It is easy to focus on wording and content when designing your website, but have you thought much about what your color palette is conveying about your organization?
Color is vital for every website, but it is especially important if you plan to reach an international audience. Whether you like it or not, your color choices might be influencing your site’s visitors.
Christian Arno, a writer for Hongkiat, a website that is based in Malaysia, has some tips on how to choose the right colors:
The choice of the right colour for a website is an important matter. We all know very well how colors can influence our instinctive reaction to places, products, even people. We know very well that, for example, many banks choose a blue background for their brand because it communicates a sense of trust. At the same time, we wouldn’t paint our bedroom black or bright red because we are aware that these are not colours which help us to relax, to say the least.
But when it comes to designing a website which has to tackle international markets, there are more considerations to be take in. Different colours have different meanings to different cultures. For example, while black in western countries is a sign of death, evil and mourning, in China it is the colour of young boys’ clothes. On the other hand, while white in Western culture represents marriage, peace, and medical help or hospitals, in China it stands for death and mourning. So, picking the right colour is not just a matter of appearance, it’s a matter of implicit messages and content.
For more excellent design tips, check out the full article titled “How to Design Websites that Communicate Across Cultures”.
photo credit: juliatenney
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