A website can serve many different purposes, but its ultimate objective is to generate leads and convert them. A lead conversion could be a new subscriber to your newsletter or news feed. The same goes for a visitor filling out your contact form. Of course, the ultimate conversion is a sale of a product or service. Using strategic use of color in web design can help your website be a lead machine.
There are many approaches that webmasters take to increase their conversion rate, and one of them is using color in their web design.
Color Psychology
The idea of color being a powerful website design tool stems from the assertion by a field called color psychology that says colors have human emotions, attitudes, and values associated with them. A sub-field of behavioral psychology, color psychology fosters the idea that colors trigger reactions from people who see them, and it’s this human response that web designers and marketers are banking on to generate those leads and conversions.
So what human emotions, attitudes, and values do color psychologist associate with specific colors? How does psychology website design help you in the long run?
The Color Blue
Blue is the coolest color for many, as it does have a calming effect on people, right to the point where it is said to be capable of reducing heart rates and blood pressures. Aside from its association with calmness and serenity, blue is also regarded as symbolizing stability, intelligence, trust, reliability, and security, which is probably why many businesses—Facebook being the most famous example—prefer to use it in their websites.
The Color Red
In case you haven’t noticed before, most signs for clearance sales in stores are red. Marketing materials—online or otherwise—that announce huge discounts and perks almost always seem to be in red, and there’s a reason for that: red is great for fostering a sense of urgency. We all know red is the color of love and passion, but it is quite effective at catching our attention and making us feel like we have to take advantage of an offer before it’s too late. It’s probably why most calls-to-action or CTA buttons are in red too.
The Color Yellow
Yellow is the sunniest color, and it does project a sense of cheerfulness that people typically pick up on immediately. Kids love this bright color, and some adults even say the sight of it makes them feel a slight increase in optimism.
The Color Orange
Mix yellow and red, and the result will be orange. And if color psychology is to be believed, you’ll get the best of both worlds too. Orange is regarded as just as effective as red when it comes to creating a sense of urgency, and it’s as sunshiny and optimistic as yellow as well.
The Color Green
No other color is more associated with issues that concern the environment than green, which is also said to be a very easy color for the brain to process. Websites that further conservation, sustainability, and other environmental agendas typically use green, a color that’s also associated with decisiveness.
Choosing Web Design Colors
While these associations as presented by color psychology tend to make a lot of sense, we cannot really say that they are definitive. In fact, some quarters assail color psychology’s assertions, saying we see colors in different ways, and our personal experiences have a lot of influence on how we look at them.
Still, the associations being made by color psychology are close to reality, marketers and web designers recognize that judging by the way they take pains to apply them to their work.
Digital Strategists typically research their target market in order to determine the color that will get a rise out of them in a positive way. They consider age, gender, culture, and other factors before picking the color for their web design. Women have varying color preferences, and so do men. The same goes for children and adults of more advanced age.
And even if you have settled on a color for your web design, you must do some A/B testing first to determine the color combinations and placements that will work best in generating leads and conversions.
About The Author
Shawn Byrne is the founder and CEO of My Biz Niche, an Arizona-based digital marketing company that has achieved superior results for their clients. Before My Biz Niche, Shawn worked for Venture Capitalists where he built a private portfolio of e-commerce and informational websites that generate revenue through various digital marketing strategies.
