There’s a lot of thought that goes into creating your own website. While structure and functionality provide the building blocks of a great website, design becomes the main driver when you’re ready to wrap it up into the perfect package for your customers. There are many elements to consider when it comes to design, but the most noticeable will be your use of colour.
Colour doesn’t just liven up a website and make it look pretty to your visitors, it also has the ability to evoke specific emotions in your audience. From marketing campaigns, all the way to the logos and branding of a company, the use of colours are purposeful and you see every day. Below, we’ll identify what colour psychology is, why it's important for your marketing and which colours evoke the emotions you want so you can get an idea of how to use it for your business branding and website.
What is Colour Psychology?
Colour psychology is the study of colours in relation to human behaviour. It aims to determine how colour affects our day to day decisions ( i.e. the products we buy, the websites we visit and the shops we go into etc). Does the colour of an icon make us more likely to click on it? Does the colour of a t-shirt encourage us to buy it? Do the colours of the packaging make us choose one business over another? YES! But the why is a little bit more complicated. The meanings behind colours can have an impact on why we prefer certain colours over others. The same colour can also have different meanings that are dependent on different factors such as our gender, location, how we identify, and various other things.
Why Is Colour Psychology Important in Marketing?
Choosing the right colours for your marketing efforts can be the difference between your brand standing out from the crowd, or blending into it. By using colours strategically in your marketing, you can get your audience to see what you want them to see and help them perceive you the way you aim to be perceived. This is why understanding colour psychology is important to know, because it can help you portray your brand the way you want to.
While choosing the right colours can enhance your brand perception, poor colour selection can do damage to your brand image. The exact opposite of what you want to achieve. For instance, if you choose the wrong colours for your website's content, it can turn out to be less readable, and hard for your audience to understand. Or even worse, you can risk being ignored all together by your target audience. A BIG NO NO!
List of Colours and Their Meanings
RED - The red colour meaning is associated with excitement, energy, passion, love, desire, strength, power, heat and fire. You might have noticed some brands use red for ‘order here’ or 'buy now' buttons. In colour psychology, red is the most intense colour. And thus, can provoke the strongest emotions. Red can also trigger danger so you don't want to overuse this colour. If you add the colour red to your website, save it for the call to action or sale icons if it’ll contrast well with design of your website.
ORANGE - The colour orange represents creativity, adventure, enthusiasm and success. This colour adds a bit of fun to any website or marketing material it’s on. Despite it’s attracting colour, it’s not as commanding as the colour red. NOTE: Many marketers still use the orange for call to actions or areas of a website that they want to draw the eye too.
YELLOW - This colour evokes feelings of joy, happiness, optimism, imagination, hope and friendship. This is because it revolves around all things sunshine and summer time. Some brands choose to use a cheerful yellow colour in their logo or the border for their website design. A little touch of yellow can help your website visitors associate your business with positivity.
GREEN - This colour is highly connected to nature, money, growth, fertility, health, and generosity. The colour meaning for green also carries some negative associations such as envy. If you owe a health and wellbeing store online, you might choose to add more green to your website than other sites. For example, your homepage banner and footer could include the colour green to clearly represent your brand.
BLUE - Stability, harmony, peace, calm and trust are just some of the feelings your customer may feel about your brand when you integrate the colour blue into your branding. An overuse of the colour blue could however carry over some negative colour meanings (depression and sadness) and can bring about a sense of coldness to your brand. Blue can be used in your website’s logo or on your website’s top navigation. Some businesses add icons for things such as free shipping or legal certificates in a blue colour to strengthen the trust aspect the colour is known for. This could work well with your branding, certainly consider using blue in some aspect of your logo, website, store etc.
Purple - This colour represents royalty, power, luxury, wisdom, and spirituality. But we recommend you avoid using the colour too much in your branding as it can cause your customers to feel a sense of frustration. Why not try adding hints of purple to your logo or even some of the text on your website to mix things up a little bit.
PINK - We typically associate the colour pink with femininity, playfulness and love. For this reason, many brands choose to use pink to attract female customers. And due to the playfulness of the colour, many use it in their logo, website design, or even to highlight key messages within text. So what's stopping you from integrating this colour into your branding?
BROWN - We often associate brown as an earthy colour, be that is the colour of earth, wood and stone. So naturally, colour psychology highlights that the colour meaning for brown relates to comfort, security and a down to earth nature. You’ll often find that brown is used for natural products and food. As this colour perfectly contrast on a white background, it often shows up in logos and sometimes the text on a website.
WHITE - In colour psychology, white represents innocence, goodness and humility. Again, this is a colour that has a negative side, depending on various different factors, where it symbolises sterility and cold. On an eCommerce website, white tends to be the most used colour. It is the most commonly used used background colour for many websites. Your pages will likely have a white background with a black font, like this one. This is because, black font on a white background is the best colour combination for optimum readability.
GREY - This colour represents neutrality and balance, after all it's the shade between white and black. However, grey does carry some negative connotations, particularly when it comes to loss, sadness, grief and depression. Its absence of colour makes it dull so it's a good idea to pair it with another colour. We recommend you use grey for font colour if you don't wish to use black.
BLACK - This colour symbolises mystery, power, wealth, sophistication and elegance. In contrast, black can also evoke emotions such as sadness and anger if it overused. You will find black is a popular colour for text as it’s an easy colour to read. Again, it works perfectly when paired with white (white background with black text or vise versa depending on the use). Many brands choose to use black to create a sense of consistency on their website.
Now that you’ve learned what colour psychology is and the meanings of each colour, it’s time to apply them to your website and your brand as a whole. NOTE: While many industries have common colours associated with them, i.e green for nature or blue for health care, remember you don’t always have to follow suit. Choose colours that represent what you want your brand to be about or what you want your customers to feel when they visit your website.
