Kissmetrics found 93 percent of consumers will buy a product based on its visual appearance. A 2002 Miami (Ohio) University study asked men and women to rate the importance of physical features of a potential mate on a scale of 1 to 10. Men’s mode response was 8, while women’s was 7.
Websites are often the first impression potential customers and followers get when shopping for everything from news to food. An unattractive website can be a death sentence to anyone looking to gain a large following. Nearly half of consumers judge a website’s credibility based on its design, including its color scheme, according to a presentation at the Designing for User Experiences Conference.
Background textures can spruce up any website currently using a single-color scheme. The process is actually fairly simple and fun.
Simple Color Creations
Photoshop and Pixelmator are two options for those looking to give their website a color makeover, but they come at a cost. Free applications like Noisetexturegenerator.com allow you to texturize background colors and then utilize the finished product for your website.
Simply go to the website, play with the sliders and pick the color you want to texturize. Set the output dimensions and download the finished product. To use this new color scheme on your website, open your CSS editor, and enter the following: background-image: url(“your image url”).
You can create several textures and use them later if you ever feel like changing it again.
Images as Backgrounds
Background images, especially moving pictures, can instantly enthrall visitors who have never been to your website. Shutterstock is one of many options to search for your perfect moving background, which can be anything from a snowstorm to a business man talking on the phone.
The main problem with images and moving pictures is that they can slow loading times for your website. A 2008 study published in the journal Information Processing and Management found consumers will judge a website and its products/services within 3.42 seconds. Every second counts so make sure your images are properly optimized.
Image optimization should be routine for webmasters, but is often overlooked. Just because WordPress allows you to blow up an image in the text editor does not mean you should do it. Smush.it is an excellent tool by Yahoo! that automatically removes excess, unnecessary bytes from images without changing their appearance. Run all background images on your website through it and replace them with the zip files Smush.it provides.
A little extra effort can go a long way in increasing website traffic and sales. As former Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius said, “the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” Always keep that in mind when considering your website’s appearance.
