Designing a stylish website, with fully working links and navigation is essential for an effective website. However, this is just the basic requirement. Your website should also reflect your branding, and your company personality. But most importantly, your website should be focused on selling. Whether you want your website visitors to sign up to use your services, or buy your products, you need to sell them the idea that your company is worth choosing. Trust, and professionalism can be displayed in a variety of ways as part of effective web design. And colour gradients can certainly help. Here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are Manchester’s leading web design experts. And we work with a variety of companies and businesses across the North West, including Southport and Wigan, to deliver effective and stylish web design solutions. As a result, we have produced this guide to the advantages of using colour gradients in web design.
What are colour gradients in web design?
A colour gradient is a colour that changes from one shade, to another. This can either be vertically as a user scrolls down your page, or horizontally, or diagonally. It can even be used just on feature elements, such as heading colour filler, and image overlays. But how do you stop this from looking like a 90’s digital horror show? And what are the advantages of using colour gradients in web design?
Using colour gradients in web design
To make good use of colour gradients, and not make your customers recoil in horror, you need to:
- choose a colour that fits that your branding
- instead of fading into another colour, simply have the colour you have selected, fade out to white
- start with a pale version of that particular colour, as this will be easier to fade out
- make sure the colour is not overpowering
- make sure the other colours your choose as accent colours really accentuate and compliment the colour gradient
- use the colour gradient as a stylish feature
Advantages of using colour gradients in web design
So, what are the advantages of using colour gradients in web design? Well, there are several, including:
- grabbing the users attention- website visitors and your potential customers are used to loading a website and being greeted by a flat background of one tonal colour. A colour gradient brings a different dimension. And this makes your website visitors stand up and take notice, immediately!
- directing eyesight- getting your users to actually look at the feature you want them to pay attention to can be a struggle. Yes, you can make the feature larger and more obvious, and increase the whitespace around the perimeter, but they may still scroll past. Your users are used to these tricks, and are becoming immune to them. A colour gradient attracts the eye because of the subtle colour changes. After all, we are all programmed to recognise even minute colour changes, as part of our evolution, where the difference between one berry and another, could easily mean death. So direct your users towards the good berry (the call to action) with a subtle colour gradient.
- add something different to your headings- headings can be pretty bland. But if you fill your heading text with a colour gradient, you can be sure to bring something new to your consumers, and really make a statement. This can provide a good impression of your company overall.
For more information about professional web design, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.