Quick! What is the hexadecimal color of my logo? Don’t know? Would you need to look in my CSS maybe? Would you try loading my logo into Photoshop and see? Too slow. Those of you with ColorZilla know.
The easiest way to do it, if you use Firefox, is to install the add-on ColorZilla. Continue reading »
Looking to get your visitors attention? Use some color. Red it this years marketing color, but orange is still hot as well. Check out Phuket.
PhuketVogue has a screaming background, it’s all orange. Seem a little bright to you? It’s actually a natural fit. The best way to pick out colors when selecting a theme is to use either surrounding colors on a color wheel or opposites. What’s oppisite of their blue logo? Orange. Plenty of studies over the years have shown bright colors like orange and red get a readers attention. It also increases their “Yes” factor. When I say the Yes Factor, I am referring to what makes a visitor agree with the content, or increase interest.
PhuketVogue is a travel information site for Phuket Thailand. It’s geared to help visitors find and reserve hotel spots, PHuket Hotels. They use the orange to capture your attention, and get you heated to make your decision now. When you visit their hotel page, you can see that even the form is highlighted in orange. Using bright colors is a great way to show emphasis, and improve conversions.
Don’t have a color chart handy? Here is a post I wrote a while back to help you decide on a color theme. Choice in Colors
It’s your website, you pick the colors. Who am I to say pink is a bad theme color for a website, especially if that site was a flower site. Building websites does require a artistic touch, and one rule of the artists is “If it is your work, you can do whatever you want.”
Free to do whatever you want is great, but don’t blind your visitors doing it though. Using colors like pink, yellow, green, and black all on the same page is not good. First, it will hurt your visitors eyes, and second it has no unity. Using the site Portugal Web as an example, you can see a wonderful example of how to use colors.
There are three good rules you should know when picking colors based on one theme color. The first is, the rule of three. Try to stick to just three main colors based on your theme. There are all sorts of studies on the number 3, and what it basically boils down to is that things start getting complex after 3. So, to keep your site simple, try to just use three. Don’t worry about having black text. Black isn’t a color anyhow.
The second rule is to choose colors on the color wheel that are on either side of your main theme color. This is what the Portugal Web site has done. They have picked a shade of green, a lighter shade of green, and one darker shade of green. They have basically applied the first two rules, and successfully created an eye pleasing site.
The third rule is for if you don’t like the second rule. If you don’t want to use all like colors, then you should use opposites on the color wheel. In the case of the Portugal site, they could have used Green with the contrast of Red. It may not sound like a good mix, but it will have the least strain on the eyes.
Many of my posts are about site consistency because I believe it should be one of the most primary rules in web design. Consistency in color schemes should not be excluded, and in fact should have a higher priority than many aspects. Visitors quickly look for visual clues without even reading, and the use of color is one of the greatest methods.
Sometimes a site is cool just because it is. Check out this webconferencing comparisons site. A pretty simple blog in regards to site design. So why do I like it? Cool color changes.
Webinar Faq is a blog about web conferencing. I’m not really into web conferencing though, that is more of my wife’s cup of tea. The cool feature they have on the site though, is located on the top right, and it allows you to easily adjust the sites theme colors with a simple click of the mouse. Don’t like blue? Switch to green or some other color. It’s a great little trick putting your CSS file to good use. The color changes the background, font colors, horizontal lines, and everything.
I see this feature often for font size, and you would think being a usability guy I would like that. I actually don’t. Just more crud for the user to figure out, and your browser should have the capability to change that feature already. In this case, a simple box with the color you want makes it an “easy figure”. Blogs are usually reading intensive, and in the case of color schemes, having something that works well for your eyes is a huge plus.
I was doing some more site reviews this morning, and a particular issue can screaming out at me today. Matching your sites colors to fit your audience.
Webmasters building a site for themselves? It’s a common occurrence. With this, a common issue is created. They get caught up in designing for their idea, and not their audience. Way to often they pick their favorite layouts, or favorite colors, not even really thinking about who they are building the site for. The visitors are just like me, right? Not.
What really got me going on this was a travel site I visited today. It was a simple blog format, nothing too exciting, and seemed more like an instant site rather than a well thought out travel site. What for surely had to go though, was the choice of colors. They chose to design the site with black as the main color. The logo was black, the headers were black, and the menu was black. Black and white travel site? No way! Travel site colors should be closer to circus colors, not Goth Industrial music colors.
You may not be spending thousands profiling your audience for your site, but you should have a general idea. Know that most sites get their visitors from search engines, and most people know nothing about you or your site. They want what they are looking for, obviously, and if they think they are on the wrong site for something as simple as color theme then you are blowing it. Spend some time researching your sites niche audience, and recognize the common theme colors. Look at the leading sites in your niche. Here is a little tip I like to use. Go to eBay.com. Every category has a custom theme color, and they all seem to be pretty well picked out.
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