Importance of Color in Your Website
Image Credit: Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash
Importance of Color Summary
Colors help express ideas, emotions, increase your brand recognition and create a dramatic appeal to your website. Soft colors bring serenity, while bright colors can set a confident and cheerful mood. Colors are a vital part of a great web design, and are a superb marketing tool to bring in viewers which can ultimately be your customer.
This is a two part blog entry that includes the history of color theory, color and marketing, the meaning of behind various colors and color palettes.
Please visit the Importance of Color, Part 1.
Color and Marketing
Do certain colors make you feel excited and confident? Or maybe bring you comfort and serenity? Different colors bring powerful psychological effects on people’s sentiments and choices. That’s why it’s extremely important to select colors that will drive an emotion to your viewers with your company’s branding. A poor choice of color or too many colors can ruin the reaction that you hope to accomplish with your color palette.
Branding is defined as a name, logo and or design scheme that is associated with a business’ product or service. It needs to be unique in nature, and eye catching. The name can include a phrase and one or more symbols. The design of the container can also make the product more appealing, like the shape of the Coke bottle. On a website, the color scheme and logo are important in the branding of the product or service.
Color Emotion Guide
The Logo Company came up with a ‘Color Emotion Guide’ that lists the colors that different companies used in their logos.
Image Credit: The Logo Company
“All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.” – Marc Chagall
Having a correct color scheme on your website is crucial if you want your website to be appealing and professional to people viewing your website. If the website is not pleasing to your visitors, they might leave your site or miss the content of your webpage. You really want to engage your viewers; otherwise they might pass and look for another website that they find more alluring.
Studies have been done, and they found that different colors can influence the viewer physiologically. Medical science has documented that color can influence hormones, blood pressure and body temperature. Men and women react to colors in a different way. Women tend to go towards the colors like purple and pink, while men are drawn towards browns and blues. This should be kept in mind if the product is gender-specific, such as clothing or sporting goods.
Below is a listing of different colors, along with the its meaning and companies that use that color:
Pink: feminine, floral, love
Companies that use pink: Playtex, Barbie, Cosmopolitan
Purple: magic, supernatural, creativity, royalty
Companies that use purple: Yahoo, Monster, Netscape
Red: power, passion, strength, aggression
Companies that use red: Target, Exxon, CNN
Orange: health, comfort, energy, warmth, shelter, excitement
Companies that use orange: Fanta, Nickelodeon, Firefox
Yellow: happiness, joy, caution, sunshine, optimism
Companies that use yellow: Best Buy, Hertz, Subway
Green: nature, affluence, greed, soothing
Companies that use green: Whole Foods, John Deere, BP
Blue: peace, trust, cleanliness, loyalty, tranquility
Companies that use blue: Lowe’s, Facebook, Walmart
Black: sophistication, seriousness
Companies that use black: Nike, Apple, Chanel
White: Purity, innocence, peace, cleaniness
Companies that use white: L’oreal, Olay, BBC
Silver: Modernism, Allure, Luxury
Companies that use silver: Lexus, Nissan, Infinity
Gold: Glamour, Wealth, Elegance
Companies that use gold: Versace, Rolex, Guess
Grey: Authority, Strength, Conservative
WordPress, Bassett, Buffalo
Color Palette
The next step in the process is selecting a color palette. Your website should use a color palette that is harmonious with your color scheme. There are many sites that can be used to select about 3-5 colors that ‘go’ with your basic color scheme. These will be the colors that you can use as the colors for your various fonts, background color, and sectional colors. It’s best to keep in mind what would draw in your audience. A color palette for women’s fashions might be best if the colors are soft tones. These colors are classy and very appealing. For children, it might be primary colors. For a law firm, it might be black, gray and silver tones.
References
Most Popular Colors to Use in Marketing
Choosing a Color Scheme for your Small Business