At some point, everyone who works in design—that includes graphic designers, interior designers, web designing agencies and more—must confront the ways in which they use color. And at some point, inevitably, that becomes self-examination—an attempt to understand the extent to which the designer’s personal sensibilities conflict or are in harmony with the perceptions of their audience.
That can be a daunting challenge, because those audience perceptions are not uniform, from one culture to another, or even from one person to another. For some people, red means danger; for others, it signals passion. Black can be funereal, or evoke a sense of elegance and luxury. Studies show that women love purple, but that color leaves men cold.
For businesses with a global audience, the challenges are even greater. Take the color green, for example. For historical reasons, the Irish consider green the color of luck—that same history, however, tells the English something very different. In Islamic countries, green is venerated. For Americans, green can mean greed and envy, unless they’re eco-conscious, in which case it signals a concern for the environment.
As marketing strategist Geoffrey Ciotti, writing for Entrepreneur, rightly concludes in “The Psychology of Color in Marketing and Branding,” much of the talk about the role of color in persuasion is little more than speculation without any credible grounding in research or data:
“Why does color psychology invoke so much conversation … but is backed with so little factual data? As research shows, it’s likely because elements such as personal preference, experiences, upbringing, cultural differences, context, etc., often muddy the effect individual colors have on us. So the idea that colors such as yellow or purple are able to invoke some sort of hyper-specific emotion is about as accurate as your standard Tarot card reading.”
This isn’t to say that a host of studies haven’t attempted to understand the ways consumers respond to color in marketing. The Log Company, to cite just one example, in “Psychology of Color in Logo Design,” looked at the logos of hundreds of prominent brands and grouped them by color, asserting that those colors linked brands in accordance with some primary emotion they all tried to convey. Those colors, what they “convey,” and some of the brands which used them in their logos, include the following:
This kind of analysis is a bit simplistic and confounding—for example, it begs questions such as why one energy company, BP, gets mileage from green’s peaceful hues, while another, Gulf, goes with the friendly, cheerful confidence that orange ostensibly evokes. It is nevertheless true that, although there are differences based on gender and culture, consumers do tend to associate certain feelings with certain colors.
Although individual colors can more or less predictably evoke emotions, web designers also need to consider the ways that the use of multiple colors, the context in which they’re used and an understanding of audience serve specific marketing purposes. As Ciotti notes:
“The psychology of colour is less about individual color washes, but rather an understanding of how people respond emotionally to multiple colors. Ultimately, factoring in color theory and pscyhology, color choices for your website should only be made once the designer has a firm grasp on a) audience / market, b) geotargeting / cultural considerations, and c) brand / product and related guidelines.”
Every business is different, and so is every website, each with its own audience, branding requirements and marketing objectives. That said, and given that there are always exceptions for specific marketing purposes, there are some best practice rules for the use of color in web designing. Here are 10 best practice recommendations:
Like most things in life, knowing how to use elements like color in web design is something that comes with experience. If you’re a chief marketing officer for a startup business or a large organization, you probably don’t have time to make the granular choices necessary to ensure that your website resonates with your customers. That’s why your best bet is to partner with an experienced web designing agency, one which can help you create a comprehensive digital marketing strategy which integrates all the elements of your marketing campaigns, from creative design to SEO, content creation, marketing automation and social optimization.
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