Drastic Change to Site Colours

Change or not

[FattyB]

I run a fairly busy news and entertainment site, it started covering mostly movies and the like so I went with a dark blue background with white text.

Now it is readable and few complaints until the last while...plus site has grown to around 3-5 million unique per month in around 18 months.

However, in last year or so we really started to turn into more of an online newspaper...running serious news and the like. Gradually we have seen more complaints over the colours used on the site...maybe 2 per month saying they find it hard to read. I would think if 2 people write in then maybe 20,000 have a problem...

I figure our options are either:

1. Ignore the compaints and keep trucking
2. Change the site to a more traditional black on white
3. Give the option to change, sort of select a skin as it were...though some complications with this due to the way we generate static pages for our dynamic ones.

I am just not clear on how big a difference it might make to traffic and return users. Like I say the site has done pretty well as it is and I am wary of alienating users or making the site look like just another news site...but then again it is about information and passing it on in the most readable fashion.

Any thoughts?

cheers
James

[limbo]

Hi James

"You can please the people sometimes, but you can't please all the people all the time...

Sounds to me like you have a successful site, plenty of repeat visitors - a good community of users.

To make a change to your brand needs careful consideration - for every complaint you receive now about legibility you'll probably receive 10 fold for changing colours.

It has to improve the site if you do make the change. If you decide to go for it, looking at a few accessibility studies might be a helping hand.

I have assumed that you are using %font sizes - fixed font sizes could be a problem for users with higher screen res, if they dont know how to alter them.

Another option, like you mentioned, is to offer a high contrast version or a style switcher - a CSS opportunity to please just about everyone most of the time ;)

[FattyB]

Limbo,

Wise words I think.

I will maybe run a poll in addition to doing as you suggest regards studies.

Previously I polled the staff, but they were happy as is. I guess you realise at times like this how little you know about your users...

My programmer tells me the switcher solution is an option but a little complicated since we would need different graphical headers, different Google Ads and need to work around the fact we create static versions of our sub category index pages...for performance reasons. So I would think need to generate separate ones for the other scheme.

We are about to roll our a user system so it might be this would fit in to that rather neatly...though personally I would like to give users the option without having to create some sort of user account.

I have to say we have fixed font sizes...which I know is not a good idea. I had thought we would just offer a font size increase option on article pages. Since a % option would cause layout problems on the index pages I am sure...maybe the control freak in me.

Anyway, thanks for your reply.

[jessejump]

Hear the complaints and change to B on W.

Almost all reading is done in B + W. Looks professional.

The white text on blue background that you can have in MS Word is bad.