The psychology behind your colour choices

When you’ve been designing your branding and your website, have you given much thought to colour choices? If not, then it might be time to take stock as colours can significantly affect consumer behaviour through unconscious psychology. Therefore, if you want to convert your website visitors to customers then read on to find out more about colour psychology.

Cultural Connotations

Did you know that different colours can mean different things in different cultures? So you can easily insult someone without meaning to just by the colour that you use. Red is one of the major examples. In China, red is the colour of luck and celebration and is used for festive occasions such as weddings and on Chinese New Year. In Japan, red is the colour of anger and danger, in South Africa, red is the colour of mourning and in Russia it is often associated with communism although it is used frequently in marriage ceremonies. So, depending on your target audience, you need to make sure you know what the colours you use mean to them.

Call-to-action

Call-to-action buttons are incredibly important as they can be the difference between a website browser and a customer. It needs to be clear, so that probably means that it needs to be in contrast to other colours around it, and the action you’re asking them to do is clear as well. Amazon is often stated as having a very powerful call-to-action button with the pale background and the soft orange call-to-action button. First, it can’t be missed as the clear next option, and secondly, orange is designed to be a warm and friendly colour so it doesn’t come across as harsh or abrasive.

Logo Design

It’s really important to understand colour psychology when designing your logo , in the same way that it needs to be considered for the overall website design and call-to-action buttons. Firstly make sure you understand the branding choice that you’ve made for your company and the ‘feel’ that it should have. Should it be trustworthy, fun, exciting, simple, serious? Secondly, understand how it might make your customers feel, through both general colour psychology and the cultural connotations mentioned earlier. And then make sure that the colours used in the logo complement each other, and also the other colours on the website complement your logo’s colours.

There is no single one colour choice that we can suggest as “the one”. A/B testing is vital to make sure that you’re using the colours that work for your business, your customers may succumb to certain colours more than the target audience for other businesses. If you need help setting up the testing for the right colours for your website then let us know: hello@webfwd.co.uk