Posted in Website Design Tips	August 4, 2006

By Kim Mateus , Managing Editor Mequoda Daily and Library

The average user expects professional websites to be clean in appearance, rich with information, and intuitive in terms of navigation. In Mequoda terms, the aesthetics of a site should support its purpose and match the user mental model—or be appropriate for the people that the website serves.

• Site design doesn't need to be pretty and perhaps not even serious, but it should certainly not be boring.
• A corporate-style B-to-B site might want to stick to the colors black and blue and gray, with some stock art and an occasional splash of bright color.
• A consumer-oriented site will need to be much more colorful, with lots of visual flair, or perhaps appear comfortable and homey.
• Layout, typefaces, and colors give a site its personality and image.
• Remember, however, that the color red sends a contradictory subliminal message, meaning "stop" or "danger," a message that is not something a site usually wants to project. Yellow or orange are more inviting and engaging colors for buttons and highlights.

Users respond best when the site appears as a simple, reliable, secure, trustworthy, perhaps comforting, online source of information.

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