The choice of the base color of any website is dependent on the purpose of the website. At times, the choice of the color might not entirely be in your hands, as a designer; the colors used in the web design might be dependent on the existing marketing collaterals of the company and also its logo. There are a number of clients who prefer choosing their colors for the design of their website; and rightly or wrongly, you will have to go along with it.

But, even if you have to go along with the color choice of the website owners, you can still ensure that you choose a color scheme that fits the needs and requirements of the website and its purpose. The standard color schemes that you can choose to use include, monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split complementary, triadic and double complementary.

Let’s take a look at each of these schemes in terms of their use in web design.

Monochromatic Color Scheme

A monochromatic color scheme involves the use of just one single base color in the various pages of the site. Of course, designers are able to use the various tints and shade of that color. You can choose to use different monochromatic color schemes for different pages of the site. There are some designers who take this route through the intuitive use of RGBA transparency. More importantly, you can choose to use a monochromatic design for one page, while in another you can go for analogous design. The use of multiple color schemes improves the visual appeal of your site and helps make it more engaging.

Analogous Color Scheme

You have a color wheel and there are colors adjacent to each other on that wheel. If you use colors lying adjacent to each other on that color wheel, you will be using the analogous color scheme. The idea is to use a large slice of the colors on the wheel and make them a part of the website’s design. The correct use of the analogous color scheme deepens the symbolism of the site and brings it out in all its glory.

Complementary Color Scheme

Choosing colors that are placed opposite each other in the color wheel, means you have chosen to go for a complementary color scheme. It gives rise to a unique combination of colors that if used wisely, will provide an interesting look and a solid foundation for the website design.  This doesn’t mean that such a color scheme must be bold; designers can tone it down so that the colors look more natural. Astute website designers couple complementary color schemes with artistic texture in order to create better visual impact.

Split Complementary, triadic and double complementary Color Schemes

As the names of these color schemes rightly suggests, these are just variations of the complementary scheme. If you want to use split complementary color scheme, you will need to choose two colors that lie adjacent to the complement of your chosen base color.  If you are after a triadic color scheme, it involves you choosing colors that are equally placed on the color wheel. This can easily be achieved if you choose colors that are placed one notch more on each side, with respect to the split complement.

Double complementary color scheme is just combining one complementary scheme with another one.

These are the standard color schemes and there are variants of the standard schemes that designers can also use. But, most designers are perfectly happy with the use of standards color schemes, as they make for a more focused approach towards website designing.

Designers would love it if they had to design a brand purely in the aesthetic sense and not the commercial sense. But, the problem is that we are not living in a “perfect world”, and all brands are created with a certain purpose in mind. The very nature of the brand makes it an entity that is driven by pure commercialism. The brand needs to conform to the objectives of the company and if it doesn’t then it is deemed to be unsuccessful. Today, brands are a crucial part of the marketing mix of companies and empower their efforts to gain wider acceptance amongst their target audience. One could define branding as a place where both the marketing considerations of the company and its graphic design meet.

The application of design principles to branding efforts is one of the ways that designers are able to build a high performance brand right from scratch. There are various tools and designing concepts that can be used to ensure that the awareness of the brand, its recall and its impression are of a very high caliber and improve the businesses reach by a very long way.

Impressive looking logo is crucial

Your brand needs a logo. A brand without a logo is like a fish out of water. Look at the most successful businesses out there, behind each successful business is a successful logo. Usually, the logo design should begin right when the company name is being designed; this means when the seeds of the business/organization/ company are first sown, work should begin on the logo. A logo should exude confidence and must look balanced. It must be the perfect visual representation of the company, nothing more and definitely, nothing less.

Typography Consistency

An often ignored, but an equally important part of branding is consistent typography. Designers must be careful with respect to the selection of the font size and style. It’s of paramount importance that the selection of the typography must be such that it can be used across all mediums and related marketing collaterals. A complete branding experience is a product of diligent efforts and an important determinant of this diligence is typographical consistency.

Selection and Definition of Colors

You not only need to choose the right colors, but you also need to define them in the appropriate manner. Careful palette selection and the subsequent definition of the color will ensure that there are a number of suitable color options to choose from, for the brand across various media.

Branding

Finally when the aesthetics are complete, the brand needs to be introduced to the real world by using it in various marketing collaterals. The brand needs to be successfully applied to business cards, web design, company brochures etc. The success or failure of the brand can only be determined when it is applied to specific marketing collaterals.

Universal web design is the kind of design that meets the needs and requirements of the widest possible audience. The principles of website designing that help give shape to universal web design include:
 

• Ensuring that it can be used by people with diverse abilities.
   
• Its needs to be able to accommodate a varied amount of individual preferences.
   
• The focus must be on simplicity and intuitiveness.
   
• It must be able to deliver pertinent information in a highly effective manner.
   
• It must tolerate a certain amount of error.
   
• It must require very little physical or mental effort on the part of the user to understand it and optimize its use.
   
• The design should be able to meet all contextual requirements of the user.

But sometimes even the best intentioned website designers can ignore the key aspects that can make or break universal website design. These are the kind of mistakes that should never be made as website visitors won’t be able to ignore them.

Let’s take a look at some of these mistakes.

Problem with Readability

If the textual content is not easily readable, the effectiveness of the website’s design goes down a few notches. This means that website visitors will have to strain themselves in order to read the content, which goes against the principles of universal website design. Some of the mistakes that make the content difficult to read include, small text size, using inappropriate font style, and improper color contrast. Other problems that can equally affect readability of text include are not focusing on user friendly headings and not giving enough importance to ample line or paragraph spacing.

Unconventional Looking Text Links

When it comes to text links, going by convention is the key. Otherwise, website visitors will find it difficult to determine a text link. The long standing convention in web browsing is that a hyperlinked text must have an underline. There are some smart designers who think it’s a good idea to not adhere to this convention and try and define a link a little differently, by highlighting it with a marked color contrast or using a darker color from the surrounding text. But, the whole idea behind underling a hyperlink is to help website visitors easily distinguish it. It’s a familiar differentiating factor that website visitors have come to expect and if they don’t find such links, they are going to be confused. A website design that confuses a visitor can never be considered universal.

A lot of visual noise

Have you heard a noise that doesn’t make a sound? No, this isn’t a joke, there is something called a visual noise that makes a website unappealing, unusable and inaccessible. If the website design looks scattered all over the place, it means that there is a lot of visual noise that is interfering with the website visitor’s ability to make sense of the website design. If the website has no focal point and a complete lack of visual hierarchy, the user will be left scrambling for answers on the website. A website’s design should be a coming together of diverse design elements that make perfect sense. If these design elements appear crammed together in the layout, the design looks disjointed and doesn’t appear to make much sense. The result is the kind of visual noise that we can do well without.

These three mistakes can cost universal web design big time, and a web design company must ensure that it doesn’t commit these cardinal mistakes. If they are avoided, the result is a universal web design; but if they are committed, the result is a non performing web design. The equation is very simple.

Website design is a coming together of various design elements in a manner that is not only perfect but also captivating. When it comes to the designing of a website, it’s the interaction of different elements of website design that determines their unity. If you want a unified layout, it must be something that works as a whole, rather than a layout that looks like having been designed in separate pieces. It must be remembered that the use of disparate elements only serves to discredit the website design as a whole as it doesn’t appear unified in more ways than one.

Today, designers work on the most advanced designing platforms and shape some brilliant designs, but the issue of unifying the various design elements still gives them pause for thought and they have to work hard at it. To ensure that the design of the entire website, including all its pages, works as a single unit, it is important to focus on two crucial principles.

Let’s take a look at them.

Contiguity

This principle is as obvious as they come, but it seems that because it is so obvious, that it is largely ignored by designers. Contiguity can be defined as a series of elements that are in close contact or proximity with one another and where one element is related to each other. The proximity of design elements on web pages is very important for ensuring that a particular web page looks like a single unit rather than something that is made up of disparate elements. Astute designers understand and seek to focus on the principle of contiguity and ensure that they set margins and padding for all design elements.

Let us try and illustrate this with a simple example. Say you have a column of text that has two paragraphs. Now, you want to put a heading for the second paragraph. What you must understand is that there is a thin line of difference between the words used, looking like a heading or a separator. It is the proximity of the text placed that determines how the reader perceives it. If the word is placed closer to the second paragraph it looks like a heading but if it isn’t, then it looks like a separator.

Repetition

Good design is also about bringing a set of similar items together. This helps form a group. So, designers must take care to follow the principle of repetition. It’s of paramount importance that designers repeat certain design elements such as colors, shapes, textures etc., in a particular web page or across various web pages of the website. Repetition promotes cohesion and ensures that the design elements can be unified in a particular group. This ensures that website visitors see the various design elements used on a web page as a single entity and not as a series of isolated shapes.

As a website visitor, you might have been captivated by the imagery and the visual appeal of certain website pages and praised its uniqueness; but what you might not have noticed is that repetition of visual elements is a recurrent theme throughout the website. That fact of the matter is that if you want your website to be eye catching, due importance must be given to repetition.

Keeping these principles in mind, will be a big step in the right direction as far as the unity of the website design is concerned. This will ensure that the design is able to meet the requirements of the client and the user in more ways than one.

User interface design or user centered interface design makes a web application or software more user-oriented, so that users are able to optimize its use. Today, both websites and web applications are no longer limited to the desktops, but are also being built for the mobile platform. Whatever the nature of the platform, the importance of usability remains the same and so do some of the core principles that determine user centered interface design.

Let’s take a look at some of the principles that have a significant role to play in ensuring that the design interface is user friendly.

Understanding the Users is the Key

The reason why, understanding users and their goals is important is because your users are going to have no interaction with the core components of your web application, website or software. What they will actually be doing is experiencing the system as a whole, so if the UI doesn’t consider this fact, the system won’t be able to meet all the goals and objectives of the users. This is why it’s important that you are able to understand the users, their needs, and what is it that they require from a particular system. This will help you provide them with a UI that helps them access the various features and functionalities of your system in a manner that is effective and comfortable.

For this, you need to begin by identifying the users, the functionalities that they want; their objective for using the kind of system that you are developing, their technical expertise and experience and also understand the ways in which they would like to interact with their software or web applications.

The UI should be Easy to Understand and a Joy to Use

If the user not enjoying using your UI, it means you have failed to offer a great user experience. Let’s take the example of an iPhone app. What separates the successful apps from those that end up a failure? Is it the features and the functionalities? Do successful apps have brilliant programming that makes them enjoyable to use? The answer to these questions is a big No. What helps them stand out from their competitors is the degree of usability of their UI. Their interface is very easy to use and users don’t need to spend time understanding its nitty-gritties. It’s the UI that determines whether the app is a big hit with the user or not. This same brand of thinking can be applied for all systems, whether it’s a website, an application or software or something else. Using the most familiar navigation structure and design elements will work more than trying to make the UI as inventive as possible.

User are looking for constancy

A principle often ignored by developers is that of consistency. Your UI should be able to ensure that users are able to maintain their spatial orientation. Users are looking for a consistent look and feel, but it’s not just limited to the design. They are also looking for consistent response from the actions performed on the interface. Users are bound to feel disoriented if there is a marked change in the navigation links and the action buttons are not found where they usually are. By ensuring that all elements of the UI are consistent with the expectations of the users, you are ensuring that they don’t need to put in a lot of effort for understanding its use.

Consistency makes for simplicity and it is simplicity that wins appreciation from the users and nothing else.

Allow the UI and users to interact with one another

Allowing your users to offer feedback ensures the thumbs up for an UI. Everybody loves a UI that they can interact with and not just one way interaction, but a dialogue. As can be imagined, this is difficult and not many user interfaces are able to form a dialog with their users. But, you can use certain elements that can act as a catalyst for creating a dialogue process. One such element is ‘labeling’. Yes, something as simple as labeling the UI will ensure that it makes more sense to the user. Another great way of initiating a dialog with users is by integrating a feedback mechanism within the UI. Something as simple as a feedback form will do the trick and will work wonders for your UI.

As can be imagined, these four principles are not the only principles you have to keep in mind to ensure a UI that is not only reliable, but also offers optimum performance. But keeping them in mind will definitely set you on the right track.