 The only measurement that actually matters in website design is its effectiveness. How well does it convey its message? A website is an introduction to a business and it has to catch the eye and the interest of a fickle public quickly. Obviously there is more than one method to attract attention but the color scheme of the site is a major factor governing eye-appeal.
The idea of developing a color scheme is as important to a website as it is an artist’s canvas. Colors can evoke emotions. They should be chosen for the emotion that the site developer wishes to convey to the viewer. Green is a soothing color, red is fiery and passionate, blue can be somber. Even going without a color, using only black, white and shades of gray is an effective statement and can impart a no-nonsense, business-like approach to the site that will be conveyed to the actual subject matter and copy.
Site designers must choose their colors with regard to harmonics. Some colors, usually those close together on a standard color wheel, are analogous and cause a feeling of unity, while others, often directly across the wheel from each other, can be jarring and at odds. This is not necessarily bad. Complimentary colors, as they are called, are used by artists to cause the viewer’s eye to jump back and forth between the two, producing an optical illusion in two dimensional works, making the area of the color union seem to vibrate.
Site designers, familiar with truisms such as the ten second loading rule and the three-click navigation rule would do well to incorporate the rule of matching color to the mood of the site. Sites aimed at youth should obviously be designed with color schemes different from those, for example, aimed at elderly investors, but there is greater subtlety involved and even the moods conveyed by color should be weighed in the same manner as a Picasso laying out his palette and deciding the emotion he wishes to evoke before his brush ever touches the canvas. The trite old adage which says ‘you only get one chance to make a first impression’ is extraordinarily true in the cyber age.
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