design inspiration

[droopy420]

Where do you guys get your inspiration for the freesites you build.? I'm talking about the good sites that make you lots money and proud of yourself...

Peace,
Casey J.

[swedguy]

[Greenguy]

Money always inspires me

[Surfn]

I look over GreenGuy's shoulder and steal the ones I like

[Kinky]

Originally Posted by swedguy

double ditto

[meunknown]

|pcwins|

[Agent]

Honestly, I start using the color scheme the tour I'm promoting uses (or one similar). I usually start there unless I'm building the free site with a neat idea or concept already in mind. I like a seamless look from Free site to pay site, but I don't go as far as using their graphics.

[Toby]

I take inspiration from wherever it happens to come from. Perhaps the look/feel of the sponsor tour, a banner, the background colors in the photo set, etc. Quite often I'll start in one direction, make a couple of changes along the way and end up with something entirely different than what I set out to do.

[Mattinblack]

Originally Posted by Toby

I take inspiration from wherever it happens to come from. Perhaps the look/feel of the sponsor tour, a banner, the background colors in the photo set, etc.

Consider the lilies..... But its really a VERY good idea to give the feel that the sponsors tour is just an extension of your site. Read Ogilvy on advertising. Use the colours black red and green which are associated with mystery money and excitement, try to avoid blue orange and yellow on your site. Why? Because blue promotes trust and is best used on the payment page - the better performing tours often have blue backed graphics and a blue backed table on the payment page explaining how trustworthy they are with your credit card data and email details. You present blue early on and the surfer wont get the feelgood factor from it. Because orange is a HOT payment colour (believe it or not humans have a peck reflex like a chickens and respond to thin orange things hence the number of buttons around with an orange glow) its best used on your sponsors pay button but maybe you should use it just once on your last ditch effort to get the customer onto the tour. Yellow is just a no-no psychologically. Gold works but its similar to orange. Urb managed to pull off gold brilliantly on his http://www.urbx.com/tours.html foxy angel tour but it often just looks 'wrong'.

Re chicken reflex.... We share 99% of our DNA with Chimps, but 60% of us is bananas however we are all definitely 55% Nuts. (recent uk show on advances in Human genome project).

[SirMoby]

Thanks for the info Mattinblack

In the beginning I got my inspiration from GG and Tommy. I'm not joking about that but don't let Tommy know. They create some awesome stuff. That stuff always made me push hard and sometimes I would actually spend way too much time on designs.

It's better to submit an average site today and an average site tomorrow then it is to miss submitting today and submit a near perfect site tomorrow. Two sites are always better then 1 so always focus your efforts on getting something submitted today.

Of course matching a tour color scheme and text isn't a bad thing either.

Other places to look for inspiration. News stands, billboards and posters. Look at titles, text colors and figure out why one grabbed your attention and another didn't.

[Wazza]

I start with 9 blind links per page and stick the rest in the gaps

[Cliff]

Design is subjective. Not everyone will agree what is good and what is not. But the color thing is quite true, you have to choose colors carefully for the job. You also have to consider how colors are affected by other surrounding colors. So choosing a color set of possibly three colors (and sticking to them) is important.

I get inspiration from television commercials, because although they are using a different medium of selling, they have had a 30 year+ head start over the web and have probably more insight into what works and what doesn't work on the human mind.

I see webmasters discussing the pros and cons of design all the time and there seems to be two schools of thought.

1. Razzle dazzle them with fancy graphics.
2. Keep it simple and straight forward.

IMO both these theories work equally as well. But not with every application.

Galleries have to have more of an instant selling hit, because they are only one page, therefore the fancy graphics will do better at punching the message home quickly than a plain simple design.

Free sites have more selling opportunities by being 4 pages long, so you can include more real text and html. So there isn't the same selling urgency that the one page gallery must have.

Like I said, this whole design thing is subjective, and sometimes taking a risk pays off better than playing within the "rules".

[asmod]

i do like as several guys above, it's good idea to use paysite examples as they have good color combination & object placement

[lassiter]

Originally Posted by asmod

i do like as several guys above, it's good idea to use paysite examples as they have good color combination & object placement

Well, some of them do.

[droopy420]

There's a lot of great info in this thread, especially about colors! Thanks guys.

[MrYum]

Yup, I tend to open the paysite tour and refer to it as I'm designing elements of the free site...especially the css. Keeping colors/fonts similar creates a more seemless move for Mr Horny Surfer dood and we don't want him changing which head he's thinking with at that particular moment