Hightide Web Resources Articles, News, and Reviews

by Brian McGregor

I wonder if you knew that visitors to your website form an instant opinion? And they form it about you and your offer. The opinion that is formed in this instantaneous way is done so subconsciously. This happens automatically, and you might wonder why. It matters not a jot how clever the text is on your page. You can have paid an expensive professional to produce your copy for you. And yet your visitor will still form their instant opinion without even reading a single word of your costly copy.

You might also have invested in some really great pictures or images on your site. I’m afraid this will carry zero influence on your visitor’s instant opinion. Nor does your offer matter. You could be promoting a sensational deal, like selling dollars for dimes. But this too, will be overlooked by the site visitor. This is because the second your page is displayed your subconscious mind goes to work, and the instant opinion begins to form. By now, you are probably wondering just what it is that has this power. Exactly what can have an immediate reaction in your site visitors. You may have already worked out that the answer is colors. When your web page appears to your visitor, the colors you’ve used go to work on the subconscious of your visitors.

The spooky thing about this is that as a web page viewer we can do nothing about this. Colors evoke an intuitive reaction which we have no control over.’ The feelings evoked by colors are automatic, and there’s no way we can avoid them. As you will know, millions are spent by big companies in deciding the correct colors of new products and in their marketing campaigns. They invest this money as they know how the psychology of color works. The right colors can be the critical factor in the success of big company products. What webmasters have to realize, and this can be very important, is that the same color psychology applies to our web pages.

The fact is, the color scheme you use on your web pages can have the effect of causing your visitors to very quickly click away from your website. If you’re selling a product from your web page, it wouldn’t matter how smart your sales messages are, it’s possible that they won’t be read anyway. The good news, however, is that you can use colors to engender a really positive reaction. This color psychology is nothing new. This has been with us for generations. It doesn’t make any difference whether you know about color power, your subconscious mind is affected.

For example, a particular color scheme could convey a good feeling in each of us. However, a different color scheme might convey not so good feelings. In essence, you might send a sense trust, warmth and belonging. Conversely, the feeling sent may be one of distrust, coolness and rejection. The following list gives an idea of the emotions associated with their respective colors:

RED Excitement, sense of power, energy, strength, love, leadership, danger etc

ORANGE Comfort, steadfastness, courage, confidence, friendliness, cheerfulness, playfulness etc

YELLOW Cheerfulness, caution, brightness, intelligence, curiosity, playfulness etc

GREEN Harmony, money, health, healing, food, nature, life etc

BLUE Stability, tranquility, peace, harmony, love, acceptance, trustworthiness etc

PURPLE Ambition, royalty, nobility, wisdom, dignity, independence etc

BROWN Reliability, earthiness, nature, tribal, comfort, durability etc

BLACK Style, dramatic, power, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth etc

WHITE Cleanliness, purity, innocence, fresh, easy, simplicity etc In summary, the color scheme you use on your web pages need to be reflected by the product or offering you make. What happens is that the subconscious mind of your visitor will attempt to reconcile the colors with the message. If it can’t, it will lose interest. Which means, your visitor will be lost. You should spend time in determining what are the right colors for your web pages. Try and make sure your colors and message are in harmony. If you can achieve this, you will produce better results from your website. Be aware, your color scheme can cause your website to make a profit or a loss.

About the Author:
Brian McGregor is an internet entrepreneur and business consultant, and author of the ebook CASH COLORS. If the subject of designing my own web site is of relevance to you, CASH COLORS shows how to make your web page colors work for you. http://www.cash-colors.com

by Francois du Toit

It is clear that web audio and web video are taking the Internet by storm. Many webmasters are realizing that although it is very important to get more traffic to their websites that it is even more important to convert traffic into sales.

Many internet marketers agree that a conversion ratio, between website traffic and website sales, of between 1% and 3% seems to be the industry norm and that 2% is a good average ratio. What this means is that, on average, only 2 out of every 100 visitors will actually become a customer.

Webmasters often make the mistake of only focusing on ways to attract more traffic instead of also finding ways of converting more visitors into customers. However, more and more webmasters are realizing that website success is a two tier approach, namely:

1) Getting Traffic, and
2) Converting Traffic into sales.

In the case of paid advertising, very often website traffic can only be increased by spending more on advertising. It is common for the ratio between traffic and advertising to be 1:1, meaning that if you are currently spending USD 100 to get 500 website visitors you will need to spend USD 200 to get 1000 website visitors.

With the cost of paid advertising becoming more expensive, many webmasters are now looking for ways to rather increase the conversion ratio between traffic and sales instead of spending more money to attract more visitors.

A 2% traffic versus sales conversion ratio leaves a lot of room for improvement and by only increasing the ratio by 1% to 3% sales would in fact increase by 50%. Talk about powerful leverage, and without spending extra money!

Sounds great but seems like a daunting task? The advent of web audio and web video have given webmasters access to a great tool for breaking the silence of the world-wide-web.

Instead of visitors coming across a “silent movie” type of website (actually even worse than an old black-and-white silent movie) they can now be greeted by a warm and friendly voice that make the website seem a lot more human and customer friendly, thanks to web audio.

By using web audio, a webmaster can tell his visitors more about the site, the products or services being offered and let them know exactly what to do when they are ready to place an order.

It has also been proven that web audio can significantly increase ezine opt-in rates by simply explaining to visitors the benefits of signing up for a free newsletter in a couple of sentences.

Research have shown that by adding web audio, it is not uncommon for website performance to increase by up to 312% This is equal to increasing a 2% traffic versus sales conversion ratio to over 8% without spending any additional money on advertising.

A common concern for webmasters, that have no prior experience using web audio as a marketing tool, is that they think it is difficult to install web audio buttons on their web pages. In fact, nothing can be further away from the truth.

A good flash audio software program should allow you to add web audio to any web page in less than 3 minutes.

It is clear that web audio has had a dramatic impact on internet marketing and we can safely assume that it will continue to grow in importance as more and more webmasters realize the importance of converting more traffic to customers instead of only focusing on ways of getting more traffic.

About the Author:
Francois du Toit is the owner of http://www.FlashAudioSofware.com, a site dedicated to providing webmasters with easy and affordable solutions for adding web audio to their websites. Sign up at http://www.FlashAudioSoftware.com for our FREE 7 part “Audio Secrets” course and receive great tips for maximizing web audio.