Why good design matters on your website: Color
Written by Aaron Radez on March 25, 2008 – 10:48 am -In my last post, I kicked off a three part series on why good design matters when it comes to your company or organization’s web presence. We started the topic off properly by talking about everyone’s biggest pet peeve in poor web design: bad navigation. Take a read if you’re so inclined.
Today, I’m going to talk with you about the importance and use of color. I know it might seem cliche, but color should be one of your first concerns when it comes time to design your company’s website. It’s certainly the first thing that jumps off the page to the user - before word one has been read or the navigation mechanism has even been located, the user’s brain reacts to the colors you’ve presented. Are the loud and aggressive, are they soft and subtle, do they suggest the type of business you might be in? All of this is subconsciously considered.
The first thing I’d like to stress is an obvious concern of color - consistency with your brand image. If you’re a RE/MAX REALTOR and you’re using the RE/MAX balloon on your mailers, business cards, post cards, local cable TV ads, bumper stickers and more, then your website needs to remain true to that color scheme. Your print and web marketing materials can be matched up through the use of a specialized color numbering system developed and owned by a company named Pantone. Almost any shade of any color that can be produced on a computer monitor can be linked to a very specific PMS (Pantone Matching System) shade of color. For example, the McDonald’s yellow is the McDonald’s yellow regardless if it’s on their website, TV commercials, in-store menu boards or the famous golden arches that sit outside each store. That color is Pantone 123. Bottom line: define your brand and keep is consistent.
The next thing to consider when deciding on a color scheme for your website is readability and avoiding over use of colors that are simply too “loud” for use on the web. If your entire site is fire engine red and bright yellow, you’ve got problems, call me. While we all want to stand out and that color strategy might work when creating signs for your next garage sale or to let people know that a train is crossing, most of your site’s visitors have been working at a computer terminal for several hours and likely have several more to go. If you’d like them to stick around and interact with your site for very long, it’s important that you present a color scheme that is both easily read (eg: no gray fonts on black backgrounds) and easily looked at for long periods of time (again, try to avoid that fluorescent yellow).
I’m sure I could go on and on and spend the entire morning writing about color, but we’ll leave it at that for now!
Posted in Quality Web Design |
