The Psychology of Color: How to Effectively Select Color for Your Website

Quick Summary:

Creating Lasting Impressions: Learn the secrets of color associations and their impact on user perceptions, helping you leave a lasting impression with your website design.

What does it mean to look through rose-colored glasses?
Does green make you feel one with nature?
Do you feel warm in a room with yellow colors or calm and relaxed with blue colors?

People form deep and sentimental connections with colors throughout their lives. Hues tremendously influence people’s moods, attitudes, and emotions.

The study of color and its effect on psychological function has been present since the 1800s. Today, color psychology is a branch of behavioral psychology studying hues as determinants of human behavior. Color is ubiquitous and ambiguous, making color psychology a complicated field, so to say.

Color psychology can be used in anything; one such application is in marketing and branding. Stack Mode Marketing Group, one of the top Reno web design companies, uses this strategy well.

According to Chris Foti, the founder of Stack Mode, “designing a business website requires considering a color theme for the graphics, headlines, borders, backgrounds, buttons, pop-ups, and letters for the page. Most companies rely on conversions to assess whether their website performs well, and color psychology in web design may impact those conversions.”

Research and statistics can prove the power of color in influencing the market. In the early 2000s, Heinz released a green-colored ketchup product in a bid to attract young customers. This resulted in 23 million dollars in sales in just 7 months. According to a 2006 peer-reviewed study, people make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interactions with either people or products; 62-90% of those 90 seconds are based on colors alone. Another study says that 92.6% think that visual dimension is the most important influencing factor affecting their purchase decision over smell and taste, according to a survey.

How does one apply color psychology in website designing? Here are three simple steps to keep in mind:

 

Step 1: The Basics: Knowing your Colors

One does not merely go about designing a website without knowing his colors. While color is ambiguous and each one has their favorites, here’s a short crash course on the most widely-used colors and their general associations:

  • Blue represents trust, peace, order, and loyalty. People feel a feeling of calmness and serenity with this color. Blue is used by social media companies, government, medical and financial companies to express transparency, honesty, confidence, and responsibility.
  • Red is the color of blood, a symbol of violence and aggression, and passion and warmth. Red is a powerful and intense color that causes excitement, increasing people’s heartbeat and breathing rates. It draws attention and signals a call for action.
  • Yellow definitely screams for attention and stimulates our emotions. Yellow appeals to the child in everyone as it is associated with cheerfulness and fun.
  • Orange represents warmth and happiness. It promotes conversation, stimulates appetite, and encourages adventure and optimism.
  • Purple is associated with royalty and luxury. The color also hints at magic and fantasy.
  • Green has one of the most apparent interpretations. The color of plants and trees, green represents the love for nature, healing, freshness, and growth. Alternatively, it’s also the color of American money and signifies wealth, jealousy, and envy.
  • White is quite sickening and boring for the eyes due to its brightness and emptiness, but it represents cleanliness, purity, freshness, and goodness.
  • Black is a color of wealth, power, elegance, strength, and authority. This is quite a tricky color to use as it also signifies gloominess, fear, and mourning. Black can be used to contrast other colors and is required for others to have depth.

 

Step 2: The Three W's: Who, What, and Why

After familiarizing yourself with the colors, the next step to do is to compile first relevant data about your website. Who do you want to cater to? What product are you planning to promote? What do you intend to achieve? Why are establishing this website?

The kind of questions above are fundamental in choosing colors for your web page. Take gender preferences, for example. According to studies, women prefer blue, pink, purple, and red while men like blue, green, black, brown, and white. Women’s beauty products like L’Oréal, Dove, Victoria’s Secret are known to use pink, purple, and white. Men’s hygiene products and clothing meanwhile focus on dark hues like blue and black.

What is the company trying to sell, and what are they trying to promote? Food companies like Lays, Denny’s, Subway, and McDonald’s use yellow for their brand logos, as yellow is associated with food such as potatoes, bread, chips, etc. Go green and brown if you are trying to promote environment-friendly products. Use the color blue if you want to show transparency, reliability, and trustworthiness to your clients. Red tags are most often used in clearance sales and orange for children’s products and sports teams. Some of Reno’s best web design companies use black in their logo and designs to give prominence to the content since all other colors would stand out against a black background, a good strategy in highlighting visual content.

Step 2 simply requires you to remember who you are as a company and applying your knowledge of colors from step 1 on how you want to express yourself as a brand on your website. Reno’s top web design companies such as Stack Mode Marketing Group make sure to get to know their client company well before recommending a proposal.

 

Step 3: Just Do It

This step is pretty brief and straightforward but requires as much effort as the previous two. After all the research and planning, one can then proceed on applying theory to practice. Companies can enlist the help of some of the best web design companies in Reno, like Stack Mode Marketing Group, if the company itself does not feel confident to do the website itself.

Color psychology, like all other branches of psychology, is entirely subjective and ambiguous. Creating a website for branding and marketing requires one to have immense knowledge of the trends and preferences of a very fluid market and audience. However, one can succeed if he uses the best color that fits the business’s image, brand, ideals, goals, purpose, and target audience.

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About The Author

Chris Foti is a developer and agency owner specializing in delivering the highest quality websites and digital marketing strategies.

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