Color And Web Design
|
|
Color is one of the most important but least understood elements of web design today. Whether they know it or not, visitors to a site respond to colors and other visual elements on the site on a psychological level. Color affects the emotion of the audience, and emotion drives decision-making. An intrigued visitor is more likely to engage in the goal of your site -- whether it is meant to inform, entertain, or to sell products or services. If the colors are unsuitable, the eye will reject the site and your product may be rejected too, no matter how good it is. A well-considered color scheme is frequently the difference between an okay web site and a great web site. It can also make a site unusable if the scheme used is too outrageous and hard on the eye.
Keep it Simple.A color palette that uses three or fewer overall colors contributes to the clarity of a web page. The reader will be able to find information quicker on a simple site versus a complex site that may make them feel frustrated and lost.
Use White Space! This relates to the previous point of keeping it simple. There are a lot of sites with too much information cluttering up the screen. Your audience will have trouble searching for navigation and the information they need amongst a bunch of clutter. White space balances colors, lets the design breathe and can make a large site feel less complex. If a customer is not overwhelmed, they will stay at your site longer.
Be consistent. Color each element (i.e. links, menu items, instructions etc.) the same on each page so that your audience will instinctively know where to look for information.
Know Your Audience Designers need to know who the target audience before choosing a color scheme. Before you begin your design, you should ask yourself what colors the audience would find compelling and right for your product.
Different colors evoke different emotions in different cultures. This is important to keep in mind on the web if your site has an international audience. For example, in China red symbolizes happiness and good luck, in India it symbolizes purity and in South Africa it symbolizes mourning.
To complicate matters further, many colors have both positive and negative associations in the same culture. In North America, for example, black can symbolize death in some instances and formality in others.
Web Designers should also use different colors if their target audience is a specific gender or age. For example, bright, primary colors like red yellow and blue are great for kid's sites, but if you are designing a site for an audience over fifty you may want to use desaturated, softer colors. Younger audiences also tolerate a black or dark background with lighter text better than an older audience.
In general terms, here are the meanings of a few basic colors: Red Energy, strength, passion, risk, fame, love, -top, take noticeBlue Wisdom, protection, spiritual inspiration, calm, reassurance, gentleness, water, creativity,-Depth quality; large companies often use it for their logos.Yellow Sun, intelligence, logical imagination, social energy, cooperation, sunshine, joy, happiness, intellect, energy, cheerfulnessGreen Healing, monetary success, fertility, growth, personal goals, resurrection, renewal, youth, stability, freshness, nature-Plants and environmental awarenessGrey Security, reliability, intelligence, dignity, maturity, conservative, practical
Temperatures of ColorsYes, colors have perceived temperatures! The perception of your site will be affected by your choice of warm or cool colors. Cool colors are water and sky colors like blue and purple; warm colors are on the opposite end of the color wheel: red, orange and yellow. The temperature of a color can affect how your message is perceived. Red text for the word SALE will be perceived as more vibrant and urgent than soft purple text.
If you have a calm and reassuring message you want to get across, (i.e. for a spa) color can affect the tone and mood. For this message, soft browns or deep green would be more calming than an orange or red.
The Importance of ContrastContrast between colors on a web page can help draw attention to certain elements. Contrast between text and its background is a necessity for legibility. Dark text on a white background is more igible than orange text on a red background.
Different elements on your web page (i.e. the menu and body of the page) should also contrast or they will start to blend together. Contrast helps your audience distinguish between the different points on your site and therefore helps them feel less frustrated and gives them a more enjoyable experience when they visit your site.
Color Design Links
· Here is a link to a great primer on the color wheel and how colors combine http://www.colormatters.com
· Colorscemer at http://www.colorschemer.com is a great color tool. It helps you create color schemes, match colors and determine the color used in graphics.
· Colorimpact (http://www.colorimpact.com) a similar tool to colorschemer. Very useful!
Color is a powerful design tool. Strong reactions to color from the audience of a site can assist in such things as brand confidence, sales growth, and readership. The web designer must match the colors they choose to the message and image they want to get across to the web site's customer.
Colleen Happ designs effective and affordable websites and graphics. Her portfolio can be viewed at http://www.happconsulting.com. She offers free one hour consultations to show how an effective website can benefit your business.
|
|
|
Created & Maintained by Empower! CMS Web Sites
Host2Sell Web Hosting | Emarketing Workshops | Site SEO Review | FREE NewsletterGraphic Terms- The Basics Part I
You're almost set. The content of your website, e-book, or software is complete. Ready to put together your e-book or software ...(related: Web Design)
How To Use Sliced Graphics To Layout Your Web Site
The problem with designing your site as a graphic, is thatit would take too long to load. Your visitors would leaveyour site immediately and move to your competitors website. How can you resolve this?Slicing graphics into a number of sections, then puttingthem together in tables is a great way to layout your website. It cuts down on the time for providing a quick designfor a potential client. It also allows you to bringelements of your site together that would be difficult todo with tables.The value of slicing gra...(related: Web Design)
Website Checklist
10 Basic Things Your Website Should Have ...__ all short sentences and paragraphs (more reader friendly)__ lots of "white" space (more appealing)__ graphics (makes site more interesting and entertaining)__ links (widens reader interest)(boosts search engine ranking)__ search engine listings (so people can find your site)__ banner at top (makes home page look professional)__ contact info (at least a valid email address)__ About Me or About Us info (makes it more personal)__ privacy policy (adds credibility; spam policy etc)__ mission statement (defines ethics and purpose of your site). For more info go to http://thecooltool.tripod.comWith these 10 website basi...(related: Web Design)
The Testimonial Trick
One of the most popular methods of traffic generation is the link exchange. Not only can they generate fairly targeted traffic from other related web sites, the number of quality links to your site is also a major factor determining your web site's ranking in major search engines like Google.The problem with link exchanges is that they require you to give a reciprocal link in exchange...(related: Web Design)
Is Your Site Too Slow? Why Image Optimization Is Critical
Graphics are fun, but if you put in too many bells and whistles when you create your web site, you may lose a potential audience whose Internet connection can't handle lots of graphics, and that means you'll be losing potential customers.According to UK website experts Boommm.com, one of the major concerns in website graphical development is what the results will look like on different browsers, plat...(related: Web Design)
The Top 8 Website Sins Part One
They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Your website then is the window to your business. What would a passerby think of your "window"? What does your website say about you? About your business?Does your website entice the visitor to pause and take a few moments to look around or does it confuse them so much they click past it without ever looking back.The goal of your website is to make the visitor stay until the desired visitor response has been achieved. That might be that they sign up for your newsletter, complete a survey or make a purchase. If surfer doesn't stay for more than a few moments ...(related: Web Design)
Elements Of Graphic Design For Your Website
We've all seen them. Poorly designed web sites that make you cringe as soon as they load. But how do you keep your website from becoming, well, ugh. You could hire a professional web designer, and that's expensive, or maybe you already hired a professional, or someone who claims to be professional, and you don't like what they're doing with your site. It all comes down to the K.I.S.S. principle; keep it simple stupid. And you're probably asking well what does this really mean for web design.Here are some basic graphic design/web design principles that you can use on your site:1. Background, be careful what color you use for the background of your site. Yes I know that you're trying to get noticed, but really they've already decided ...(related: Web Design)
Attention Grabbing Web Design Will Kill Your Sale!
In the of-line marketing world it is all about trying to get the attention of the potential consumer to a commercial message.The primary goal is to get noticed by the ...(related: Web Design)
Looking For A Web Design Company? Use A Web Design Directory
Your business website tells a lot about your company. A poorly designed website will have your visitors questioning the quality of your business. A well thought out elegantly designed site would instill confidence in your visitors that you are a credible business to deal with. There is a saying in advertising, "It is better to not advertise than to advertise ...(related: Web Design)
Free Website Templates - Top 10 Things You Need To Know
When building your website you might not have a large budget to devote to website design or a designer, so the best option for you might simply be to use free website templates. However, consider the following benefits as well as drawbacks before you decide to take this route of website design.#1 Many Website Templates are FreeThis is of course one of the best benefits of free website templates because you will save money and still be able to have a professional looking website.#2 Make Building a Professional Website...(related: Web Design)
Make Your Site Quick To Load!
The time it takes to load your site can make or break a visitor's first impression of your site. If your site takes too long to load, the visitor will click "Stop" or "Back" and leave your web site. If you are a business and offering people important information, it is critical to have a nice design, with a quick load time.You may want to check out the load time of your page, to indeed see if your site loads quick enough for the average user. A great site tool can be found at http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ where you are able to enter your site and it displays a report on the time it takes to load your site on different connections, in addition to tips to decre...(related: Web Design)
Cascading Style Sheets For Better Web Design
In cascading style sheets you can specify how your web pages will be presented on the screen by simply predefining page elements such as fonts, headers and links.You can add these predefined elements in the head-section of your pages, but more interesting is to use them in a single .css file and include that file in every page on your site.All you have to do is include in your HTML header.(the path in the href must point to the place where your .css file is stored)There...(related: Web Design)
Web Site Professionalism? What Is It?
Your web site should be-
- visitor friendly to navigate
- search engine friendly for the crawlers
- Automated with ecommerce and subscription forms...
site-map - Copyright © 2006 Empower! Web Design | All Rights Reserved. | Web Design