One of the most interesting things to me is how colors effect the way we think and feel. They effect us whether we are aware of it or not. Some colors effect us more then others but they all have their own individual properties that effect the way people feel.

The sad part is that color is often overlooked in the business of online marketing and design. Website sales can be greatly effected by changing colors of your current website. It is harder to read text on a monitor than it is on a piece of paper, because of this we have to be very careful of the colors we use.

All colours don’t effect all people in the same ways, however, there have been extensive studies done that show how colours effect the majority of people in the same ways. As with all rules, there are exceptions, but to ignore the power of colours would be to ignore an essential element of a good website design.

Another extremely important element to colours is not only the properties or emotions each colour conjures up in each of us, but also how combinations of colours make people feel. And to further complicate your perfect colour selection you also have to be concerned with the fact that people have to be able to read your content or the most beautiful colour in the world will be for nothing. No matter how important the content on your site may be to someone, if they can’t read it due to bad colour selection they will leave in search of another site to serve their needs.

Here are only a few colours and what emotions have been shown to be raised with each.

Green jealousy, good luck, and harmony

Blue calming, peaceful and builds trust

Red colour of action, anger, Love, impulse and impatient

Purple nobility, spirituality and creativity, passion

White pure colour, innocent and clean

Black serious, mysterious, mournful and lifeless

Yellow happy, cheerful and joy

Orange positive, enthusiastic and warmth

People believe you can even see colours in music, one thing is for sure though, they cause a physical and emotional reaction in each of us. Colors can cause headaches, sickness, relaxation, pleasure, tension, passion, peacefulness or irritation.

There are literally hundreds of sites dedicated to the research and insight into colors and the reactions they cause in the people viewing them. We’d suggest that you do as much research into this area of your website as you can stand as in the long run it will pay off in sales or return visits to your site.

I found an article over at WPW by bhartzer and it may have been one of the best articles I have read in a long time.It is one of those articles that make stop and think.

It started out talking about “linkbait”.

He goes on to explain that linkbait is something on your website that makes people want to link to you.

He says that creating things that are funny, controversial, informative, or creative can gain you natural links.

Since natural is all ways the best I decided to do a little digging and a little thinking on this.

Here is what I have come up with.

There are all types of hooks.

I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of them but I thought I would throw a couple out and help you get the idea:

• Informative Hook

• Creative Hook

• Controversial Hook

• Resource Hook

• Humour Hook

• Orginal Hook

• Different Hook

• Nice Hook

• Attack Hook

First thing we have to understand is that some are done on purpose and some just happen on accident.

One that was done on purpose was the MillionDollarHomePage.com.

It was created by a 21 year old college student, Alex Tew; in England.

He started selling ad space on his web site for £1.00 per pixel. Since there are one million pixels he named the site the Million Dollar Home Page.

If your wondering if he sold them all the last 1,000 pixels where sold on eBay to Elijah Kliger of Brooklyn, NY, for the price of $38,100.

Are you wondering how much traffic this site gets?

On Wednesday 18th of January 2006 there was a total of 350,000 people who visited that site on that day alone.

Guess that is a good example of linkbait.

There are plenty of others I could also show as examples but I think you understand where I’m coming from.

It’s up to you the type of hook you decide to use but if your fishing for visitors you had best find one soon.

Ever Wonder How Many People See What You Searched For?