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Professional Web Design
Web Site Creative
— Elements of Style
Your web site is
often your first contact with customers, so
it’s important that the creative elements you
use reflect your business goals and objectives
— and even your personality. Choosing the
right colors, fonts, and graphics for your web
site will help you establish your company’s
online presence and attract more visitors.
If you’re new to
web design, it may be tempting to go
overboard, using all of the colors, fonts, and
graphics at your disposal. If that happens,
you’ll end up with a busy site that’s hard to
read, confusing to navigate, slow to load, or
just plain unattractive. Knowing some basic
design rules can help you create a great site.
Getting Started
First, look closely at the sites you frequent,
such as news, weather, or shopping pages. Do
you notice a pattern in what you find visually
appealing? Why do you return to those sites?
Jot down which colors, fonts, or text
treatments always seem to catch your eye. Now
go to your competitors’ sites. Do some look
more reliable or established than others?
Using a Template
To keep your site attractive but simple, it
may be helpful to begin with a template. There
are many templates available on our ECSnap
here.
These templates are often professionally
designed and customizable for your business.
While most of the
work is done for you when you use a template,
you’ll still have the opportunity to customize
your site and make some key creative
decisions.
Color
Typically, it’s best to stick with three
colors and to choose a neutral, solid
background color like white. Two of the most
popular color combinations are red, yellow,
and white and blue, orange, and white. You can
adjust the shades and depths of your colors to
make some sections of the site stand out more
than others.
Using more than
three colors can make your site look less
cohesive — especially when you factor in all
of the colors in the images you’ll be
incorporating.
Fonts
The fonts on your site can influence your
readers’ perception of your company. For
example, a serif font like Times New Roman is
more formal than the sans serif font Arial.
Select fonts that are easy to read (sans serif
fonts tend to be easier to read online) and
are readable on any browser (Explorer,
Netscape, etc.) or operating system (PC or
Mac).
Choose one font
for longer blocks of text and a complimentary
font for headings and menu items. You also can
use the same font but differentiate it by
making it bold or increasing or decreasing its
size.
Graphics
Resist the temptation to use lots of pictures
and graphics because it can make your site
slow to load and drive away impatient users.
And designers agree that one strong image on
your home page often is far more powerful than
multiple smaller ones. Optimize graphics by
cropping white space and making all images as
small as possible without sacrificing quality
— the optimal resolution for web graphics is
72 dots per-inch (DPI).
If you have a
digital camera, you can take and upload photos
but, if you’d rather display professional
images, there are a number of free and paid
sites where you can search for photos to use
on your site.
Good Creative
Pays Off
Once you have established a color palette and
selected your fonts and graphics, see if they
work well together to convey your company’s
image. Try a variety of font-color-graphic
combinations, and have fun designing your
site.
Remember, when it
comes to design, subtle often is best.
Choosing the right creative elements — colors,
fonts, and images — allows you to be creative
while building a professional-looking site
that will enhance your online presence, appeal
to customers, and help you meet your business
objectives.
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