Clever Site Design (part 1) - A Splash of Colour

Ok, first things first, we need to consider our background and colour scheme. It’s important to think about your brand here and who your customers are.

For your background, you’ve got two choices - a background image, or a background colour.

Colours can say a lot about you and create mood and feel. Blue can evoke feelings of calm or cold, yellow is often associated with comfort or fun, green with nature, and red with anger and danger as well as love and romance.

Try and choose something that says something about you as a business, tells people what your attitude is, or reflects what you do. Remember that very bright background colours can sometimes detract from what you’re trying to say or sell and that red should be used with caution, as it may draw attention away from what you’re saying or selling.

Background images can help you add an extra level of identity to your shop. If you’ve got a minute, take a look at The Button Tin and Flock Boutique, both of whom have used background images to good effect in-store.

The most effective background images are some sort of texture or pattern. Be careful you choose something that will repeat well though, otherwise you’ll end up with a tiled effect across your page. If you’re looking for a pattern, then stock image vendors like fotolia have good selections. Simply type in “floral pattern” or “texture” and hit go (you'll have to buy a standard license for each image you download, which costs anywhere from £1 to £3).

When you’re choosing the rest of your colour scheme, try out a number of combinations. You’ll need to be careful to choose color schemes that match well, and if you’ve used a background image then I’d recommend neutral colours, whites, greys and pastels, so that you avoid making your site too busy (in a visual sense...hopefully it’ll have the opposite effect in a transactional sense!)

If you’re really stuck, try checking out other frooly shops for inspiration. We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Richard Heathcote
Marketing Musketeer
tweet me: @rich_heathcote
richard.heathcote@frooly.com