Set to Publish Your Design to the Web. Right

So you’ve bought the domain, you’ve got some great sales copy, ensure your meta and alt tags are doing they’re job, have a few graphics thrown in for good measure and are all set to publish your design to the web. Right?

Wrong. But though you’re on the right track, you might have overlooked what research is now calling one of the most crucial elements in site design: color. Having the right color scheme might be one of the ways to make or break your site. Since you only have about the first ten seconds of a user’s attention span, you need to ensure that what they first see catches their eye.

The fact that users are visiting your site means you’ve got the core elements of design on target, but now you have to keep them there. True, you’ll need great a great sales pitch and copy but don’t underestimate the importance of a color’s psychology.

Colors mean different things to different people and can symbolize different things in different cultures. For instance, if you’re marketing your website for Asian users, a green hat with a white carnation as a corporate logo might seem creative but it might also get you backlasher and I’ll explain why. A green hat in China means a man’s wife is cheating on him and the white carnation symbolizes death in Japan. Using the two in conjunction is a definite no-no.

However, using bright blue or bright of any color is a bad idea since the human eye will need to adjust to each color and it will put unneeded strain on their eyes.

Pink normally represents softness and gentility, which is why it is often used in baby care products while orange which symbolizes potency and power is normally, used in vitamins and health products, energy drinks etc.

Consider Newton’s first law - every action must have an equal and opposite reaction. For each color that you choose, there will be a different reaction to it by every user approaching that site. The question now becomes: how do you know which color won’t affront?

Let’s say you just love the blue/purple combination and have a nature-based website. Users do not often associate purple or blue with nature. Green and yellow might be more useful, with yellow used sparingly and green used predominantly due to its generally calming nature.

Multicolored websites have the least visitation span with the span reducing with the introduction of each new color. In general, not more than five different colors should be used on a single page.

Concluding, each website is defined not only by the content but by its color - an indirect approach to marketing and propagating a message. While we use body language, websites use colors to demonstrate the subtleties and finer text.

Colors should not be used to support information, but rather to represent the site’s message and remain consistent throughout the website.

Currently a freelance writer with expertise as a Technology Analyst for doting. My experience in the fields of Computer Science and Information Technology help in writing technical documents, user manuals and any other work that comes my way.

I have worked as a Web Developer for the last four years and am now branching into freelance writing, a path I have taken for the last eleven years. I own and manage a writer's community with a free quarterly ezine at DesiWritersLounge.net.