Essential Tips To Picking A Website Colour Scheme

85% of customers buy a product because of its attractive colour. This data proves how humans are so driven by visual stimuli.

This psychological aspect is now being applied in the marketing world. Every popular brand you will see today is attached to a particular colour. For example, if you think about McDonald, red and yellow colours first come to mind. Similarly, famous laptop selling brand, Dell has blue as it’s dominant colour.

How branding and colour are interlinked?

If a product belongs to an authentic brand, people have more trust while buying it. So, creating a brand identity is very important for a business. With a brand, you can earn reputation and long term experience.

But how a brand image is expressed? Mainly, it is through the brand logo. Colours used in the logo play a significant role. In fact, every distinct colour is known to evoke a specific emotion in people.

So, 50% of brands use a single colour in their logo, it symbolises their niche and values.

Having the right colour in your logo enhances brand recognition by 80%. Then imagine how effective will it be by having the ideal website colour!

People make an overall judgment just within 90 seconds at a site. And colour has the maximum impact on this first impression. So, you should select the website colour scheme carefully.

Here are 12 beneficial tips for picking the ideal colour for your site.

1. Learn how colours evoke emotions

This psychological theory will help you a lot in choosing the ideal colour.

For example, Yellow colour is the symbol of optimism, clarity and warmth. It has been used in websites and logos of National Geographic, IMDb, Nikon and Subway.

Red is the colour of energy. It brings urgency in the viewer. This bold and exciting colour is used by Coca-Cola, Pinterest, Lays, Canon, Kellogg’s etc.

Likewise, you can decide which emotion to evoke in your audience. Then accordingly choose the best colour.

2. Target your demographic

You have a very special demographic for selling your products.

These potential customers have unique personality, emotions, political views and expectations. It is surprising that every single colour matches a personality type, triggers a unique body part and sends a unique value.

Let us take a practical example-  A company who is selling an organic product, should have dominant green colour in it’s site. Because, green connects our mind with nature and health.

3. Be gender specific

This does not apply to every company. But it is crucial for the brands that strictly sell products to men or women.

For example, a cloth designer, shoes brand etc.

Joe Hallock did a survey on male and female colour preferences. It was revealed that men dislike brown, purple and like blue. And women love blue and purple but dislike orange and brown. So, choose your website colour accordingly.

4. Consider the age group

Joe Hallock also found that the colour choice of a person changes as the age changes. If your company caters to the needs of a specific age group, then design your site colour to impress them.

5. Take a colour quiz

If you are having difficulty in choosing your ideal colour, then attempt a colour quiz.

Quiz offered by Grasshopper has around seven questions in the stack. Like what is your business type? What are the products? How is your audience?

After completing this quiz, you will get the best colour suggestion for your site.

6. Don’t make choice by yourself

A website is designed to attract customers. So, the colour should be well planned according to customer preferences.

You should not select your personal favourite colour in this case. Because your site will not be effective and would be rejected by the customers.

Suppose your favourite colour is blue and you used it in your make up selling website. The results will be very poor. Because mainly pink and purple is good for make up niche!

7. Decide the number of colours you would use

Up to now, you have finalised the main or primary colour of your site.

But you can’t use a monochrome only. You have to bring out the perfect colour combination that allures the viewers.

We will go with the research findings. According to it 60-30-10 rule is ideal for designing.

That simply means, the primary colour covers 60% space. A secondary colour another 30%. And an accent colour for the remainder 10% of your site.

The 3 colours formula is widely practiced. But if you use more than 4 colours on your site, it would look cluttered and confusing.

8. Determine the set of colours

Now it’s the time to select the entire colour palette.

You can go for a light background with a contrasting main content and texts. This design is easy to read and looks professional!

You can also use the opposite, that is a deep backdrop with white, bold readable texts. Anyway, your pages must look attractive!

9. Take help from colour wheel

Sometimes you will need to find totally contrasting colours or very similar ones. You can easily get answers from a colour wheel.

In a colour wheel, complementary colours are placed opposite. Like, Yellow- Purple, Green- Orange.

The analogous colours are present adjacent to each other. Like, Orange-Red, Green-Blue.

10. Use different tools

There are various tools to check how colour combinations would look on your site. Name of some tools are – Colour Spire, Colour Explorer, Instant Schemes and Kuler. Just experiment and choose what looks best for your site.

11. Look at your competitors

Yes, before you take any final decision, check at least 3 brands of your niche.

And focus on the colour schemes they are using right now.

There will be a certain conventional pattern in all these sites. You have two choices. Either make similar design to your competitors or adopt a totally different colour scheme. By being different, you can distinguish yourself easily from others.

12. Have a bundle of choices at hand-

It is good to start with more than one colour combination. Because,  you can compare and keep testing as long as you want. Have healthy discussion with your teammates, take feedback from friends. At last, decide which one to finalise.

Conclusion

Choosing the right colour combination doesn’t require expertise in arts. You have to understand the connection between colour and customer psychology. Your website colour has to appeal to the users and keep them engaged for a longer time.

And indeed, this is what we want. Because longer retention means less bounce rate and more conversions. So, pick your website colour carefully. It can break or make your business!