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When building a web site, one critical element is design.
Design allows you to communicate with your visitors on a level below the words you use, and indeed
validates and invalidates your authenticity before you've fired off a single shot.
Design is an umbrella that covers a variety of details that we'll try to break down into
their constituent pieces here.
Consider two hypothetical websites: The first looks like it was built by an amateur, the second
looks like it was built by a team of designers. Now consider that
the site is asking you to spend your money to invest in stocks, or purchase a product or service.
The amateur site will be far less likely to produce a sale on the strength of design alone.
Stated another way, the design will impede a sale.
Consider that information is a currency for which the "sale" comes when the reader accepts the
information presented as plausible or factual. Without a single word, a bad design can destroy a site's chance of gaining credibility.
Before they read a single word, a non-credible site has already lost it's audience.
Visitors obtain information from a website not be reading word for word but rather by scanning
the layout and paragraphs looking for visual cues. Those cues can take the form of colors and shapes mainly.
White space is also integral in a layout that conveys helpful visual cues. In this way the visitor begins
to decode the information info chunks and then sorts the chunks and delves deeper into the sections
that hint at containing the information the visitor is search for. This can be done in seconds often.
The first stage of this process is accomplished entirely by unconsciously analyzing the
colors and shapes, and their sizes, and interplay with one another.
In a fraction of a second, a poor layout or color scheme can rob your site of any
ability to convey legitimacy. Sadly, even if the words you use are brilliant and irrefutable,
the layout and color can undermine every shred of value and cost you visitors who simply
click "back" and then click the link before or after yours.
So, what to do? Well obviously you want a layout and a color scheme that conveys
professionalism, but it's more than that. Colors and layouts are often reflective
of the type and tone of the language which makes up your messaging content.
While the trends vary, there are trends. The trick then is picking a scheme and layout
that not only tickle your professionalism fancy, but that are appropriate to your message.
For example, playful and vibrant may not be appropriate for a memorial site.
Somber dark tones may not be appropriate for a children's reading site. And so on.
Ask ten professional designers for their recommendation for
the best combination of color scheme and layout relative to your subject and you'll
probably get ten different answers. There are a lot of ways to come at the problem.
To start, your pragmatism is often flavored by whether you are predominately technical,
artistic, or business oriented in nature or education. Then as you gain experience, you
may shift your thinking completely, or simply refine the process within your initial
approach. If you are looking for a place to start, here's my suggestion based on my own experience.
Begin by considering your content subject matter and target audience. Try to formulate
two to four visitor personae for your audience. You absolutely want a representative
sampling of traits for your key demo. If your site is primarily aimed at men, then your
persona needs to be a man. If your target audience spans sexes, but targets a specific
age range (for example college kids) then you want to flesh out both a female and a male
persona profile. If you anticipate a wide variety of interests within that age group.
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For example some college kids like sports, some like math and perhaps these are sufficient
degrees of separation to base some general properties on. In this example you might
want a male persona that likes sports, a similar but female persona (with all the subtle
and not so subtle differences accurately articulated). You'll also want a male and a female
that like math, and all the personality traits that identifies.
As you gain a detailed mental picture of your target audience, details of the color
scheme should begin to fall in place... for example, will they be warm colors or are colder
colors more prevalent in the other products or services those target demographics
frequent? When you run into recurring themes, such as when the music commercials aimed at
your audience, the cell phones, and the social networking offers all share a color or colors,
you may well want to repeat that. (Note: there are branding and positioning arguments that may
argue counter to this, and if you have a specific reason to differentiate yourself from others
in a space you may want that to guide you instead.)
Layout can be a function of the type of information, or of what you know about your
audiences learning preferences are. What do I mean by your audiences learning preferences?
Well, if your audience likes to assimilate smaller chunks of data, and drill into additional
levels of detail interactively, then you may favor a newspaper layout over that of a book.
If they like to read specifically, then text may be sufficient, but if they lose interest
quickly then you may want to break your information into smaller sections and break them
up with interactive examples including diagrams, sounds, animations, or video clips.
Admittedly, the audience learning styles strategy is more difficult to execute on. So, if you
are concerned that it may be too difficult to get your content out if you are bogged down
with too much planning, then start by picking the text approach. If the text approach isn't
exactly what you want, then adjust it as part of a phase two effort. The main objective is to
deliver something, then clean it up and make it better. Trust me, based on years of experience
and hundreds of projects very few of which made it all the way through the pipe and saw the light
of day, it is demoralizing to hold off delivering something until it's specified to death and every
conceivable detail documented and contingency planned. Take my advice and incorporate perfection
in phase two.
Animation can be a double edged sword. While it can offer an audience an opportunity to be
revived periodically with a change of pace, it can also present problems with accessibility
and functionality. A decent rule of thumb when considering the inclusion of animation
in your site is to ask yourself as a user, "does this impede my access to information, or
does it distract me from obtaining the information within my site?" If the answer is
"maybe" then it's probably too much animation. If it's "yes", then it's absolutely too much.
Striking the correct balance can be a difficult task.
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