As with any other advertising medium, how color and shape subconsciously affects a viewer is crucial if the advertising is to be effective.

On the web, even though you're not limited to only a few colors, color psychology needs to still be understood. When it comes to online sales, your color scheme can strongly help you reach your target audience.

If you're constantly changing
your site's style to follow the latest
trends, it can make it look either like your
business is new or like it is suffering
from an inability to define itself.

For example, if a corporate business deals with money, the website and logo colors should symbolize seriousness, authority, trust, and security. Such colors include dark blues, black, and grays.

A corporate health entity, such as a hospital, would be best served by using pastel greens and blues to imply health, calm, open spaces, efficiency, and cleanliness.

Companies dealing with something that already has colors defined in nature, such as a garden center or landscape gardener, would use mostly greens and browns, as these denote nature and earthiness. A florist, selling naturally colorful products, could use any pastel color found in most flowers. Yellows, pinks, purples, and oranges would be ideal.

If you are selling products primarily to women, such as beauty products, your best main colors would be purples and pinks, signifying femininity, spirituality, softness, and sophistication.

One common problem with websites is the lack of such planning, especially if the designer just uses a template they like, rather than create one colored for the client business type.

I get regular calls from prospective clients with sites that are not reaching their lead or sales potential. In a lot of cases, this is because the designer, or the client, has become caught up in the latest design trend they have seen online, even if it does not fit the business type.

If you're constantly changing your site's style to follow the latest trends, it can make it look either like your business is new or like it is suffering from an inability to define itself.

Either way, trends may not help you establish a stable, reliable impression with your site visitors.

If you have concerns with your web presence reaching your widest customer base, now is the perfect time to look into our WebUpdate system sites, which take advantage of advanced SEO, social, and responsive features to give your business the best competitive edge online.

Terry Young is the founder and CEO of Internet Marketing and Design. Since 1997,
his computer programming and graphic design knowledge have kept his company
at the forefront of the latest technology in web development.