The Article below was assigned to one of this year’s summer interns, Constantinos Zachariou, and was written with the close supervision of our Team. Constantinos is about to enter year 12 as a high school student at the Heritage Private School, Limassol, with his main focus being around his future aspiration to study International Commercial Law. Ultimately, it has provided an opportunity for Constantinos to enhance and outline his knowledge on paper, as well as to express his own ideas, interpretations and educated opinions on the matter of website design for businesses. On the other hand, our Company has gained insight from an informative piece of writing, circulating around a matter of utmost importance in the modern era. Consisting of a detailed piece of writing for educational purposes, we have decided to publish his writing piece in 2 separate articles, with the second following up directly from the first. Ultimately, this will allow for all parties interested to gain the most from reading, either these being people that wish to acquire a basic knowledge on the matter, or dedicated professionals that wish to grasp a younger mind’s opinion on this trending topic.
There is a severe epidemic, in Cyprus especially, on the importance of a visually appealing and functional website. As technology advances and society becomes much more reliant on the use of electronic devices, corporations globally need to start setting their sights on the convenience of their customers.
View it from their shoes: they wake up exhausted; do their daily morning routine; take their kids to school in heavy traffic; work long and tiring hours; during their break they must go back to pick up their kids from school, experiencing heavy traffic yet again; return to work in heavy traffic; then keep working and then finally return home in heavy traffic, again. This tedious process results into your customers (or potential customers) feeling very encumbered, resulting in very little motivation to pay attention to you and your business. Start-up businesses suffer especially from this phenomenon as they are not “fitted in” the schedule of potential customers. For example, a person would make time to get a coffee from Starbucks, but won’t make time to visit a local coffee shop. Considering this, businesses need to be efficient and calculated in their approach to increase their market share and climb the ranks of the corporate ladder.
The Issue
When even the average person can easily detect flaws within a website then one can understand how severe the issue is. A quick 20-minute search on most companies’ websites will lead to very ineffective and incredibly confusing, unappealing conclusions. Ignoring the obvious problem of not financing enough their website, a very common flaw is that designers do not consider how consumers will view a website. The human eye is conditioned, unfortunately, on first noticing vibrant colours that stand out, instead of processing all the information in data blocks like computers. There are many factors that a business would need to consider constructing a website: size, colour, contrast and alignment should be the primary focus points and secondary focus points should be: style, whitespace, proximity and repetition.
Size
Size refers to the length and width of elements on a website. Larger elements will gain more attention than smaller elements, meaning that important information a customer needs to know should typically be on a larger scale, and less important pieces of information need to be smaller.
However, most common websites struggle to find the perfect balance between the scale of the elements. For example, a retail shop wishes to display a 70% discount on summer clothing. This would be considered valuable information for the customer, as this is what will attract them to visit the website. This shouldn’t be neither massive nor tiny. It should be noticeable to grasp the consumers’ attention, but should not be emphasised to the point that the discount appears to be the identity of the business.
It is recommended to try to adopt a more subtle approach. To try to advertise discounted items in a slider format, with a constant cycle of images that consist of the product and the discount above it, placed on the home page. The attention is immediately zoned in on that area and this further gives the consumer a chance to review products, making it much more time efficient for the customer. Another option would be to place a notification directly below, in a moderate size depending on the layout of the website, letting the consumer know that there is for example a “70% Discount on ALL SUMMER CLOTHING”. The possibilities are endless and there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach, but the importance is in understanding how the human eye is directed into looking at different objects and consider what information must be noticed more and what is just extra.
Colour & Contrast
Colour is an important component in any website and colour alone could make or break any website. The use of appropriate colours could aid in making a website look more professional and help emphasise important information. Vibrant and bright colours appeal more to the human eye than dark and moody colours. This doesn’t mean fill the site with many vibrant colours as this would surely confuse the consumer on what specifically they need to look at and makes a site look childish. Use darker colours for the background and to build contrast for certain elements to emphasise them more.
For example, a business could use a light shade for the background of a div block and place inside a bold colour. This dynamic of mixing dark and colourful colours creates a harmony that is not only pleasing, but also promotes less stress to the eye, as it is not franticly bouncing around trying to figure out what to focus on. Remember, we are dealing with busy consumers who don’t have the patience nor the will to strain themselves any further. Therefore, it is imperative that the browsing process of the website is made to be a smooth and relaxing procedure, lacking any complexity.
Many websites appear very unprofessional due to their poor and careless choice in colours. Not all shades are made equal and some just look very poor and are very hard to combine. Common issues occur with shades of red, yellow, and green. These colours are typically very aggressive in their tonality, being other too dull or too bright. Furthermore, a business should typically not use any more than 2 colours for their website, as any more could cause confusion and make a website look unprofessional. The colours of the business logo could be utilised (3 or more colours in a logo are rare).
Lastly, some colours have a certain psychological impact behind them and induce different feelings – sub-consciously. According to an article by Mental Health America, the colours in a house could have a very big impact on mood. Warmer colours like red, yellow, orange stimulate energy and happiness and cooler colours like blue, purple, green create a more relaxed feeling. Zoning in further, different colours do portray different meanings. Although not all these meanings are shared with everyone, in general:
- Black portrays: Boldness, Power, and Mystery
- Blue portrays: Stability, Confidence, and Trust
- Green portrays: Safety, Balance, and Nature
- Orange portrays: Creativity, Warmth, and Excitement
- Pink portrays: Sensitivity, Care, and Love
- Purple portrays: Royalty, Luxury, and Wisdom
- Red portrays: Immediacy, Passion, and Energy
- White portrays: Luxury, Peace, and Innocence
Word of caution, focusing only on colour psychology would be a waste of time as different colours carry different meanings in specific situations. However, when deciding on the colour of a logo, and hence the primary colours of the website, it is important to have an understanding as to the values of the company and portraying that through colour. A great example would be the universal colour of blue for the police and the colour red for ambulances and fire-trucks.
“THE REVITA TEAM”
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