Color is important. Your content is king and always will be – but if your website design is color-illiterate then you run the risk of losing visitors quickly no matter how good he content is. A simple example: if you have decided to display white text on a bright pink background it is unlikely that your users will hang around to find out what your site is selling.
Tips for Choosing You Color Scheme
- Use a design program to help you out. Colorlovers is a good one to try out. You’ll be able to get professional advice on your own designs and a load of inspiration too.
- Check out the background psychology of “color marketing“. Your company has a personality and the colors you pick to represent it can impart that personality to your visitors.
- Use your logo to set your tone. Your company logo should always appear on your website. If you don’t have a logo then a website is a great place to build one. Brand your company and pick a color from your logo to set the theme for your site.
- Don’t use too many colors. Three is a good number. Use one main color, with an offsetting color and a background color. In almost all instances the best background color for a site is white or grey.
- Shade. You can use different shades of the same color to keep your palette complementary without making your site look like it was designed 15 years ago. If you shade your colors you can pick two complementary colors and use varying shades of each to give depth and life to your site.
- Use an analogic color scheme: pick one base color, one neighbor color and one complementary color. Use the base and its complement for the main colors in the site and spread the neighbor sparingly throughout to bring some extra life and interest to the page.
- Never use colors that make it hard to read the text on your site. The moment your website becomes difficult to use, your visitors leave. Think of your color scheme as a setting for your content – it’s a backdrop designed to draw the user in, rather than the be all and end all of your site.
Images used are courtesy of Shutterstock
