Colour plays a very important role while designing your website. It can impact your website visitor experience and your final return on investment. A website’s effectiveness as a sales tool can be greatly affected by simply changing its colours.
All of us are aware that it is more difficult to read text on a monitor than it is on paper, so we should be very careful while choosing the colours for a website. Some colour combinations are very hard on the eye, such as a yellow text on green background. The reason you see black text on a white background so often is that it is the easiest colour combination to read, both on and offline.
We need to realize that some colours evoke different emotions.
For instance:
Colours also have both positive and negative associations.
Some common colour associations are listed below:
Red:
Positive: Sense of power, strength, action, passion, and love
Negative: Anger, forcefulness, danger, impatience, violence and revenge
Yellow:
Positive: Brightness, warmth and joy
Negative: Caution and warning
Blue:
Positive: Cool and tranquil, patience, comfort, loyalty and security
Negative: Fear, coldness, passivity and depression
Orange:
Positive: Warmth, friendliness and cheerfulness, excitement and energy
Negative: Ignorance
Green:
Positive: Nature, growth, freshness and soothing
Negative: Envy, greed, guilt and jealousy
Black:
Positive: Dramatic, sophisticated and stylish, serious
Negative: Evil and death
White:
Positive: Pure, fresh, easy, cleanliness or goodness
Negative: Blind, winter, cold, distant
A major goal in marketing is to evoke emotion in your audience. By choosing the colours for your website with care, you can evoke an emotional response that will increase sales.
As a general rule, one primary colour and two secondary colours should be chosen. These colors should be based on the specific target market you want to attract. If more than two or three colours are used websites tend to look chaotic, and the power of any one colour. The best advice is to keep it as simple as possible.
In designing your business website your color choice is vital. Be sure to try different colours, different shades, and different combinations before you make your final choice.
So the choice is yours whether you want your site to be one of the most visited website with a maximum return on investment.
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I do believe colors impact people both physically and cognitively. Many food companies display ads that are filled with the colors red and yellow. Red is supposed to induce hunger and the yellow is supposed to induce a welcoming sense of well being. Together, the colors red and yellow allow consumers to feel the need to visit a certain companies establishment to get food.
I’ve been using colors to both get the consumers attention and to affect them at a subconscious level on my website. Using different colors seems to work perfectly well to get visitors’ attention. I hope you don’t mind if I save the list of colors and their effects for future reference.
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Choosing the right color for a website is something I have been thinking about not too long ago. I tend to like the orange color. However, I don’t know which type of websites may benefit the most from this color.
In your article, Priya, you have listed the word “ignorance” as something negative that can be associated to this color. Thus, I am thinking that perhaps the orange color may be a better choice for websites that are not about providing vital information.
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Great series on color! Really enjoyed the way you presented it, and especially liked the color charts!
Thank you!
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While I agree with most of the article, blue has nothing to do with fear, that would be yellow.
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Taryn, the colour wheel you suggested is very helpful. Thanks for the tip. I also use Color Scheme Generator: http://colorschemetools.net/colorschemegenerator. It's been quite useful. Any other tips, info, or advice on color schemes would be great.
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Hey Kevin, I’d use the colour wheel here : http://gxi.co.za/building-your-brand/196-choosing-the-correct-colours-for-branding.html
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We’re trying to figure out best colors for our flag site. Any suggestions? World Flags and Flags
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A real eye opener. I firmly believe that colours do play an important role in deciding who will stay and who won’t stay back to learn more about your website. Very important to choose the right colour for your website, taking into consideration the niche, the geographical location as well.
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Good Post! I also believe color has major impact on emotion. This is a cool color picker I found, great for selecting website color combinations.
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html