How To Use Color To Make An Impact With Your Website

When designing a website, most of us pay a great deal of attention to the quality of our content. We need to craft our message very carefully so that we portray all the more important elements in as short a space of time as possible. We understand that internet surfers are extremely busy people, and they have a tendency to skip around from website to website, often spending only seconds on each page.

Psychologists tell us that the first impression is very important and that a few second reaction can often mean the difference between persuading someone to stay and further investigate or continue on their journey. This tells us that while we should always focus on the quality of our written content, the very design and appearance of the site is most important. Selecting the ideal colors for your website should be more than just a quick decision, and using of a certain shade because it happens to be “your favorite color,” isn’t always the best idea.

Occasionally you may discover that you’re steered in a particular direction because of the very nature of your website, the product or service that you provide, or the actual basis of its development. While this may mean that you are leaning toward primary colors, pastel colors, stark blacks or whites, you nevertheless need to ensure that you have a balance between your colors and shades – in other words focus on a color scheme.

While fundamentally a color scheme must always be pleasing on the eye, unless the very reason for your website is to provoke and annoy, there are nevertheless many different ways to achieve a desired result. If you’re working with a client who has certain principle colors, you can suggest different tones and complementary shades with other colors that blend in nicely.

If you have a clean sheet of paper and are looking for some inspiration, there are numerous resources on the Web available to you. Several sites allow you to select different palettes or to view those that others have created before you. The power and creativity of these programs allow us to instantly see whether something looks pleasing to us or could “work” for a particular environment or site. Design programs work with a mixture of Pantone colors or hex codes and there are really an almost infinite number of variations available.

If you find that you need to turn to other sources for inspiration and discover a particularly interesting scheme through a random photograph, there are several different online tools that can help you to determine the actual code of the color that you like, also known as its hex value. In addition, design programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Photo Paint can “sample” the color from a photograph or a scan and replicate it perfectly.

When you are surfing the web yourself, you may come across a website that you particularly like. The color scheme may be very attractive to you and you might be wondering what colors are represented. You guessed it – you can turn to a website that allows you to enter a particular URL and return the color value that is used.

Adam Toren, Co-Founder of Young Entrepreneur, specializes in improving the profitability of under-performing businesses with a unique and ‘bottom line’ program. Adam, along with his brother, have started, bought and sold several companies over the past years. They currently own and operate a successful publishing company and several online companies.