Nowadays, it is more than proven that through color, emotions, and feelings can be transmitted to the general public. For this reason, your business must know how to take advantage of this fact to generate more sales.
User Interface
Before diving deeper, we will explain what U.I means. User Interface or U.I refers to how the user communicates or interacts with a computer system via points of contact or input devices.
Color
As we said before, color is used to convey emotions and generate associations. Companies are creating internal teams that are in charge of studying how colors can invoke their customers’ feelings to persuade them to take action. The meaning of the colors can vary depending on the culture and the circumstances in which they are used.
The most common colors on the market are:
- Red: Passion, love
- Blue: Responsibility, trust
- Black: Elegance, high-end
- Orange: Energy, enthusiasm
- Yellow: Happiness, abundance, action
If you want to know a little more about color theory, we invite you to read our blog: Marketing With Color https://qadigitalads.com/marketing-hecho-colores-2/
There is a world of colors that can be used in interfaces. We can take advantage of how we use them to create interest. Through the use of colors, we can improve the user experience.
To pick the right colors for your U.I designs, you need to know these three terms: Hue, Value, and Saturation.
Hue: Hue is the color without any variation of shadow or light; in other words, it is the color in its natural state.
Value: Value is the light or the shade that the color gets. It gives a sense of depth to things. A clear example is when the sun hits a specific spot during the day, making a portion appear bright, while in the shade, the other part will be of a darker tone. These two variations are different values of the same color. In U.I, value is essential since it can help create a good contrast throughout the webpage.
Saturation: Saturation is the intensity of the color. When we add saturation to a color, we make it more vivid and intense. If, on the other hand, we desaturate, the color becomes opaque.
Now that you understand the terms above, here are some tips that you should keep in mind when choosing the colors for your web design.
- Building The Right Palette
A website with many colors will not be harmonious. On the contrary, it saturates the view of the user and makes navigation uncomfortable. It would be best if you chose a color palette that suits your brand and represents your identity. It doesn’t have to include all of your brand’s colors, but you can pick two or three at most to use.
Combining colors and learning to provide harmony and balance takes practice. It is normal not to get it perfect the first time because gradually it will become easier. Always keep in mind the comfort of the users. How will they feel when entering and navigating the website? How easily will they understand the identity of the brand?
Example:
2. Creating an identity with corporate colors
First, your website should implement the corporate colors you have designated.
The aim is for your audience to recognize who you are immediately—at the same time, trying to achieve harmony between your website and your logo.
When you have already defined your company’s corporate colors, it is essential to display some of the colors in the website’s design.
After, we can choose a background color, which should not be conspicuous or saturated, as it can make reading difficult. Selecting a shade of black or white for the background is the right thing to do, as it will give the design sobriety.
If you have more than three corporate colors, which is not recommended, you must choose which ones match the background of your website. If your company colors do not match the background, look to change the shade of the background until you find harmony with the corporate colors.
- Grayscale: Using desaturated colors helps give the design a sense of realism and depth. When we see the colors in grayscale, we will be able to observe if the colors we implemented have contrast while maintaining harmony.
A) CTAs (Call To Action)
If your website is very saturated with colors, the user will not know where to direct their gaze and will ignore what you have written. If, on the other hand, you use a color that stands out above the others, the customer’s view will undoubtedly go there.
Here is an example:
In this case, the company wants to offer its professional service, and it is clear where their gaze will be directed to as soon as they enter the site. While if it looked like this:
Can you see any difference between the services? Where does your gaze naturally go? Highlighting the Call To Action requires that the colors of your website do not overwhelm the user but instead allows his gaze to flow naturally to where we want it to go.
B) It is also vital that you coordinate the colors that will represent these states: Error, success, and disabled.
- In case of error, it must be a different color from the corporate colors of the company. We do not want users to assimilate the idea of ‘error’ with the company.
- In the case of the color that represents success, we could use a company color.
- The disabled ones should be inconspicuous but must still be readable.
C) Use a range of interactive colors.
When we have Call To Actions, it is essential to make the buttons visually interactive. We can have three states for the CTA.
We can have a ‘natural/normal’ state, a ‘hovering’ over the CTA state, and one for when the CTA is pressed.
We can use the +1 and -1 values of our interactive color so that the interaction is more comfortable to perceive.
3. The 60-30-10 Rule
In the end, we have a rule that is tried and true; The 60-30-10. This rule refers to the successful combination of colors throughout the website’s design. It is vital to choose a predominant color and use it in 60% of the interface. A secondary color, and use it in 30% of the interface. And the last color for the remaining 10%. This rule is fundamental and widely used for general designs. A rule that easily provides harmony and balance.
We hope that this blog has helped guide you towards creating a fantastic website that will help you get closer to realizing your goals! We are QA Digital, an advertising agency dedicated to design, programming, and web positioning. Contact us at 240-521-8700, leave us a message on our website, or check out the rest of our services here: https://qadigitalads.com/en
Our experts will answer any questions you may have!
Here at QA Digital, we make your projects become a reality!