The truth is that colours can even influence whether or not we go ahead and do certain things, such as buy a product. Take the colour red, for example, if we're driving and we see a red sign or a red traffic light, we automatically recognise it as an indication that we should stop; it's seen as a danger sign.

But online red is used effectively to give a sense of urgency. In this case it is often used on a website to urge a person to go ahead and order a product. Red means you must buy this now before the price goes up, or before the product is taken off the market altogether.

Other colours are used to generate certain feelings in people, which can be extremely effective when you want people to approach and view your website with a positive relaxed feeling in mind. Blue is a very calming colour, and can do exactly this.

Colour can also be associated with logos and branding. Whatever colours you use for your own logo, it's a good idea to brand your whole site by continuing to use these colours throughout all the web pages. Of course, this doesn't mean your blue and red logo should inspire red writing and blue tinted pictures; rather you should use these two colours to complement the text and images you are using.

It's obvious that the best approach to take with a new website is to experiment with how you want to use certain colours. It's more a question of getting the overall balance right than anything else, and this can be achieved by asking yourself some simple questions at every stage of the planning process.

Is the background going to be a certain colour, or kept as white? Are you sticking with black text? Colour text can work well on occasion, as it does on certain sections of the eBay website, where blue text is used. Remember that any banners and other adverts you use will have colour in them, and depending on how much advertising is present you may find that adding a lot more colour overdoes the final effect.

Once you have got a finished website it's worthwhile to test the results, especially on sales pages. Try changing a single colour now and again and keeping records to see whether a certain combination brings in better sales. This kind of approach has been tried with the sales forms on mini sites, with excellent results.

It's hard to believe the presence or omission of a colour can make a difference to your sales, but in reality that can happen. Never settle for what you have, you might find that making a few tiny changes can make a big difference.