AllBusiness.com's Chris Bjorklund Interviews Joseph Carrabis on Color Use in Marketing, Q7: Examples, Part 1

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NextStage: Predictive Intelligence, Persuasion Engineering, Interactive Analytics and Behavioral Metrics

This is Q7, "Analyze a few websites here for what works and what doesn’t…" from AllBusiness.com's Chris Bjorklund. Ms. Bjorklund interviewed me on NextStage's five year study of the best uses of colors, color imagery and color iconography in marketing. This study contained NextStage original research and research from others. The posts in this arc provide content that didn't make it into the podcast, just as the podcast has content that isn't provided in this arc.

You can hear the entire podcast at The Best Way to Use Color and Imagery to Improve Your Marketing. I'll be including a bibliography in the last post in this arc.

FlyTed.com as it appeared when doing this interview

Let’s look at FlyTed.com. Today, as I call up the homepage, everything about this page is good except the border color. I’m not even sure what the color is. This goes back to the six colors everybody can see thing. I’m pretty sure the design goal was to create contrast that would drive the eyes to the central content. What can happen is that the border is so distracting that it drives people away at a non-conscious level. I wrote about the 3 second rule in Websites: You've Only Got 3 Seconds and it applies here. The border color can drive business away before it even occurs.

Contrast FlyTed with the Apple (note to readers: this wasn't the actual site I was commenting on in the interview. Apple had their "iPhone" homepage up during the interview. What is shown here is very close as far as color, imagery and iconography is concerned) and Jitterbug (below) sites. These sites are so beautifully done for their respective audiences they need to win awards.

Apple’s color scheme and images communicate “come into the mystery” and that’s exactly the message iPhoners want at a non-conscious level. They want to know they’re part of an ultra-group that not everyone can enter (due to cost, availability, etc). There’s not much text. Either you get it or you don’t, a kind of “If you need to know the price you can’t afford it” mentality.