Web Site Design by David Rutstein from A to Z

Choosing the right colors for your website is just as important as selecting graphics and content. This article discusses what factors to consider when selecting your website colors.

Colors have many effects on people. Certain colors can invoke specific emotions in people. Emotional reactions can affect the image of your company in the visitors mind and can have a major effect or your company’s “brand”.

If you doubt color evokes emotion, consider the phrases, “green eyed monster” “seeing red” or “in a black mood”. The green-eyed monster is a reference to jealousy, seeing red means a person is angry and a black mood refers to depression. People do associate colors with specific moods. Scientific texts have proven that different colors can make people happy, sad, relaxed, excited, angry or afraid.

Anything that can evoke those responses in people needs to be looked at carefully when designing your website. Colors tend to be classified as “neutral, “warm” or “cool”. So, let’s take a look at some of them.

Neutral Colors

Whites – Whites stand for purity and cleanliness. In eastern cultures white is the color of death while in western cultures in is the color of marriage and hope.

Grays – Grays exude reliability and conservatism. Shades of gray are one of the most popular colors for business attire.

Browns – Browns stand for the earth, home and family.

Blacks – Blacks tend to signify power, elegance and sophistication. In western cultures also stands for death.

Warm Colors

Reds – Reds are good for attracting attention. That is why they are frequently used in sales letters to emphasize specific points. Red symbolizes, anger, violence, lust, passion and can actually raise people’s blood pressure.

Yellows – Yellow can mean weakness or cowardice as well warmth and happiness.

Oranges – Orange is associated with fall harvesting and Halloween. It can also stimulate a person’s appetite.

Pinks – Pinks usually symbolize innocence, femininity and romance.

Cool Colors

Blue – Blue has a calming effect on people. It exudes intelligence and trust. It is a surprising that many financial and health care institutions use blue themes. Blue can also suppress appetite.

Green – While the green stands for jealousy, greed and inexperience, it also stands for money and wealth.

Purple – Purple tends to symbolize creativity. The darker shades were once reserved for royalty and the lighter shades are usually associated with romance.

Web Safe Colors

Vacuum tubes, LCD and Plasma screens all display colors differently. There are 216 colors that can be displayed on every type of monitor in every web browser and will look almost identical. These 216 are called web safe colors. If consistent color is important, you should only use web safe colors on your websites.

Color Schemes

Color schemes can be composed of a single color, complimentary colors or contrasting colors.

Single Color — Single color schemes uses several different shades and intensities of a single color on a white background. For example, if you want to use a red color scheme, you can use everything from the lightest pink to a red so dark it is almost black.

Complementary Colors – Complementary color schemes use two or more colors that look good together and create a pleasant blend that is appealing to most people. One color may be dominant and the other used to compliment it.

Contrasting Colors – Contrasting color schemes use two or more dominant colors to create an “eye grabbing effect”. For example, using a dark blue page background, a deep red frame around a white background text area with black text is a typical contrasting color scheme.

Web designers need to be careful when using contrasting colors because some combinations tend to “vibrate” such as red text on a blue background and can hurt some people’s eyes, while other combinations are just had to focus on. Other combinations “clash” and are unpleasant to look at.

General Color Guidelines

The following guidelines are suggestions that should make your web pages readable for everyone.

• Text should be readable. Obviously black on white is the default choice but others are also good. White or Yellow or other light colors work on black or any other dark color background. But, Yellow, Green or Gray on white does not.
• Use colors that are attractive and pleasing to the eye.
• Select the colors that portray the image you want to give your visitors.
• For consistent colors across different browsers, use web safe colors.
• Do not use a normal color intensity images as a background behind text. It makes it difficult to read. If you use an image, use it as a faded watermark.
• Colors should be uniform on all your web pages to create a “brand” for your site and let your visitors know they are still on your website.

When you come to designing your website, choose you color scheme just as carefully as you choose your graphics and content. The overall appearance will determine the impression the visitor gets of your company and can mean the difference between success and failure.

Web surfers are basically an impatient bunch and if a website is hard to figure out because the links are not obvious, they will click away never to return. Website navigation is one of the most crucial elements in determining the effectiveness of a website. This article discuses the basic principle of designing website navigation.

To be effective website navigation must first and foremost make sense to the average person. While there is always room for creativity, well-designed websites tend to have similar navigation layouts.

As a web designer you must always keep in mind the basic purpose of the website and the intended audience when designing navigational elements. Most websites exist to either inform the visitor about a product or service or to actually sell the product or service. Therefore there are some basic guidelines to follow:

Make sure all navigational elements are clearly links by using standard conventions for links such as buttons, menus, underlining the text or changing color on mouse. Resist the temptation to use clever or ambiguous names for links.

When using non-conventional links, explicitly tell the visitor that this is a link. For example, suppose you design a web page where you want to use a map showing several different cities and want to let the user click on the city name to pull up information about that city. Just make sure you tell the user to click on the city name to get more information about that city.

Remember the “Three Click Rule” that most professional web designers use. Studies have shown that most users will not click more than three links to get to the information they want. So every page on your website should be reachable within three clicks.

I do not recommend using a flash movie or other type of splash page on your website. Keep the web page design simple yet attractive. But if you do decide to use one, make certain you use the META REFRESH tag to take the visitor automatically to your home page after a few seconds and provide a clickable, clearly marked button or link so the visitor can skip the entry page and go directly to your home page otherwise a large percentage of visitors will just click away never to return. Remember most visitors are looking for information not entertainment.

Navigation Element Locations

Top Menus – a top of the page menu bar is usually located directly below the page header graphic that contains the site logo. These menu items may be single links, drop down menus, or expanding menus. Each menu item can be represented by a graphic or just text. In ether case a hyperlink is associated with each item that the visitor can click on to get to the information described.

Left Side Navigation – left side navigation is typically implemented as either a column or text area on the left top portion of the webpage. Like the top menu, each item can be a single link or an expanding menu.

Right Side Navigation – right side navigation is not used that often, but when used, it is implemented as a column or text area on the top right side of the webpage. Most designers use this area for advertisements rather than site navigation.

Bottom Menus – bottom menus can be either a menu bar or footer. Menu bars use either graphics or text links while footers almost exclusively use text links.

Important Navigation Elements

Internal Page Links – Every page on the website should be within two or three clicks from the home page. Important pages should be ONE click away. The type of website will determine which links are more prominently displayed.

Login Boxes – login boxes should be prominently displayed. Common locations are top left, top right or inside the page header.

Shopping Carts – if you use a shopping cart to sell your products, you should prominently display a view cart button on each page. The most commonly used location is the top right side just below or as part of the header.

Order Buttons – if you use individual order buttons they should be large and visible. The fewer clicks it takes to get to your order page, the more orders you will get.

Breadcrumbs – breadcrumbs are both links and a graphical representation of where you are in the site. Breadcrumbs are usually located at the top left of the page just under the header. Each word is a link back to the previous page. They are in the form

Home-> Articles-> Marketing

External Links – external links can be used anywhere but are most frequently used inside the text areas on a website. They may be references to more information located on another site, to recommended products, or to almost anything else.

Advertisements – advertisements are usually either a graphic or text with an associated hyperlink. Ads can be placed anywhere on a webpage but are usually used just under the header banner, down the right hand side of the page, under navigation elements on the left margin, across the bottom of the page or even interspersed within the test areas of the page. Studies show that ads “above the fold” are more effective.
(“Above the fold” refers to the area of a webpage that is visible without having to scroll.)

Downloadable Items – if you offer downloadable items such as audio, video or pdf files, make sure that you tell the user haw big the file is and whether they need an application to use the file. If they do an application, provide a link to the application. For example, provide a link to the free Acrobat reader if you offer pdf files.

Site Map – A site map is a good way to layout your entire site for your visitor. (Search engine spyders like them too.) It is just a hierarchical listing of every page on your site with a clickable hyperlink to that page.

Summary

A good navigation system can increase the numbers of pages viewed by each visitor. This in turn can increase signups, customers, sales, members or whatever it is your site is designed to do and make your website more successful.

Although hundreds of graphic file formats exist web browsers only support a few of them. This article describes the different graphic file formats that are available to web designers and when they should be used.

The graphic file formats supported by most popular web browsers are Graphic Interchange Format (GIF), Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and vector graphics. Some of the properties of graphic files are:

• Transparency – this property allows the image to be varying degrees of opaqueness from solid to completely transparent (see-through).
• Compression – this property allows the image to be stored in a much smaller file by using a mathematical algorithm to handle groups of pixels as a single item.
• Interlacing – Interlacing allows the image to be loaded by first drawing the odd rows and then going back and drawing the even rows. It allows the visitor to see the picture sooner.
• Animation – Animation gives the appearance of movement by using a series of successive still pictures. Animated gifs do not require a browser plug-in and can work on almost all devices.
• Progressive loading – Progressive loading is similar to interlacing in that it only loads a portion of the picture initially but is not based on alternating rows and allows the user to see the picture quicker.

GIF

GIF was originated in the 1980 and was adopted by web designers in the early 1990s as the preferred graphic format for web pages. GIF files use a compression algorithm that keeps file sizes small for fast loading.

They are limited to 256 colors (8 bits) and support transparency and interlaced graphics. It is also possible to create animated graphics using the GIF format. All browsers can display GIF files.

GIF Advantages:

• Most widely supported graphic format.
• Diagrams look better in this format.
• Supports transparency.

JPEG

JPEG files are compressed but support “true color” (24 bit) and are the preferred format for photographs where image quality matters. JPEG supports a progressive format that allows for an almost immediate image that will improve in quality as the rest of it loads.

Unlike a GIF file, the compression for JPEG files can be controlled by the web designer,which allows for different levels of picture quality and file size. All browsers can display GIF files.

JPEG Advantages:

• Large compression ration mean faster download speeds.
• Produces excellent quality for photographs and complex drawings.
• Supports 24-bit color.

PNG

PNG is a fairly recent format that was introduced as an alternative to GIF files. PNG supports up to 24 bit color, transparency, interlacing and can hold a short text description of the image’s content for use by search engines.

Unfortunately, most browsers do not support PNG and the ones that do support it, don’t support all of its features yet. But that will change in the future.

PNG Advantages:

• Overcomes the 8-bit color limitation of GIF.
• Allows text description of the image for search engine use.
• Supports transparency.
• Diagrams look better than they do in JPEG.

Vector Graphics

Most web graphics are raster images or bitmaps, which consist of a grid of colored pixels. Drawing and illustrations should be created as vector graphics which consist of mathematical descriptions of each element that makes up the lines shapes and color of the image. Vector graphics are created by drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand and are the graphic artists choice for creating drawings. Vector graphics must be converted to either GIF, JPEG OR PNG format to be used on a web page.

Which Format Should You Use?

A web designer could choose either the GIF or JPEG format for most uses. But, since the file size of a GIF is usually small than the file size of a JPEG, most web designers will use the GIF format for backgrounds, boxed, frames and any other graphical element that look fine using 8-bit color.

Most designers will select the JPEG format for photographs and illustrations where the compression doesn’t compromise the visual quality of the image.

As PNG becomes fully supported by most web browsers, it will probably replace GIF as the web designer’s choice for non-photographic page elements. However, GIF will still be used for animation.

Bottom Line – GIF and JPEG are universally supported and the web designer’s choice is determined by the graphic element being used.

The terms web designer and web developer are used interchangeably in the media and advertisements. But, they are not the same thing. Design involves what the visitor sees on your website, development involves the site’s functionality. This article explores the difference between these two disciplines.

A website contains several distinct aspects:

• Look and feel – primarily the graphics, color scheme, navigation elements, etc.
• Content – information, products, etc available on the site.
• Functionality – functionality includes interactive features that the web site provides to the visitors and the required infrastructure needed to provide them.
• Usability – the site from a visitor’s perspective and includes things like program interactions, navigation and usefulness.

Look And Feel

Look and feel includes overall appearance of the website. A Graphic designer decides on what colors and fonts to use and how to layout each of the sites pages.

The graphic designer needs to have a good appreciation for aesthetics and feeling for what combinations of colors and imagery will project the image that the website owner wants visitors to have of the site.

Content

Content is all of the text that is found on a website and includes everything from the privacy policy to a very persuasive sales letter extolling the benefits of a product and asking the visitor to part with their hard earned money and everything in between. If it is written text then it is part of the content. You need a copywriter and editor to create good content.

Functionality

Functionality includes all of the interactive aspects of a web site and includes animation. The common denominator is that programmers using the various web programming languages that work either on a web server or in a web browser create all of these functions.

Flash can be used to animate graphics. Perl, php and java are programming languages used on the web server to create sophisticated dynamic web pages. These pages can work independently but most commonly with a database to create all of the features we have come to expect from a website.

JavaScript is used in browser to create a lot of cool effects such as swapping images when a mouse moves over an image, “ticker tapes”, links changing colors, etc. JavaScript works in the user’s web browser rather than on the web server.

There are also other “backend” applications that are transparent to the visitor such as form processing, content management and other administration programs that make it possible for non-programmers to maintain some aspects of the website’s data.

All of these programs have to be integrated into the HTML code to be used on the webpage.

Usability

Usability is the website viewed from the user’s point of view and involves mostly testing things like:

• Does the look and feel are actually portraying the proper image?
• Is the navigation is user friendly?
• Does the navigation lead the visitor to where the owner wants them to go?
• Does the site load quickly?
• Do the applications work properly?

Design Versus Development

Unfortunately, there is a lot of overlap and integration needed between web design and web development. When you toss in content creation and usability testing, it becomes a real mess.

Can a single individual do all of these things? There are some people who can do all of these things but most people only do one or two of the tasks.

Web design usually involves content creation and look and feel while web development involves creating the functionality and testing its usability.

Web designers need to be proficient with graphic design tools like Photoshop. Most also know HTML so they can implement their designs. However, using animation on the site and layout for the site’s content are also part of the web designer’s responsibility.

Many site owners provide the content for the website but a web designer needs to be able to edit and even rewrite the content if necessary. Web designers also normally do the usability testing for the navigation and site loading speed.

Web development programmers create the functionality for the website, but all of that functionality must be integrated into the HTML pages on the site. Alternatively, the HTML content could also be integrated into the program. Web developers also do usability testing on the site, at least for the functionality they create. So the programmer also needs to have some HTML knowledge as well.

In either case the web designer and web development programmer need to work together to assure that the website does everything that the site owner requested.

Bottom Line – Only large companies can afford to hire separate experts in graphic design, programming and usability testing when building a new website. In most other cases, the web designer and web development programmer are two different people who must work together to create a successful website.