Design Tip:
Choose Your Colors Carefully

by Larisa Thomason,
Senior Web Analyst,
NetMechanic, Inc.

First impressions count. People often make a snap decision about you based on your clothes or hairstyle. They make decisions about your Web site even more quickly. Your content may be great, but bad design and/or color choices can send the wrong message to visitors - and send them away from your site.

Color Sends A Cultural Message

Color has a powerful effect on human emotions. In North America, we associate the color red with strong emotions like fear, love, and anger. Blue and silver are cooler colors that evoke less intense feelings.

Or do they? Do you know what message color is sending to your visitors?

It's important to consider the cultural background and expectations of your visitors. The Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University published guidelines on designing Web sites that are appealing to international visitors. Color is the first factor addressed in the report.

SURL found that the same color can trigger many different responses, depending on the visitor's culture:

The study relies on research from 1993 and parts seem a bit outdated. For instance, the association of blue with masculinity in the United States is a bit surprising. Especially since business news site Business 2.0 recently christened blue as "the color of cool."

However, it's worth noting that there are some wide cultural differences and you need to be sensitive to them.

Also remember that many colors have both positive and negative connotations, so it's important to select color combinations very carefully. Different shades of the same color also evoke different associations. Think about the different ways you'd use pink, bright red, or maroon. Those shades are hardly interchangeable!

The Visibone Color Lab is a great way to experiment with various color combinations for your Web site. You can choose between 216 different colors to select the best combination for your site. The tool even gives you the hexidecimal, RGB, and CMYK values for each color.

Appealing To Particular Audience Segments

It's hard to generalize about any audience (especially a worldwide one). Still, your initial audience analysis process should yield important information about your site's target audience. The analysis is easy when the site needs to appeal primarily to a local audience or a particular segment of the national audience.

Consider the differences between sites targeted specifically towards men or women. Men and women tend to express different color preferences. Natalia Khouw discusses gender differences in her article at the Color Matters Web site.

Khouw reports that women in general prefer soft, cool colors while men prefer bold, saturated colors. Online retailers recognize this: the Avon Web site is pink and beige while the John Deere site mixes bold shades of green, orange, and yellow.

Web sites that want to attract a young audience of kids and teens are free to use animations, online chat, neon colors, and unusual fonts. But imagine that same type of design on a financial services site. Would you trust them with your retirement savings?

Audience analysis is a critical part of the Web design process. Understand your audience's needs and expectations before you start writing code.

Color Selection Checklist

When visitors feel comfortable on your site, they'll stay longer. But if you've used jarring colors, hard-to-read text, or poor design, they'll be gone before you can say "back button." You only have a few seconds to establish your site's credibility with visitors. Color renders quickly and gives visitors an instant impression of your site.

Marta Eleniak provides more information about color selection in her excellent SitePoint.com article titled Essential Colour Checklists For Web Design.

Here are a few of the important considerations she lists:

Color is a great way to set a mood. It's also a good way to decrease page download time. Often, you can replace GIFs with colored table cells to create fast-loading backgrounds and navigation bars.

Visitors may leave your page if it looks bad. They're even more likely to bail out if it loads too slowly. Check your page download time with HTML Toolbox and make sure you aren't losing visitors before they even see your content!