the right website colours

[Jozo]

I have come across an interesting article about website colour schemes.

When developing my website I took great care in choosing the right colours.

However I still have not quite decided whether to use blue or orange colour for categories navigation and the main window heading.

At the moment I am using blue as it just looks good with the rest of the design and the logo. I would like to stick with the blue.


My questions:

How do you decide what colours to use when designing a website?

What are the most user friendly colour in your experience?

 

[fisicx]

User testing is the only way to find out.

I've tried all sorts of combinations over the years and discovered green is the worst, multiple colours cause confusion, blue is no longer soup de jour and pastels don't attract the eye.

Currently using an orange/brown combination. Bounce rate has gone down and time on site increased. This doesn't mean it will work for everybody though.

Do a search for 'colour/color psycology' and then take a look here: http://www.colorsontheweb.com/. Also consider vision impairment: http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/

But it all boils down to your visitor's perception, that's why testing is vital. Run a vanilla test of the site without the styling (no colours) then add the CSS and repeat the test. You will be amazed at the difference adding or removing a few colours can make.

 

[streetslocal]

blue is no longer soup de jour and pastels don't attract the eye.

Really?:redface:
Might try a colour change.

 

[An Oasis]

Also consider vision impairment: http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/

And their online colour mixer @ http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/

 

[AshSmith]

Google "Colour Lovers" - its very addictive.

 

[fisicx]

Really?:redface:
Might try a colour change.

Yup, changed from a blue theme and time on site increased. Removed the borders and things improved again. Got rid of the background and again saw some changes. Tweaked the whitespace and then the content to good effect. Decreased the font size and less people stayed. I experiment and keep the things that work a ditch those that don't. Only thing to consider is time. I usually let things run for a few weeks to judge the effects of a change, any sooner and it could be a seasonal thing (like a run of visitors to a blog post or from stumbleupon).

My top tips for an information site: lots of primary colours, minimal decorative imagery, no borders and long articles with lots of sub headers. Works wonders for me.

 

[Colt]

a good site for colour combos is colourlovers.com

ahhh ash beat me to it!

 

[fisicx]

There are some nice tools on the colours site I link to above:

The colour wheel: http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwheel.asp

The colour wizard: http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp

 

[straightdrive]

Do you have a link for this article

thanks

 

[Jozo]

the website is www.zygella.com

Thanks,

 

[websitedesign]

market research, industry analysis, customer profiling, etc will give you a better understanding of what colours to use.

Also Google "Colour Lovers" - recommend

 

[happyoutdoors]

When researching I found this amazing site with masses of info and examples

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/colorful-websites/

it is American but has useful pages such as

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/find-the-perfect-colors-for-your-website/

you can easily get lost in the massed array of examples of all things outstanding

Good luck

Geoffrey

 

[Fuzzy]

I went against the grain and chose black don't tell Earl

 

[directmarketingadvice]

User testing is the only way to find out.

I've tried all sorts of combinations over the years and discovered green is the worst

Funny, one of the start ups I'm coaching wants to go with green, I've been trying to talk him down from the ledge. Ghastly colour for a website.

I'm still a fan of blue colour schemes.

Steve

 

I went against the grain and chose black don't tell Earl

Actually I do use black for some of our more exciting products even a splash of red.

http://www.atvquadshop.co.uk/spyder-images.htm

But in the main I stick to the blues for most as the evidence is overwhelming that it has a major trust factor.

Although colour I believe should match your product for maximum psychologicall effect.

Earl

 

[Christine Hough]

I chose to colour co-ordinte with the photo of us ( the founders) on the home page which worked well as we have always had process blue ( a bright just greener than royal blue colour) for our logo and the orange worked well.
Once I had the two mian colours the rest was just finding the right photos to go with it. (all weekend searching but pleased with the results)

Then just trying to use enough of the old site styling (hofnote.co.uk) to keep the branding identity on the new (hofnote.com)

I did not find the web dev. co much help in this and we ended up designing the home page ourselves which set the style for the rest of the site.

I decorated our front room the same way, chose my fav picture and then picked out colours from it for walls, ceiling, curtains carpets!!

Although user testing should have been done, in practice ours is not a site you can change easily.

 

[fisicx]

I'm still a fan of blue colour schemes

Me too, It's like the industry standard. But because it's so popular everything can get really samey.

As you keep saying Steve, test, test and test again. You really won't know if your layout is working as well as it can until you tweak and adjust every single element. It's one of the main reasons not to begin with a layout/template and try to make everything fit. Unless you can play with the colours, fonts, sizes, padding, margins, borders, hover effects and so on how do you know they are effective?

 

[delboy1875]

Colours is one of those things that you can play around with for ages and it depends on what you are designing the site for. In my experience, black text on a white background is always better for readabilty or white text on a black background secondly. It really is quite a tricky topic though.

 

[Geoff T]

At the risk of getting shouted at (used to it), laughed (sameo, sameo!)...

What's wrong with green? and...

D'you think there's any chance of a retro come-back?

 

[fisicx]

Dunno, I just know that all my stat's improved when I changed from green to blue.

Will probably work well on a spiritual, calming website but not so good if you want people to do something businesslike.

 

[Geoff T]

Dunno, I just know that all my stat's improved when I changed from green to blue.

Will probably work well on a spiritual, calming website but not so good if you want people to do something businesslike.

More changes coming than I'd realised then!!

 

[99giants]

If I'm looking for design or colour combination inspiration I go to the Ffffound website. Its really current in design fashion.

 

[Jozo]

I am sticking with the blue and orange color combination www.zygella.com

By the way there is a well known green coloured website.
Literally everything on it is green!

 

[directmarketingadvice]

By the way there is a well known green coloured website.
Literally everything on it is green!

I don't think anyone was suggesting that there are no websites that are green.

The real question is whether it's converting as well as it would if it were a different colour.

Steve

PS Earlier this year, Drayton Bird and I were discussing split-testing on his blog and he mentioned:

My colleague got amazingly improved results by using a lot of (what else) green when making an environmentally "good" proposition.

So, it's not always a disaster. However, I'd recommend either (a) split-testing it against other colours or, if you don't feel like doing that (b) steering well clear of it.

 

quote by Steve

"My colleague got amazingly improved results by using a lot of (what else) green when making an environmentally "good" proposition."

Classic example of colour matching the product.

Earl

 

[Geoff T]

Classic example of colour matching the product.

Earl

to try that principle if I may...

Green..."the colour of money"...?

maybe not!:redface:

 

[freepropertyadd]

I have come across an interesting article about website colour schemes.

When developing my website I took great care in choosing the right colours.

However I still have not quite decided whether to use blue or orange colour for categories navigation and the main window heading.

At the moment I am using blue as it just looks good with the rest of the design and the logo. I would like to stick with the blue.


My questions:

How do you decide what colours to use when designing a website?

What are the most user friendly colour in your experience?

we use green , and find it seems to work well for us

 

[Geoff T]

we use green , and find it seems to work well for us

"garden" connection maybe??:|

 

[Jozo]

The thing is that a friend of mine was telling me how important the colors are and that he would change the blue for red.

The reason was that the red is more engaging and stuff and that blue is cold and calm or something.

It is crazy what colors can do.

 

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Oh right I'll see if the spaceship starts.:|

Earl

 

[Employment Law Clinic]

A difficult decision, always, but as Fisicx says, testing is the key. We recently changed to blue for employment law (hasten to add, before this thread promoted it), but as SirEarl mentioned - the psychology of colours - and others have observed too, blue can be cold, so I wasn't sure about it.

A good book I had reviewed on colour psychology before we went blue is Colour Your World. Marketed as an interior design book, it's actually very useful for anyone considering the way people react to colours; it doesn't deal with a website environment specifically, but I had the benefit of being able to check the colours of our site with the author (a colour consultant), and she gave approval of the colour scheme which was good enough for us to proceed.

 

A difficult decision, always, but as Fisicx says, testing is the key. We recently changed to blue for employment law (hasten to add, before this thread promoted it), but as SirEarl mentioned - the psychology of colours - and others have observed too, blue can be cold, so I wasn't sure about it.

A good book I had reviewed on colour psychology before we went blue is Colour Your World. Marketed as an interior design book, it's actually very useful for anyone considering the way people react to colours; it doesn't deal with a website environment specifically, but I had the benefit of being able to check the colours of our site with the author (a colour consultant), and she gave approval of the colour scheme which was good enough for us to proceed.

If thats your site I would suggest you change the background to white and do your text in dark blue,at the moment the light blue background is not doing you any favours.


Earl

 

[directmarketingadvice]

we use green , and find it seems to work well for us

"Seems to".

i.e. you're getting conversions but you have no idea how many more conversions you might get with a different colour.

(Maybe green is best for your site. Maybe it's costing you 20-40% of your conversions. No-one knows. You can never know what's possible until or unless you test)

Steve

 

[Graemem]

Personally i use neutral colours usually and whitespace, i think it's more about the design being eye pleasing on the whole than just using a particular colour.

Could be wrong though!

 

[harryhead]

That's cool!

 

[ORDERED WEB]

My questions:

How do you decide what colours to use when designing a website?

What are the most user friendly colour in your experience?

Culture - exmple for an arabic site you would never use green
Content - some types of content lend themselves to certain colour scheems
Science - colour wheels and all that jazz
Accessability - it needs to be readable etc..

lighter schemes, with darker text are pretty friendly and tick most boxes

 

[Jozo]

Personally i use neutral colours usually and whitespace, i think it's more about the design being eye pleasing on the whole than just using a particular colour.

Could be wrong though!

I actually thing that your right saying it is about the design on the whole.