Did you know?
Choosing colours to associate with your brand can have a subtle but measurable difference on your business.

It’s true; colours can have a pretty big impact on bodies and minds. Scientists have known colours can influence our body’s physiology and mental states. In a famous study by Dr.Wohlfarth a scientist who studied colour treatment on sick patients in the 60’s - The doc experimented on the colour environment of 14 handicapped children and using a particular combination of colours resulted in a measurable change in blood pressure and a decrease in aggressive behavior. The science of colours has been used by market researchers and designers to determine how best to apply this knowledge to influence customer’s perceptions of businesses.

The power of colours stimulates our nervous system and evokes emotional states. The colours of our environment travel through our eyes to our brain causing various hormonal releases. Understanding these means that you can sell to customers without ever saying anything.

The meaning of colours and your business
The meaning of colours varies depending on one’s culture, race, gender, and even age. So, it isn’t just the selection of colours in general but also which colours to use with your target customers. For instance, white is often associated with weddings in western cultures and is often related to innocence. In many eastern cultures though, white signifies death - it is the colour worn at funerals.

Colours can be combined to signify meaning to a culture. In the western world, green and red are associated with Christmas, while green and gold stand for almost any Australian national sporting team.

Several large brand name companies are associated with their corporate colours. IBM’s blue signifies stability and conservatism. Cadbury purple represents luxury and passion (and chocolate). A colour can be connected to a product like Coke; in the bold red packaging, you will be surprised how quickly you think ‘Coke’ when you see red in a shopping centre aisle.

The Woden Community Festival has been announced and we are happy to be a major supporter of the event. As part of our commitment to supporting our local community (as well as the wider community) Voodoo has designed a logo and style guide for the event as well as the newly launched website – see it here www.wcs.org.au/festival. The Woden Community Service, who are running the event, are a great organisation that runs community groups, youth services, transport services and much more. We are proud to support the WCS and hope to have a great relationship with them well into the future.

SEO... What is this magical term that seems to get website owners in a huff? Well in a nutshell SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation - or in layman terms, it's how to make your website appear in Google. Notice I said Google, and not just search engine, as this is because most Australians use Google - in fact over 90% at last count.

There are quite a few things that can be done to make a website index better in Google, many of which they mention in their webmaster pages (found here). The big thing though is that most of these things need to be done by your designer/developer and are most likely not managed by you. We found a great video on YouTube the other day that explained SEO in the form of rap. Check it out!


The main thing that I tell people is not to buy into the hype so much and concentrate on the two big things that they actually control.

1. Content
Content is king - you need to work on your content; provide your site visitors information that is valid and useful, AND matches up with what they are typing into Google. Try to have informative content on your site that contains the words and phrases that you think people are typing into Google to find you / your service / your industry.

2. Relevancy
Hand in hand with your content, is the fact that it needs to be relevant. I.E you can't start writing about Paris Hilton or Brittany Spears in the hope that you somehow have more traffic based on the fact that you have written about a celebrity.

In the end - a good web designer or web developer (like Voodoo Web) will give you advice when it comes to trying to index your site better in Google and keep an eye on it as time goes by.

Voodoo Web is the website design arm of Voodoo Creative (a Canberra based Graphic Design Studio) we love making powerful online solutions and we love making them work for our clients. At Voodoo we excel at creating and communicating clear, compelling brand and marketing messages across interactive media.

Whether you need to be able to edit your own content with a CMS, increase traffic to your site, sell your products or services online or begin an email marketing campaign, Voodoo Web can help. We design and build smart, tailored online solutions for individuals and companies all over Australia and overseas.
It’s what we do.

Wherever you are, contact us with your requirements or ask for your free Website Health Check - we’ll look into your website and give recommendations as to what we think you could do to make it better.

And so Voodoo Web is born...

Voodoo Web was formed to address a need for professionally created websites that actually achieved results. Having worked with dozens of clients that felt as if they had thrown their money in the trash when they took delivery of their websites we quickly learned a few things (these are just a few):-

• You need a website that you can edit yourself.
  Having heard horror stories from countless clients about how hard it was to update, manage and edit their websites - it became apparent pretty quickly that they had gone down the wrong path. You have to have the ability to edit your own website without outside assistance and without having to learn a new language to achieve it - this solution already exists and is often called a CMS ( Content Management System) - basically it is a system built to allow you to edit your own content, upload images and much more. The problem is that most of these systems are either very clunky and hard to use or are so generic that they don't have the capability achieve your online goals.

• Websites are not really brochures...
  A lot of people go about designing their website like they would a brochure - which is fine up to a point, but then those same people get a little peeved when their brochure website doesn't get allot of traffic, or even come up on search engines. A website needs to be planned with key objectives in mind -  what do you actually want your site to do? Provide information? Generate leads? Once you have a starting point you can actually plan the site out and measure your success against the objectives.

• You need a website that works for you, not one that needs you to do all the work.
  In an ideal world you would follow up every lead, remember dates that clients first interacted with you and send them something, send reminders out before things become overdue etc. But the sad truth is that most people are far too busy to do these things, let alone do them well. A good website should have in built work flows to help you keep in contact with your customers/users, tell you when people have interacted with your site and tell you when you need to act. It should be able to act all on its own for the things you don't have time to worry about, like sending invoice reminders, or saying thank you to customers that made a purchase sometime in the past.

We've learned a lot more things in the time that we've been building websites, and we're always learning more. I'll be outlining more bits and pieces in the future so be sure to keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime if you have any questions or feel that you need to take the next step in getting your website starting to work for you, why not give Voodoo Web a call on (02) 6282 0888 or contact us via our site.