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How to Choose a Good Website Color Scheme

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First impressions are everything, that’s why a brand representative website color scheme matters. Today, if you want your business or company to become successful, then it’s vital to have an online presence. Specifically, you must have a website to keep clients and/or your target audience informed. After all, how else do you expect to stand out from the competition?

Specifically, your website will need to reflect your brand. When visitors arrive at your site, one of the first things they will notice is the color scheme. Whether you want to believe it or not, initially, the website color scheme may even be more important than the product you have to offer. Therefore, choose wisely!

The Importance of Your Website Color Scheme

When building your website, it can ultimately be difficult choosing a color scheme. While you can make changes as you go (nothing is ever set in stone), you’ll save time, energy, and money by sticking with your first option. The following ideas can assist you when it comes to making decisions.

First, consider what your product is or represents. Again, this will be a reflection of your brand. Once you understand the feel you want your viewers to receive by stopping by your site, you’ll be able to properly choose a color for your logo or headline. Remember, always keep in mind what colors compliment each other, as well as where these colors should be located on your site. Once you start playing around with different ideas and placement, you may discover that certain shades don’t A) look good together and B) don’t look good in a certain area of the site.

In the beginning stages, you’ll want to pick a dominant color for your site. Again, think about your product. For example, if you are a suspense writer, your site may be full of dark tones. Or, if you wanted to promote something happy or light in energy, you would probably display your site in yellow. Make sense?

Think about Pepsi. When you consider the soda drink, the color blue should come to mind. That’s how important color can be for your brand, site, and product.

Another factor that can help you in choosing a website color scheme, is knowing your audience, and who is more inclined to buy your product: men or women. It should come as no great surprise that various colors appeal differently to males and females. While the former tend to like darker, richer tones, the latter have been known to gravitate towards brighter hues.

Piggybacking off of the above pointers, you should also think about the area in which your ideal viewers will be searching from. The culture and environment could impact your color choices. Again, depending on your product, if it’s more popular in a certain country or region, you may want to factor in such details when designing your website.

Helpful Tools

When choosing website color schemes, you may feel slightly overwhelmed. However, since we live in a world where technology is king, there are numerous applications and tools to help you pick what is best for your particular needs. You may find the following options helpful:

  • Kuler
  • Color Scheme Designer
  • Colour Lovers
  • Pictaculous
  • Color Spire
  • Daily Color Scheme
  • Instant Color Schemes
  • Colour Grab
  • Color Jack
  • Color Explorer

Of course, these aren’t all of the tools to choose from . . . not even close! There are hundreds of color apps out there. Though, start with these ten, and then go from there. Do a little bit of minor research to discover which examples from above are the easiest or most convenient to use to accomplish your goals.

Ready to Color?

A website can take time to build, so whatever you do, don’t rush the process. Allow yourself to explore your options. Play around with different color schemes, backgrounds, and tones. In doing so, you’re more likely to find the perfect fit.

One important thing to remember when choosing a website good color scheme, is to have fun! Sure, the task is work and can be somewhat stressful, but try to enjoy it. This is the part of your business where you get to be creative – perhaps even the most creative. And while you may feel as if this is an impossible job to complete (because, how can you possibly please everyone?), trust your instincts. When you find the correct color scheme for your website, you’ll definitely know it!

Zen Den is an award winning web design agency in San Francisco.

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5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use a Free WordPress Theme

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At first, a free WordPress theme for your blog may seem like a simple and effective way to garner attention and attract customers to your products. It’s true that there are a lot of color and layout combinations, and given the advantage of saving money, it’s easy to see why a free theme might be the way to go. However, a free wordpress theme will actually end up hindering you in the long run due to opportunity costs.  If you’re thinking about a free wordpress theme, before you finalize that choice, here are some things you should definitely consider.

A Free WordPress Theme is Not Unique

A free WordPress theme has already been created and made available to everyone. If you decide to go with a free WordPress theme, another business has also probably selected the same theme. More than likely, several other businesses have also selected the same theme. If you’re looking to make your business stand out, you want to make sure that your products, services, and platforms stand out from the competition. Consider a list of the top 50 free WordPress themes: big picture background, words laid over it. Impressive, right? Think again.

A Free WordPress Theme is Not Personal

Along the same vein, it is distinction and brand distinguishing that wins in marketing. If your product and platform looks the same as everyone else’s, it doesn’t matter if you’re offering superior quality. Branding requires a personalized touch that clearly separates your business from others, complete with qualities and features customers can’t find anywhere else. A free WordPress theme is not made with your vision in mind, and therefore has no ability to convey that vision, quality of service, dependability, or system of values. It’s a generic template with no life or personality.

A Free WordPress Theme Indicates Little to No Effort

If you settle for a free WordPress theme, it suggests to your customers that the products and services you provide are nothing special (see distinction). If you have a generic, basic platform, potential customers probably think your company is also generic and basic. If customers don’t believe you care to present and support your products thoroughly, they certainly won’t care to invest their money in those products. You didn’t invest in your own product. Why would they? A customer would no doubt prefer to see commitment and control. Speaking of control:

A Free WordPress Theme Offers Less Flexibility

A free WordPress theme comes completely set-up, right out of the box. As mentioned earlier, it lacks personalization, and you are limited in your ability to add to this. You have a limited ability to tailor it to your needs, and if you do so it’s at your own risk. What does this mean? Well, if for whatever reason you end up having difficulty, you’re on your own for the most part. That’s never good. Furthermore, you become reliant on plugins or add on packages, which may or may not be available, in order to stay up to date and secure. Essentially, it’s like buying a car, except you only get half of the trunk space, have to rely on maintenance to come to you on their schedule when something breaks, and you never get to look under the hood to make any real modifications. Would you drive a car like that?

A Free WordPress Theme Offers Poor Search Engine Optimization

This last heading is misleading. A free WordPress theme doesn’t really offer search engine optimization(SEO) to begin with. That is up to your business, your marketing department, etc. However, when you consider the previous points about personalization, customization, and the lack of support, it becomes clear how difficult SEO is when working with a free WordPress theme. Sound bad? It gets worse. When it comes to websites and hosting in general, the thing about free themes is that there is often some kind of cost in trade, usually in the form of a plug. Somewhere in the html, there’s likely to be advertising- only it’ll be advertising WordPress, rather than your business. That plug won’t help you climb search rankings. In fact, it will definitely hurt your rankings.

All in all, a free WordPress theme is not going to do enough for your business when you consider all the costs and limitations that come with it. Not convinced? Take a look at a comparison between a free theme and its premium counterpart. Even setting functionality aside, perception is king; having a custom made platform well tailored to the specifics of your company increases your image rather than taking away from it. In the long run, you’re better off with a professional, personalized website that is continuously customizable and upgradeable; one that fully expresses your vision and demonstrates quality of care and commitment to customers.