Website Design: Color Me Blue

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."

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 high-priced, high-commission products.

Chris had gone the extra mile to have his site professionally designed, and it was simple, elegant and user-friendly, employing consistent navigation and a nifty database-driven 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 pay-per-click 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 non-buyers 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.

I'd changed my own site links, Sage-Hearts.com, from maroon to blue sometime before and noticed a nice conversion rate increase.

Sure enough, that WAS the answer to Chris' 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.

Article by Rosalind Gardner, author of the best-selling "Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online". To learn how you too can suceed in Internet and affiliate marketing, go to: http://NetProfitsToday.com

---

6 Website Design Disasters and How to Avoid Them?.

Let's face it; the line from A Field of Dreams... Read More

So You?re Hiring a Web Designer?You Have the Right to Demand these 7 Perks

Whether you're hiring a designer who has created 10 sites... Read More

Why Hire a Professional to Design Your Web Site?

Creating an appealing, functional, and effective Web site is much... Read More

Website Registration Roadmap - How to Create Your Own Website in 7 Easy Steps

Creating your own website is actually easy in today's world... Read More

How To Shop for a Web Design Firm?

While few companies can boast as we do that our... Read More

HTML - A Website Language Explained - For Over 35s

This is a very perfunctory look at the website code... Read More

9 Ways to Gain Your Visitors Respect

The internet is filled with sites and they are good... Read More

The Seven Deadly Sins of Web Business Design

Before you take a road trip it is usually a... Read More

What Content to Publish on Your Website

Many businesses want a simple website where they tell people... Read More

Web Design Advice And Information

Most of us at times need advice on different aspects... Read More

Tips On Effectively Organizing Your Navigation

Not all links are created equal.While all of your links... Read More

Your Free Guide To Obtain A Cheap Web Design Quote

Website design is a very competitive area and there is... Read More

The Secret To A Profitable Website

Whether you are planning on having a website built for... Read More

How to Get Your Visitors to Create Content for Your Website

An ongoing challenge for webmasters today is to provide fresh... Read More

Website Design Info - Part 1

What Will My Site Do?This is the first of eight... Read More

Make Artistic Graphic Designs

Are you a student of graphic design? If you have... Read More

14 Ways to Add Content to Your Web Site - Part 2

7. Create high quality content - make clear points with... Read More

Flash Doesnt Always Add Shine to Web Efforts

The trend today to overuse animation in a website's opening... Read More

Top Six Ways To Make Your Visitors To Hate YOU!

We will take a look at why your visitors may... Read More

Using CCS to Eliminate Tables

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets has opened up tremendous possibilities... Read More

Web Page Building for Beginners 4

Page ranking by search engines such as Google are not... Read More

Why Web Pages Appear in the Wrong Location after Uploading to my Website?

If your are a new web designer, you may face... Read More

Why a Website Design Speaks Volumes About Your Company?

Whether a business has just got off the ground or... Read More

Usability and Considerate Design

I hate to imagine that in your web development project... Read More

Using Server Side Includes to Simplify Your Web Design

An "include" file is a piece of code that can... Read More

The Top 8 Website Sins Part One

They say the eyes are the window to the soul.... Read More

How to Choose a Website Design Company

The internet is full of web design companies pleading for... Read More

Do You Really Need A Website?

Nope. You certainly don't need a website.But you don't need... Read More

What You Should Ask a Web Designer Before You Hire Him

You've thought about it and you're ready to go. You're... Read More

The Next Marketing Tool: Deisgn

Design sells. It's something that all of us know, but... Read More

Testimonials Can Increase Your Web Traffic

We've all seen and read product testimonials. They're a very... Read More

User Experience and Search Engines: If Your Home Page Could Only Talk

Dear web site visitor.I can't tell you how glad I... Read More

The Testimonial Trick

One of the most popular methods of traffic generation is... Read More