Are pros' sites Always with a white/light background ?

[Sharg]

Hi, is it an impression or all the major site with the most traffic always have a white background ?

Perhaps people feel gloomy on a dark background and stay less on the site ?

Thoughts ? Have you noticed this too ?

Benj

[George L]

yeah probably is the case anyway... look at altavista and excite and such

[chrispadfield]

This was of interest to me. I run science fiction forums so thought a black background would be good. I certainly tried but it is hard to design for black. There are actually quite a lot of decent colours that you can use for text, more so than white/grey backgrounds. Desite this it is hard to get alternating table colours that work apart from (ie you need 3, page background, table 1, table 2) also images are normally designed for white backgrounds so you need to create a whole new set. In the end i chickened up and went for white background. (mine is the standard at the moment, waiting for update before i change my templates).

[Nutrocker]

black or white?

Hi

Not a 'pro' by any means but the answer is a definate YES.

Check out http://www.webmaster-forums.com/ for much more info.

Everyone I have asked have said 'change your site to a lighter background' to increase your hits.

I can do that (increase my hits) by submitting to the search engines properly, keywords etc. and I do OK, the trick is to keep the visitors coming back!!
Lighter backgrounds do that apparently!

Hope this helps some.

And most images are created with white backgrounds in mind, not darker ones, sad but true.

[Me2Be]

From personal experience (and from that of my visitors), I don't like dark background sites. Maybe it's subliminal, but people don't like staying on a dark background because it brings down the mood of that person. Hey, it's been tested! I like bright and airy sites - makes it more fun and lighthearted to play around in.

[Sharg]

Well thats very interesting. I used to do black background sites some times ago, and when I look at them now, i really understand what you mean about bringing down the mood of the person.

The advantage of dark background is that they don't hurt the eye as much as light ones...

Benj

[Me2Be]

I think people expect light background sites now - even white backgrounds. Remember a couple of years ago when textured backgrounds were on every webpage? (back in the olden days). It is very rare to see a textured background on a professional site anymore. The only time I see them is on a personal website.

[Sharg]

Hey thats right. I remember the old pro site and the two major changes that comes to my mind are:

1) Now they stretch to use all available space screen, and are less and less in a 600 width table

2) The textured background were removed, even on some big gaming web sites.

Benj

[Me2Be]

Admittedly, back in 1996 when I started my site (yes, that long ago), I had a pretty heart textured background with TONS of graphics. Dumped that about two years ago and went with a lace-like background with still lots of graphics - dumped that last year and went with the white background, minimal graphics ... and our site is more popular than ever (well, advertising is more responsible for that), but our session time has increased quite a bit.

[Sharg]

Can you email me back you URL please ?
Thanks,

Benj


[Edited by Benj on 09-12-2000 at 07:02 PM]

[Me2Be]

Just did

[JonnyQuest]

Anyone remember the early days of the PC with DOS. White text on a black background. The Mac had the default black text on white background. Didn't take Microsoft long to figure out that its much easier to read black text on a white background - like paper.

[Freddie Bingham]

I always switch my telnet sessions to white text on a black screen.

[phumphries]

I don't use it much, any more (I am sure some old sites are still hanging around), but I used to have a small image with a chalk pattern that I found hardly distinguishable from a plain white background but seemed to be easier on the eyes -- sort of a textured white/light grey thing.

[WebStyles]

Black text on a white background is easier to read, but you don't neccessarily need to have the whole background be white. I used incredibly gloomy colors on the current design of my website, but it's really easy on the eyes and most, if not all of our visitors dig the look. The important part is that the body portion of the interface, where all the content is, has a white background. Totally white backgrounds are just too bland for my taste.