are URL thieves that are looking to steal from you. It is a fact up to 40% of affiliate commissions are up for grabs by these thieves. The danger is real when it comes to your affiliate commission being stolen. There is an answer all you need to do is cloak your affiliate URL links. This process will take you some time to prevent the link thieves from stealing your commissions but the 10 to 20 minutes is well worth it. In the process of cloaking your affiliate URLs you can give a more professional look to your website and save your commissions. As an affiliate you have probably received an affiliate URL to your program that looks something like this:

http://splend2443.richjerk.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=RICHJERK

This link can look strange and uninviting to your potential customer. This type of link coding also makes it easy for a link thief to change and redirect it to their affiliate link. Changing it can make it safe and appealing at the same time.

"this will appear in the address bar http://www.onlineprofitmarketing.com/Project_X"

or put a name for the link instead the url

"This will look better on your site as a link Rich Jerk

This will protect your affiliate commissions because your affiliate URL is protected. Also it looks better to your customer because it shows a link to your website and the product. Link looks like it belongs to you. This can protect commissions and increase click through rates. This type of link is also easier to track. Also if your customers book link your site it is even better because the link will be yours not that of your affiliate program. So how do you create this affiliate cloaking URL?

Here are the instructions:

Go and connect to your web server using your FTP client or another file management program. Now go and create a directory that properly describes the product you are affiliated with. In this example lets say your product is called Rich_Jerk so you would create a directory in your site and then name it the product name. The third step is create a single index.html, index.htm, index.php, index.htmls, or many other web page formats. If you don't have HTML editor then you can use Note Pad, which comes with all windows OS. The forth step is to Edit the index file so that it contains this exact code:

(</b> Page Title Goes H
="Your affiliate URL goes here">
)

To make your page and the affiliate page look like they go together I recommend you copy the affiliate page's title or the product name. To see this just click on your affiliate link and copy the phrase on the top of your browser's window. You can also use the script from click bank, thats what I would use.

Don't forget to make sure your affiliate URL works before you publish it. Now you need to upload index.html file in your new directory for example http://www.onlineprofitmarketing.com/Rich_Jerk and now you are finished. So this little bit of work your affiliate links are now cloaked, no URL thieves can take your commissions and your links look more professional to your consumers. It is that easy and it is free . Like I said, I do not support cloaking links anymore. I updated this article to make a little more sense and to add info about the click back script.

For more new on SEO and Opportunities that work, go here

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Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Get Your Website Advertising For Free

Getting traffic to a website can be very expensive, getting links and search engines to your website is free. There are many advantages of website optimization it is a proven way to draw search engine crawlers like Google, Inktomi Slurp, MSN Bot, Survey Bot, and others. Search engine traffic is 100% free, no pay per click charges unless you want them. The traffic you receive is 100% targeted, a person had to actually search for what you are offering.

Google proved in their research using thermal graphing, people look at the organic search engine results and then look at the pay per click (ppc) adds. Search engine opomization puts your website on 100% auto-pilot, no extra costs for ads, no ads to write unless you want to. No emails to write or send, no SPAM, no blacklist because someone forgot they opted in. Another type of free trafic is using blogs. More sales for you and more money search engine optimization make sense.

Look here for more Information on Marketing and Work at Home News

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