The balanced use of color in web design is one of the most important factors in captivating the attention of your visitors. Color is very closely tied to emotion and tends to hold a very personal value to people for many different reasons. The color blue can inspire the emotion of blue skies or cool water and ice. The color red can inspire feelings of anger or heat or love. The first thing to consider before choosing the color spectrum to use on your site is exactly what message you are trying to relay to your visitors. What feelings do you want them to experience when viewing your pages? Color has multiple levels of intensity and can be either toned up or down based on the impact you are trying to achieve on your website. Color has very similar meanings around the world to many different cultures and are commonly used to increase awareness of danger or caution (yellow and red). Love is also very attached to the color red. Roses, red velvet, fire etc…

Using color in your content

I have seen so many websites out there with a great concept and good overall use of images and layout but a terrible use of colors and color variables. I think one of the worst I have seen is using colors with far too much contrast with each other.

A good example of that is a jet black background with bright white text. This tends to actually hurt your eyes or makes it extremely hard to look at for more than a few moments. I prefer a website that presents content in the traditional way of using black or dark grey text on a white background. Not only is this easy to read but it gives the reader a more familiar reading experience. Much like a newspaper or a magazine, the norm has always been a white background with black text and for a good reason.

Think outside the box, there are many great colors and backgrounds that can be used to make your pages look great to you, but in the end, the most important thing to remember is that you already know what your writing about. Someone trying to read your content to learn about something or to find information on a product you are selling is less likely to be as patient with hard to read text and are likely to hit the back button and get out of there as soon as possible and guess where they are going to end up, they will end up on the site that you thought was boring and more than likely inspired you to choose such a radical approach in your presentation.

Location, location, location! I suggest using images and pretty colors to compliment your content by placing it around the text area or by highlighting key focus points in your writing. Don’t use busy backgrounds behind your content and try to avoid sticking images in the middle of your content that interrupt the natural flow of the paragraph. The best way to present content is to allow it to naturally flow down the page from top to bottom without any interruptions.

Images can be added to the side of the text area or as breaks between subject changes or after a description where the image is used to demonstrate the topic. I know it looks cute to add jumping smiley faces and funny little moving images all over the page but that unfortunately is one of the best ways to completely distract the reader from the content and looks very unprofessional.

Adding too many images and animations to a web page will also increase the time it takes for the page to load. A common rule is that a reader will only look at a blank page for a bout 5 to 10 seconds before becoming frustrated and leaving the site.

You can use bolding and colors like red or blue to call attention to important areas of the content. One method I use is to bold the first few words of a new paragraph or topic. This is an easy way to allow readers that tend to scan the page for info they are looking for to find it without having to commit to reading the entire page. In many cases the reader will go back and read the entire page but he needs to know that he has found something he is interested in. By making it easy for your readers to find topic changes and key points within your content you make it easy for them to assess the value of your content to their needs.

Our computers are full of important information and files that we add every single day. If someone were able to gain access to your computer through a virus or an insecure network they could wipe out all of that data and possibly even steal your personal information, credit card numbers, social security number etc…

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