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Web Design

Building a site with a website creator is fun and easy to do. It takes very little time and effort to build a website in this manner. However, there are some pitfalls that are easy to fall into when you use a website creator. This is because they are so easy to use it can be difficult to remember that your site needs to be professional and unique, as well as easy to navigate. Here are the top five website creator mistakes that you should avoid at all costs.

1. Not making the site unique. A website builder offers hundreds of templates for you to choose from. Unfortunately, these same templates are being used by thousands of people every day. In order to keep your site professional and unique, you need to change the template slightly. Choose a different color scheme. If possible, make a unique color scheme by choosing individual colors for your font and backgrounds. This way your site is somewhat unique from the thousands of others using the templates.

2. Not using keyword rich titles for your pages. Some site builders will automatically name a page "Page 2" or something similar. Other website creators name the page after the heading you put in the title. The name or title of the page in the navigational tools and buttons should be keyword rich and descriptive. This is necessary both for your site to be professional as well as for your site to be found in search engines.

3. Not changing graphics. You might choose a template that you like because the graphics match your business or website goals. However, this is detrimental to the professionalism of your site because thousands of other people will have the same graphic. Instead, change the graphics in the template to original graphics that you create yourself or purchase from the internet. This way your site is professional and unique. Title the graphics with keywords to further optimize your site for search engines.

4. Not giving enough information. It is easy to build a website with a website creator in a matter of minutes, but you won't be providing much information in the process. Information is important to keep your visitors long enough to buy something from your site. Keyword rich content is also important for getting higher placement in the search engines.

5. Not keeping it simple. Too many graphics, colors in the fonts, hard to read font styles, and similar design mistakes are not as easy to make when you use a site builder, but they still crop up. You want your site to look cool, but you also want to make sure that the design doesn't take away from the goal of the website. If something is too flashy, many visitors will not stick around long enough to buy something.

Chicago Web Design

Choosing the right colors for your website is just as important as selecting graphics and content. This article discusses what factors to consider when selecting your website colors.

Colors have many effects on people. Certain colors can invoke specific emotions in people. Emotional reactions can affect the image of your company in the visitors mind and can have a major effect or your company’s “brand”.

If you doubt color evokes emotion, consider the phrases, “green eyed monster” “seeing red” or “in a black mood”. The green-eyed monster is a reference to jealousy, seeing red means a person is angry and a black mood refers to depression. People do associate colors with specific moods. Scientific texts have proven that different colors can make people happy, sad, relaxed, excited, angry or afraid.

Anything that can evoke those responses in people needs to be looked at carefully when designing your website. Colors tend to be classified as “neutral, “warm” or “cool”. So, let’s take a look at some of them.

Neutral Colors

Whites – Whites stand for purity and cleanliness. In eastern cultures white is the color of death while in western cultures in is the color of marriage and hope.

Grays – Grays exude reliability and conservatism. Shades of gray are one of the most popular colors for business attire.

Browns – Browns stand for the earth, home and family.

Blacks – Blacks tend to signify power, elegance and sophistication. In western cultures also stands for death.

Warm Colors

Reds – Reds are good for attracting attention. That is why they are frequently used in sales letters to emphasize specific points. Red symbolizes, anger, violence, lust, passion and can actually raise people’s blood pressure.

Yellows – Yellow can mean weakness or cowardice as well warmth and happiness.

Oranges – Orange is associated with fall harvesting and Halloween. It can also stimulate a person’s appetite.

Pinks – Pinks usually symbolize innocence, femininity and romance.

Cool Colors

Blue – Blue has a calming effect on people. It exudes intelligence and trust. It is a surprising that many financial and health care institutions use blue themes. Blue can also suppress appetite.

Green – While the green stands for jealousy, greed and inexperience, it also stands for money and wealth.

Purple – Purple tends to symbolize creativity. The darker shades were once reserved for royalty and the lighter shades are usually associated with romance.

Web Safe Colors

Vacuum tubes, LCD and Plasma screens all display colors differently. There are 216 colors that can be displayed on every type of monitor in every web browser and will look almost identical. These 216 are called web safe colors. If consistent color is important, you should only use web safe colors on your websites.

Color Schemes

Color schemes can be composed of a single color, complimentary colors or contrasting colors.

Single Color -- Single color schemes uses several different shades and intensities of a single color on a white background. For example, if you want to use a red color scheme, you can use everything from the lightest pink to a red so dark it is almost black.

Complementary Colors – Complementary color schemes use two or more colors that look good together and create a pleasant blend that is appealing to most people. One color may be dominant and the other used to compliment it.

Contrasting Colors – Contrasting color schemes use two or more dominant colors to create an “eye grabbing effect”. For example, using a dark blue page background, a deep red frame around a white background text area with black text is a typical contrasting color scheme.

Web designers need to be careful when using contrasting colors because some combinations tend to “vibrate” such as red text on a blue background and can hurt some people’s eyes, while other combinations are just had to focus on. Other combinations “clash” and are unpleasant to look at.




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