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Finding the right colours for your website
Colour is an integral part of website design. Colour can attract people to your site or make them hit the close button straight away. The main thing about colour is to make your designs easy on the eyes. If a site is blinding with its bright colours people may not visit your site again. You should also have colour combinations which blend together.
Colour and its important with Google Adsense
Colour is important at the designing stage of building your website for a number of reasons. Some studies show google adsense on your website gets a higher CTR depending on its colour and its colour in relation to your website’s colour. So if your website is focusing on making money from adsense you may want to consider what colours you adsense will be and where they will fit into your website. Often adsense under articles will fair better to have a background which compliments the overal colours used in your design, whereas in content ads should blend with the website design. Also I have read studies which show blue titles will get more clicks by the direct coloration people make between a link and the colour blue. This is due to the default colour for links in most browsers being blue.
Colour should be specific to your website category
Colour can also show the reader what your website is about. It can give a website a theme. If you use too many blues and white you website can have a cold feeling - often not desirable - whereas with oranges and reds you can create a warm feeling. For a gardening site you may wish to use natural colours such as browns and greens. When a person visits your site they should immediately recognize what its about. Using colours can help you with this, so try and use colours associated with the category your website is about.
How to find good color combinations and schemes
A website colour scheme should compliment each other and be harmonious. Certain colours go well with other colours. Sometimes people aren’t great at recognizing this or finding colours which go well together. Below is a list of tools which you an use to find great colour schemes for your website. A thanks to TalkFreelance forums for providing the links.
Colour Theory:
http://www.writedesignonline.com/res…les/color.html
http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/…eory-intro.htm
http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory
http://www.worqx.com/color/index.htm
http://webdesign.about.com/labels.ht…opNode=&type=1
http://www.webwhirlers.com/colors/colorinfo.asp
http://www.colorcube.com/articles/theory/theory.htm
http://www.devx.com/projectcool/Article/19954
Colour Palettes:
http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/
http://www.kolur.com
http://www.colr.org/
http://kuler.adobe.com/
http://www.colourlovers.com/
http://adampolselli.com/article/
Online Colour Scheme Blenders/Generators:
http://www.wellstyled.com/tools/colo…/index-en.html
http://colorcombos.com/combotester.html
http://www.colorblender.com
http://www.colorjack.com/sphere/
Colour Software:
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/csdesigner.html (FREE!!!)
http://www.tigercolor.com/ ($49.95)
http://www.colorschemer.com/index.php ($49.95)
If you have any questions or think something has been missed out please post a comment and I will be glad to answer. If you have done any experiments or studies on how colour effects adsense CTR please be kind enough to share 
8 Responses
some really good info there, I am not sure about the importance of colour with adsense I have tried many diffent colour schemes and it doesn’t make much difference for me:(
I find banner ads convert best
Yep. Adsense blending is a must. It’s gotta attract viewers. I blend on all 1000 sites I have.
colors are important, but how do you please everyone, that is the question. I have showed people my site http://www.ohmcheck.com and I have gotten mixed reviews on colors.
- Michael- August 7th, 2007 at 1:03 am
well the idea is to appeal to as many people as possible. Something different from the norm can also be good as it can make your website stand out from the rest.
Wow, i learned a lot from this post
Yes, colour is something that is necessary to master, but it hard to. I try to remember colour but unfortunately I rarely do in my designs
Oh my…!!
I really think this article is so important!!Thanks you!
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Wow! Informative post. As a general rule I’ve just matched my adsense ads to my BG colour. I’ll think twice about it now. Thanks!