One facet of a well devised website is its colour scheme. Colour selection is vital in creating the look that the site's owner wants to portray. If the look of the site does not meet the users expectations, then they will leave and most likely never go back to the site. This is time and again the reason why a web site is not doing as well as it should be.
Knowing about colour conception may make life a whole lot easier when deciding on a colour scheme for a site. Knowing which colours may irritate and which could calm is important in giving the user the right impression and experience of the site. Why would you crave to anger a user when you thirst for them to buy from your web-site?
Colour contrast and antithesis is another technique to be aware of. It can be used to point users attention to desired pages of regions within the site.
Below is a list of the most notorious, colours and their emotional connotations.
Green is associated with the environment, peace and jealousy. It is also a very relaxing colour and is gratifying to use for a calming effect.
The colour white conjures up senses of purity, simplicity, emptiness and innocence. If used as the major colour in a web site, it creates a clean and simple feel.
Blue is a colour is greater commonly associated with corporate web-sites as it is a strong colour that is associated with confidence, coldness, depression, water and peace.
The colour red is a very evocative colour and it conjures up images of hell, treasure, fire and warning. It is expediently the better colour to use to lure attention.
White could be used to create contrast by being used as a background colour. The spaces of white in between components of a web page are referred to as negative space. White is linked to cleanliness, peace and light.
Black is a strong colour and is associated with sexiness, intensity and elegance. It is a very popular colour on photography web sites, as black creates heightened contrast with colours within photographs.
Grey can be connected to respect, humility, decay and boredom. It is used a lot to create shiny gradients in web design to give a slick, present-day feel to a web site.
Orange is strongly related to spirituality and healing. It is the colour that symbolises Buddhism and it has a healing punch about it. It is a bold colour that is not as bright as yellow yet not a deep as red.
Brown, especially the lighter shades may be very calming. Beige is also a accepted colour in website design as it gives an earthy and relaxed feel. It may also intimate tradition, poverty and mother earth.
Grey may be linked to elegance, innovation and the future. The lighter side is similar to white in that it is a glorious colour to use on the background of a web-site to create a anticipation of space and modernism.
The psychology of colour can play a massive role in creating a successful web-site. To subliminally create an expectation amongst the end user can be a powerful sales tool. Choosing colours without thought could inadvertently put users off the site. Creating colour combinations that guidebook users to an end goal can generate more sales and make the whole user experience stress free.