Feeling stuck on your website and not sure how to make it look professional?
Misuse of colour is often the biggest culprit when it comes to websites that lack direction. Websites are a visual form of communication, the way that you design the layout of the pages, the structure of the content and the menu items all play a role in how a user interacts with your website.
The influence of colour-psychology has been researched and tested within scientific and art fields, across all cultures, it is something that many brands use to distinguish themselves from the competition (try thinking of Coca-Cola without thinking of the colour red, or Lloyds bank without the colour green). Using the right colours for your identity will help convey and reinforce the underlying vision of your church, it will also help when it comes to creating a professional look to your website.
First impressions are often made within the first 90 seconds of meeting someone and this is true for your website too, in order to engage someone to stay on your website longer, you need to make your message clear within the first 90 seconds. The best way to do this is to utilise colour and imagery to speak for you and to have a clear layout.
Having a specific colour pallet associated with your church will help people to easily recognise you, this colour pallet should be something that you use not only on your website but across all of your branded material and communications.
Your pallet should consist of a primary, or dominant colour and then 1 or 2 accent colours. The dominant colour is the colour that you want people to recall when they think of your church, it should be used for your logo, menu items, call to action buttons and any important areas that you want to highlight, such as titles and headlines.
After your dominant colour, you will want 1 or 2 accent colours, these will be used to highlight secondary areas of information such as subtitles and so they should complement rather than compete against the dominant colour. Additional colours to your pallet should then include those that you use for your main body of text and if you wish to use further accent colours.
If you are unsure about using colours then keeping to a minimalist palette of 3-4 colours will help define your visual communication rather than overwhelming it.
It is helpful to think about the values and atmosphere that underpin your individual church, and what feelings you would like your website audience to feel as they interact with your website. A church that is really active in the community and has a lively congregation, a bright colourful palette will work well, whereas for a church that seeks to bring harmony into unstable and troubled community may prefer to use a colour pallet with softer tones, to create a sense of calmness and well being, and a family orientated church could benefit from using a neutral pallet to promote a sense security and stability.
There are many online tools that will help you to create a colour pallet with a range of colours that work together coherently, such as: Paletton and Adobe Color, or you can use Canva to create a pallet from a photograph or an image.
At Church Edit, we have various design options and our designers can guide you in regards to your website colour palette. We also have many free templates for you to choose from, which have preset palettes. The team here are always happy to help, so please give us a call or an email if you would like assistance on your website.
You can call us on 0121 651 1120 or email us at hello@churchedit.co.uk