Use of Color on the Web

Use of color on the web is extremely important. Having the color palette for a site is crucial to brand your products or services and communicate with visitors. Even from a cultural standpoint, colors are interpreted vary from culture to culture. Choosing wrong colors can become a failure for websites!

Some key questions to keep in mind while trying to choose the right colors could be:

· Who are your site’s potential visitors?

· What are your products or services?

· What are your site’s key objectives?

I read in http://www.pallasweb.com/color.html that “If potential visitors come from a global or regional market, or exclusively from North America. Did you know that the color white symbolizes mourning in China, or that purple is the color of death in many Catholic countries? Yellow is an Imperial color in Chinese countries, but in America it may symbolize cowardliness or urine. More important, shifting colors to another area of the color spectrum can completely change their impact. For example, yellow shifted toward red results in a color that indicates gold or ‘having value.’” So it is important to keep the cultural piece in mind while picking out colors! I had never thought about it this way !

Text and background color selections do also affect readability, which can be an issue for visitors who are older those with visual impairments.

Check this site out for some great online color tools : http://bluefaqs.com/2009/11/25-online-color-tools-for-designers/

Sites built to Web Standards

The term web standards can mean diverse things to different people. For some, it is ‘table-free sites‘, for others it is ‘using valid code‘. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) andpursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc).
In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly.
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/articles/checklist/

Why do web standards matter?

There are numerous advantages to using web standards. Here are some highlights:

• Save $$$ (ease of maintenance): It is quick and easy to change unformatted content in HTML files which indicates that site changes take less time and eventually less money.

• Up to 60% Less Code! : Many websites that are built around Web Standards use up to 60% less code.

• Improved Search Engine Rankings

• Changing the layout is easier: When the site is designed with web standards in mind, site-wide changes become a lot easier. If a different color is needed for the site, all that needs to be done is to change one line of code in CSS. If you want your website to look good on mobile devices all that needs to be done is use CSS and your website will look good on mobile devices . Designing with web standards will give many more options to select from and will allow for swift and effortless site-wide changes.

• Accessibility: Vision impaired surfers may be using special web browsers. Using web standards makes it much easier to make content useable under special circumstance and also to the search engines.

What is Information Architecture?

Website structure, also sometimes referred to as information architecture, describes the logical flow of content on your site. A site that is well structured tends to focus on one overall major theme, and branch out from that theme into pages that are continually more focused, specific, and relevant to the overarching topic of the site.

For instance, a well architected website selling Caribbean cruises would branch into sub-topics (sub-directories and/or sub-menus) that flesh out the main theme. These sub-areas of the site might focus on specific Caribbean ports of call, cruise lines, specials / deals, thematic cruises, local culture, and anything else relevant to Caribbean cruises.
(Information above was located at http://www.ozonesem.com/search-engine-optimization/website-structure.html)


I have always wanted to know more about how the domain structure for multilingual sites are. Upon visiting some good sites, I figured that there are many ways to handle sites that are created in different languages for these countries. It looks like the best method however, is to create country specific TLDs with unique sites and content. Localization is critical and ensure that for instance the Spain site has language specific to Spain, not Chile! Another comparable method is to create sub-domains for each language version. Another not quite desirable, is to create a directory structure that serves each language. In all cases, web writers need to make sure of the name of the directories that use the language of the country being served.

Thankfully, Google Webmaster Tools now permit us to indicate the language preference for directories and sub-domains.
The first method, of course, has many benefits, which include the ability to validate the domain in Google Webmaster Tools and specify the geographic location. International TLDs will be indexed and listed in specific language versions of search engines and regional directories, while many sub-domains and directory localization strategies will not be indexed and listed such.
Small international sites should be served with a version selector for each country-specific domain. This assists with spidering and allows users to choose the version of the site they are interested in using.