How important is colour to a website's success?

I thought I'd ask this as a discussion topic as I've seen some web designers whose work I've truely thought... oh, that's great! and then looked at the web designers own sight and thought.... eww! And for me it was to do with the colour scheme as the overall layout seemed similar. And it got me thinking... is colour really important or am I just being really superficial?

I personally believe that colour is important.  Most people like a pretty picture in colour and it draws the eyes and keeps the interest of the person.  It can also make a person want to look at the next page to see what is there too

I guess anyone's perception of colour is formatted by their own experience.  If you don't like bananas for example, you'd probably be biased against the colour yellow.  That said, there are a variety of colour combinations that work - these are called complementary colours and tend to be the opposites of each other (ie yellow and purple).  So when we talk about a colour scheme that doesn't work, it's generally because the colours don't complement each other properly.

Can you give us some examples of sites you've seen and disliked? 

The problem with colours and images is that what appeals to one person will completely turn another person off. If you are designing a website I would suggest you poll friends, family, colleagues and any one else you can find to give their opinions. I think you will find the exercise interesting!

Only if your site can be found in the first place

Colour is very important to a website, it is very relevant to achieving good accessibility particularly for people using the web that may have visual impairments.

Hello All ,

Just wanted to add some thing to this discussion as i am new to this forum and i have started a new business with one of my friends we develop design and develop websites and i think it is very important that the content and design of website and simple as technology is changing perception towards use of digital media is changing content managment systems like drupal and zotonic gives a good feel to the sites it is very important to use good graphics and once these are in place colors match automatically .

Very important, some of the colours represent certain factors for example the colour Yellow increases the receptor in the brain which helps increase memory like brands such as the Yellow Pages.