I was doing some more site reviews this morning, and a particular issue can screaming out at me today. Matching your sites colors to fit your audience.

Webmasters building a site for themselves? It’s a common occurrence. With this, a common issue is created. They get caught up in designing for their idea, and not their audience. Way to often they pick their favorite layouts, or favorite colors, not even really thinking about who they are building the site for. The visitors are just like me, right? Not.

What really got me going on this was a travel site I visited today. It was a simple blog format, nothing too exciting, and seemed more like an instant site rather than a well thought out travel site. What for surely had to go though, was the choice of colors. They chose to design the site with black as the main color. The logo was black, the headers were black, and the menu was black. Black and white travel site? No way! Travel site colors should be closer to circus colors, not Goth Industrial music colors.

Know Your Audience

You may not be spending thousands profiling your audience for your site, but you should have a general idea. Know that most sites get their visitors from search engines, and most people know nothing about you or your site. They want what they are looking for, obviously, and if they think they are on the wrong site for something as simple as color theme then you are blowing it. Spend some time researching your sites niche audience, and recognize the common theme colors. Look at the leading sites in your niche. Here is a little tip I like to use. Go to eBay.com. Every category has a custom theme color, and they all seem to be pretty well picked out.