There’s more to websites than just images and text. A website is a marketing tool, representing
company, owner, employees and products. Beyond that, it is a personality. A website is a personality? Yes. It portrays a positive or negative symbolism and/or emotion. In a face-to-face meeting our bodies and faces portray unspoken meanings. We smile, gesture, laugh, and become nervous. It’s these little nuances that help us communicate. A website does exactly same thing. The difference is: a website does it with color. Colors themselves contain a cornucopia of meaning. They can make us happy, sad, angry, comfortable, nervous, and even trusting. While it seems simple enough to choose a graphic and then design a site around that graphic, you may unintentionally be presenting a derogatory impression. The colors may contradict content in unintended ways.
Colors and their meanings Green and white work well together, but in Japan a white carnation signifies death and a green hat in China means a man’s wife is cheating on him. A green hat with a white carnation in brim wouldn’t be a good choice for a company logo. However, green is easiest color on eye; it has a calming effect which is why it is most used in hospitals. It relaxes patients. Different shades of green have different meanings: yellow-greens are least preferred colors by consumers.
Red has been shown to increase blood pressure and heart rate. People working in a red environment work faster, but they also make more mistakes. It increases appetite, restlessness and nervous tension. Creating a site with bright red and bright blue is a very poor idea! Bright red has longest wavelength and bright blue has shortest. When viewing these colors human lens has to adjust to focus, and it tries to focus on both. This tires eyes very quickly and will give viewer a headache.
Websites that contain different shades of blue, or a blue and white combination tend to be more popular. Why? Blue represents calm, stability, hope, wisdom and generosity. People inherently trust blue websites faster. Add blue text and people will retain more information from your site. Combine blue, purple, and white and you have nobility.
Thankfully you do not see many yellow sites. While yellow can increase concentration, it is hardest on eyes. Paint a room yellow and you will make babies cry and adults lose their temper. Yellow is a very spiritual color and eye catching. Used in small amounts it is very inviting, cheerful and number one attention getter. Forget blinking animations, just use a small, nicely designed yellow graphic.
Let’s talk orange for a minute. As a fruit, I love it. As a color, I don’t love it. It always reminds me of Jell-O and that reminds me that EEG of Jell-O is same as human brain. Orange does have its pluses though. It tends to make more expensive products seem affordable and suitable for everyone, almost like a natural sales pitch. Brighter orange is hard on eyes and is not recommended for text or background images. Small amounts of bright orange can help create a “fun and interesting” site.
Action and Reaction Color affects how we feel, our perceptions, and our interactions. A visitor has already made a conscious choice to visit your site, now you have to keep his or her interest. You have between 8 to 10 seconds to visually appeal to surfer. Through color you can make a surfer feel welcome, comfortable, relaxed, and trusting. If you take existing graphics on a site and change color you change way site is perceived, thus changing a person’s reaction.
