background colours?

[garv]

who thinks long and hard about the colour of their sites backgrounds?

I was rather drunk on a bus the other night and heard some 18 year olds talking about porn sites and I just happened to mention that I ran a few, the first question one asked was

"what colour background does it have?"

I said "grey or blue, sometimes white"

he said "good cause if i see a black background I think virus straight away."

his mate then said "yeah if they've got a black background and red text or bright green all i think is virus and close the site"

back in the mid to late 90's loads of porn sites used black backgrounds, hell I did a fair bit myself thinking it was well cool. there's still a few floating around that maybe missing out on good traffic cause of their background and text colours.

I found purple around #40196C seemed to do quite well for sales on softcore lingerie/bikini pay sites. but just wondering if anyone else has tried different colour backgrounds etc to see if changes happen?

[wankmaster]

Depends on the niche. Extreme hardcore sites use black and red, lingerie use pastel shades, ebony usually brown, and for the asians I go yellow or green.
Tits, I use blue, and I don't do much teens, but for them usually pink. Fatties blue, red ( bright colors ), MILF and granny, I go blue again.

These are just general guidelines, when the mood takes me I use other colors.

[rogue]

thats interesting about black backgrounds, i'd like to know what the experts here say.

personally, i try to go as close as possible to the colours being used by the sponsors sites

[garv]

thanks wankmaster.

[wankmaster]

About black backgrounds, I think they are fine. I remember some newbie posting up a site with a black background, and some "expert" telling her it would never sell a bean. She wrote back that she'd had some focus group work done on the site ( it was a site to sell sex toys to women ) and black had come up top against other common colors. I guess nobody knows for sure, you just work out what seems to work for you over time.

I've done OK with black for a hardcore site and also an "arty model" type thing.

I'm sure tho that color makes a difference.

[garv]

yeah I did quite good with black background for bondage and cumshot pay sites. But found it interesting that it was the very first thing a porn surfer would ask about and then it got me wondering, I hadn't thought about it since 2000 when I hired a designer who had done "colour studies" as part of his university degree. He did very well & still works for me 6 years later and takes care of all those decisions now. So guess there's some truth in colours.

[ukwebmasters]

I spend long hours fine tuning bgcolors, I think it really helps conversions

[nekrom]

I mainly push Bdsm and fetish sub markets. I have always used the black background or a darkish shade of grey, which always works well for me.

-N

[jayeff]

The cultures in which we grow up ensure that we cannot help but be influenced by color, since - whether it would otherwise be a natural reaction or not - we are bombarded with associations. Pink for girls, blue for boys, etc.

But color alone is not the only factor. I can make a site look dark and brooding - appropriate say for bondage - with a combination of dark tones, but use the same background with high contrast colors and the effect will be entirely different.

The aim of every element on a page should be to make an impact when the page opens and to - correctly - convey what the page has to offer. Otherwise many visitors will move on without looking further and many of those who remain will be people who were led to expect something else. Although it is a good thing to want our sites to be different than the thousands of others out there, it can be very dangerous to stray too far from the basic color pallettes which many surfers associate with certain types of content.

[ristac]

I have a black background one but I am not over keen on them, it probably stems back from when everyone used to search for hacking, warez and downloads. They were always black.