A lot of planning goes behind developing a business strategy for launching any product/service and involves so many crucial decisions. One of these decisions is to choose a perfect color scheme for your website. One might think that this is not very important, but believe me, it’s as critical as any other element of your overall business plan. Your product/service must be presentable and people must recognize it, differentiate it, and most importantly recall it. Let’s understand the significance of different colors which will help you in choosing right color scheme for your website design.

Colors And Their Meanings

Every color has certain attributes attached to it and signifies something. Though, the significance differs from culture to culture. Here’s a brief description of the meaning and associations of color, particularly in relevance to the western culture.

RED – Shows passion, love and desire. Also used to show danger, strength, fire, and energy. Red quickly grabs attention & stimulates emotional reactions. Perfect for cars, sports sites and often used in food industry as it stimulates appetite. Must be avoided by sites related to finances, money lending etc.

PINK – Closely connected to femininity (women and young girls). It expresses sweetness, tenderness and finesse. It’s often used to portray romance and intimacy. Perfect for sites offering products related to women, babies or couples.

ORANGE – Orange is the color of joy, happiness and creativity. It’s very eye-catching and therefore often used as base color for call to action buttons as it attracts impulse buyers. Avoid using orange in excess as it shows desperateness to sell and that’s quite cheap.

YELLOW – In western culture, it’s often connected with happiness, warm feelings, optimism and cheerfulness. Again, a very eye-catching color, but must be used with caution as it can be a little harsh on eyes if used in excess or in a super bright shade.

GREEN – Color of nature, wealth, balance and harmony. It’s very pleasing to the eyes and often signifies prosperity. Green is suggested for sites related to money and finances.

BLUE – Both men and women equally love and prefer the color blue. It creates a feeling of stability and trust. Often used by banks, real estates and health institutions.

PURPLE – It symbolizes luxury, ambition and power. Since this color is very rare in nature it is also associated with mystery, magic and extravagance. It’s mostly used to advertise products for women and children. Also, purple is a good choice for businesses related to beauty & fashion, technology and education. However, it’s not advisable to be used in the food industry.

WHITE – White brings a feeling of safety, purity and cleanliness. It is a perfect base color especially for eCommerce sites since it help products to stand out. An information-friendly environment can be created by effective use of white space. It’s often used for medical websites.

BLACK – Black stands for class, royalty, luxury, wealth and sophistication. It is considered to be very elegant but also mysterious. Black is the safest bet for background color and is often used across businesses.

Ask these questions :

– What kind of age groups are you aiming at?
– Do you wish to sell your product to a specific gender?
– Which of their feelings do you want to engage?
– Do you want to trigger a specific emotional response?

It’s important to know your target audience, and then devote time to choose the best-related colors.

Colors By Gender

Joe Hallock did a study back in the year 2003 which compared color preferences among various demographics, here are a few results based on the observation:

• Blue was the favorite color for both men and women
• 23 percent of women chose purple as their favorite color while no men chose purple as their favorite color
• Brown was the least favorite color for men while orange was the least favorite for women
• 26 percent of the total participants considered orange as a cheap color

Another experiment conducted by Doctors Anya Hulbert and Yazhu Ling observed the following differences in how men and women perceive colors:

• Women prefer soft colors while men like bright colors
• Men are more tolerant towards achromatic colors as compared to women

Color Naming

Men like to keep it simple. What simply may be pink to men, could be Baby, Salmon or Magenta to a woman.

Choosing Colors For Your Website

Now that you have a basic understanding of colors, let’s dive into the details of how and what colors you can use on your website. There’s a rule of thumb when it comes to selecting colors for your website – You should not pick more than three colors for your website : Dominant, Accent, and Background.

Dominant Color

Dominant color is used at places where you want users to focus their attention. Remember, the purpose of Dominant colors is to differentiate certain section of your website so that users get attracted to those parts. Don’t overuse it as it will kill the purpose.

Image source: Gimme Delivery

Accent Colors

Accent colors are used to emphasize on certain elements like badges, sales banners & call to action buttons. Yes, they will hold importance but not as much as Dominant color. Avoid cluttering your website with too many accent colors. Less number of accent colors will help users to smoothly navigate throughout the entire web page. The eyes will naturally follow the path you want them to follow.

Image source: Car Workshop

Background Color

The color of the background also depends on the purpose of your website. Like you shouldn’t pick orange as a base of wellness & spa websites, blue or green would be much better. Background colors can be used for storytelling. For example, suppose you want to create a strong and memorable impression on users, you should use darker shades and lighter tints of the dominant color across the website.

Image source:loveforiceland.com

Of course, color psychology is not engraved on stone. Color is something that people will classify through their own experiences and feelings. Don’t pick your colors at random. Think about your strategy and purpose more than once and determine what colors fit in the context appropriately. If you’re not very confident with your color coordination talk to our design experts, and they will be more than happy to assist you.