Internet Marketing Blog » Web Design Tips

The use of colour in web design.

Chris — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:21:28 +0000

A website is now, more often than not, the most common and easily accessible source of information about any company. With this in mind it is very important to ensure the use of colour on the website is appropriate.

Colour is one of the first elements that a user registers when viewing something for the first time. Users naturally make associations based on the colours they see and react differently to the various embedded meanings of each colour.

Choosing the right colour scheme is dependent upon your brand, product or image. Colours can be used to evoke emotional reactions and transcend deliberate associations.

For example the colour black and dark shades of grey are often used to depict sophistication and elegance whilst vivid bright colours such as pink/magenta depict flamboyancy and are attention grabbing. Websites should use colour schemes that correctly reflect and engage their target viewer to create a more rewarding user experience.

Whilst selecting the correct primary colour to be used it is also important to get the accompanying colours right too. There is a distinct relationship between many colours and finding a harmonious scheme is not always simple. Some colours just don’t complement each other together or look nice side by side, no matter how hard the designer may try.

Once the correct scheme has been found, it is important to ensure each element is used in a way which enables easy retrieval of information from the website page for the user. Bright, attention grabbing colours should be used as spot colors to highlight key areas of information but should not be spread over the page in a way that causes a breakdown in the flow of the information.

Colour coding, contrast and shades of colours can be used to organize different types of information and make elements simple and easy to process by the user.

Developing a colour scheme for a website requires a good understanding of what is meant to be conveyed to the user, a technical development of the use of this colour and the information on the webpage. This can be achieved by using colours with significant meanings and dependent relationships but sometimes trial and error finds the most attractive solution.

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How WYSIWYG Ruins Websites

Richard — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 08:05:30 +0000

WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) can seem like a godsend to new web designers. When HTML is still very unfamiliar, and the basic principles of web design are fresh and awkward, having a ‘what you see is what you get’ option can be extremely helpful. Overuse of WYSIWYG, however, can be extremely detrimental to your web development.

In many ways, WYSIWYG can open up possibilities when it comes to web design. Most of these ways only apply to new web designers, and they don’t compensate for the limitations that come with programs that display pages instead of code.

WYSIWYG and limitations

What limitations do you get from programs that operate mostly in WYSIWYG? One of the more frustrating limitations is that these programs usually embed proprietary code within the page, so you end up with a bunch of what is essentially DreamWeaver or FrontPage junk mail sitting in your source code. This makes for clunky code, and can hinder your site in the search engines.

Another limitation is that errors can be harder to fix if you don’t know how they were made in the first place. If you’re doing your own web design, you may run into problems. Experienced web developers should work exclusively in HTML, and you can talk to our online marketing experts at Click Consult about expert web design.

Viewing your page as it’s being built is very tempting, but don’t give in to the temptation to the extent that you ignore your code. Your code is what the search engines see, what other sites see, and is ultimately what makes your site work.

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Tone, Colour And Contrast In Web Design

James — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:03:43 +0000

Web design relies upon the skilful use of colour in order to, firstly, delight the eye, and secondly, draw attention to certain areas of the page. The overall use of colour must be balanced or the design will feel off kilter, with clashes or nauseating combinations sending visitors scurrying away from the site.

Mastering the use of colour is not enough on its own to make a web design succeed, though, as the elements of tone and contrast are perhaps even more important in making the finished look work. For the colour blind, a page that makes sense without relying on colour to indicate that, say, a certain phrase is a link, or that a particular link has been visited, is much easier to use.

Ensuring a page works for everyone means making it work first in greyscale, perhaps using variations in tone to indicate page elements such as links, or basic styles such as underlines. Viewing a site with colour turned off also gives a feel for the contrast and how readable all the text will be for every visitor, not just for those who are colour blind.

If a page works in greys, whites and blacks, it will be much more likely to succeed than one which does not, even though the colours might be beautiful. This is because the emphasis is always on ease of use and readability. At internet marketing company Click Consult we know the differences between tone, colour and contrast and understand how to use them on the pages of your website.

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What Clients Can Bring To The Design Process

James — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:02:47 +0000

Sometimes a web design firm might be wary of allowing clients to have too much input into the design process, perhaps because of past experiences where the end result became hopelessly compromised. This can happen due to the internal politics of the commissioning organisation emerging as requests for unhelpful design changes. However, shutting clients out can be a huge mistake as, unless the designers specialise in one area of work, it is unlikely that they will know more than the client about that company’s intended web audience.

In many cases, clients may be armed with a lot of useful information about their customers, perhaps including statistics about the type of people who are likely to visit a new website, their ages, professions and interests, and maybe even individual reports about what a typical potential user might like and dislike when using a site. This can all save time for a web development team, as much of the necessary research regarding a target audience is already done, and the work of creating a site to fit those needs can begin all the sooner.

When the creation of a website takes place in a spirit of collaboration, rather than as a tug of war being played out between designers and clients, the results are much more likely to succeed. Here at internet marketing agency Click Consult, we recognise the advantages of working closely with our clients and we understand that a collaborative approach will help us to produce a website that suits your customers’ needs perfectly.

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Using Flash In Web Development

Richard — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:49:27 +0000

Flash is useful for adding animated and interactive elements to a web design. Using special software, images can be drawn which are scalable. This means that outlines remain crisp when enlarged or shrunk, rather than appearing jagged in the way that a JPEG, for example, might do. Such smooth types of images are known as vector graphics.

Animations produced using Flash allows the viewer to interact with what is happening on screen. For example, one might select certain items and move them around against the background. Flash creations typically load more quickly than other animations, and no programming experience is needed in order to create them.

One disadvantage of having Flash on a website is that visitors can only view it if they have downloaded a Flash player. However, many browsers currently have this pre-installed and, if not, it can be downloaded for free from the manufacturer’s own site. Creation of Flash movies at a professional level requires purchasing software. Objects are drawn as they appear at key frames within the film and the software then fills in the intervening stages.

Objects can be made to rotate, images can be converted into clickable buttons, and sound may be added to films. Although search robots can now read some text contained in Flash files, it is still best not to rely on Flash at present for any significant written content, or to use it in such a way that the site cannot function without it.

At web marketing company Click Consult we know exactly when and how to use Flash for a website.

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The Dark Side Of Web Design

Richard — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:01:23 +0000

It can be more difficult to make web design work using dark colours than it is using a light background, and an airy approach. Pale text on a dark background is a lot more tiring for readers’ eyes than the ideal combination of black text on white. However, there are certain sites where a dark – and maybe even a largely black – colour scheme can be very effective.

A site which has the purpose of displaying a lot of images, such as a photographer’s portfolio, can benefit from utilising a darker set of colours. The advantage is that the images tend to stand out more against black or dark grey, and usually there will also be less text, so readers are not being asked to view large blocks of writing which could otherwise strain the eyes.

Web designers take into consideration that there text is presented on a darker background, it usually needs to be made larger than it would be if it was displayed as black words on white, in order to remain equally readable. There should also be more space around the lines of text, as this serves to increase legibility. The extreme of white text on black can be more of a challenge to the eye than white on dark grey, or perhaps off-white on black, and it is worth experimenting a little with various shades in order to see what works best in terms of ease of reading.

At web marketing agency Click Consult, our web development experts have the skills to create websites with darker colour schemes in order to meet the needs of your business.

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Web Pages Should Have A Logical Order

Click Consult — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:58:30 +0000

When visitors read web pages they make assumptions, based on previous experience, about what will happen next. Usually, after entering details into a form, one would expect a button to appear below allowing one to submit the information. It could be quite surprising if the button was on the top left of the page instead. In Western cultures, the convention is to read pages from left to right and from top to bottom, and this ought to be incorporated into the general flow of a page design in order to make the sequence feel more intuitive for readers.

Web design that makes it easier for users to engage with a site is likely to lead to more return visits and, over a longer period, the website is much more likely to succeed than one which visitors frequently end up abandoning in frustration. As well as considering the directional flow of events on a page, it helps if elements that are related are grouped together visually in some way. This could be done simply by varying the amount of space between a group and the rest of the page, or by using containing lines and boxes, or even colour. It is perhaps best not to rely on colour alone to convey any important message, as some visitors may be colour blind, and screen readers, and even search engine crawlers, may not be able to recognise colour variations.

At web marketing agency Click Consult, our web development team plans websites carefully so that visitors find them logical and easy to use.

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Putting Your PR In The Right Context

Susie — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:37:20 +0000

Deciding on a font can take weeks in the publishing and internet marketing industry. Fonts can have such an impact on how a piece of text is read that companies frequently design a whole new one for important documents. Publishers engage in heated debates over the slightest of differences between typefaces, and they do it for a good reason.

Font choice has an effect in several ways, and if used right, can become a tool used within a search engine optimisation campaign. The first is readability. It is known that different fonts read better when used for different purposes. In general, it is thought that a serif font, which has small tags on the letters – such as Times New Roman, is better for chunks of text. This is because the serifs lead the eye naturally on to the next letter, making it faster to read. For bullet points and short chunks of text, however, sans serif fonts, such as Arial, are favoured, because they make individual words stand out more.

The second way in which a font influences how text is read is the emotion it provokes. We’ve all smiled at a funny font, or sobered when reading a professional-looking font. Fonts convey a lot in terms of emotion, and this can have a big effect on how the message of the text is received.

When deciding on the design of your online press release, consider your font choices carefully. Opting for the standard choice can be advantageous, but so can choosing something different to stand out. Talk to our consultants at Click Consult about your design options.

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Web Design With Content In Mind

Click Consult — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:29:18 +0000

Often during web development the structure of a page ends up being imposed upon the content. Numerous columnar and box-like shapes surround and enclose the text, creating a strong and sometimes distracting abstract pattern on the screen. There can also be a tendency to limit written content, partly in order to fit into the page scheme and partly due to the idea that articles on the Web should not exceed a certain length.

These restrictions may be detrimental and, with skilful design, they are unnecessary. The use of rectangular borders and blocks of colour around content can overwhelm the text, making it disappear into the background. In addition, having too many elements on the page can confuse the eye, giving an overall look that conveys chaos rather than professional orderliness. The answer lies in a lighter touch. Blocks of text speak for themselves within a thoughtful design, and need not be announced clumsily with borders, boxes and the like. If the paraphernalia of design is kept to a minimum, the text can leap out and grab the reader’s attention.

The amount of content on a page need not always be small as, with careful design, a larger piece of writing can be made both easy to scan and relaxing to read in full. At the other extreme, even the shortest portion of text might lose its impact if forced into a poorly-designed page. At Click Consult our design team knows how to create web pages that bring content to the fore.

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Let The Experts Take Care Of Web Design For You

Gareth — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:59:55 +0000

When a business is looking to build an effective website it can be a daunting prospect. Just surfing through the internet looking at what the competition already offers can also be disheartening when it comes to knowing where and how to get started. This is where web development and internet marketing professionals can make the difference in giving you a website that can achieve your goals.

There are literally hundreds of books lining the shelves that can teach the necessary computer languages and explain all the things to use and all the things best avoided in creating a workable and user friendly website. There is no shortage of advice online either, but whether it be books or other websites, they all use terms like HTML, CSS, Style Sheets, Embedded Media, Photoshop, and Search Engine Optimisation, which for someone who has never had to face such task, can seem confusing and intimidating.

Even software that can be bought off the shelf might be puzzling to understand, often leaving more questions than answers on which software might be best for the basics, and which is most user friendly, or which one will grow to meet increasing and changing demands.

While there are certainly plenty of educational courses that teach web design, not everyone has the time or the money to spend on weeks of lessons. But at Click Consult we have the knowledge to ease away that confusion and lessen the stress by implementing comprehensive web design solutions tailored to meet specific company needs, while laying down the foundations for growth in the future, letting you worry about more important matters, like that next big product release.

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