In today’s world, it’s very important to have a unique brand identity and for it to be visually recognizable. Not only will it help you build trust with your customers, but it will also help you spread brand awareness more easily. And there’s no better way to make yourself stand out from the crowd then through a smart choice of colors for your website.
Colors are extremely important when it comes to making your website likable for your customers and the choice of your color scheme should always be near the top of your priorities when it comes to web design. Here’s our list of eight things you need to know about when choosing the color scheme for your website.
Colors Affect Emotions
When users enter your website, they start judging it based on their subconscious and how the environment affects it. This basically means that upon entering the website, your users will be judging it mostly based on the color scheme you’re using. This is why it’s important to get familiar with the psychological effects different colors have. A good place to start is to get to know the right colors for your CTA buttons and how they affect the conversion rates.
Pick a Dominant Color
The color you pick as your dominant color is also your brand’s color and it should always be embedded into the website. A dominant color doesn’t mean it’s the color that’s represented the most, but the one that will hold its hue regardless of its surroundings. Coca Cola’s dominant color is red, but McDonald’s is actually yellow. This is the color you’ll be using on all your promotional material and how your target audience will remember you when they think about your brand. Picking a dominant color is a strategical choice and the one you’ll have to make with a lot of consideration.
Gender Differences
For this step, you’ll need to figure out whether your business is targeting women or men, or maybe even both. This is because different colors appeal to men and women, with some of the colors being in common.
Women like: Blue, Green, Purple
Women dislike: Orange, Gray, Brown
Men like: Blue, Black, Green
Men dislike: Orange, Purple, Brown
You can see that both genders are likely to be positively affected by blue and green color, while they both dislike orange and brown. This means that you’ll have a better chance hitting and affecting your targeted audience if you avoid orange and brown, while using green or blue. If you are favoring one gender over another as your target audience than it’s even easier to set up the color scheme according to this.
Accent Colors
Now that you have your dominant color picked out, it’s time to pick accent colors. These are used mostly to attract attention to certain parts of the website, while also giving the website more freshness compared to it being in single color. However, matching and mixing colors might prove a difficult task for most people, which is why almost any freelance web designer will get the hang of it through trial and error. With dominant and accent colors now on board, you are already half-way towards positively affecting your website visitors.
Choosing a Background Color
A background color is what creates the atmosphere on your website. It’s always chosen carefully based on the industry you’re in. An e-store will almost always use a neutral color so that they can draw attention to what really matters to them – products. On the other hand, design or fashion websites will usually be more graphic intensive because their agenda is to promote their creativity. Choose a background color that matches your industry and niche and make sure that it goes well with your dominant and accent colors.
Different Age Groups Prefer Different Colors
You probably didn’t know, but people change their color preferences over time and with age. Take a look at Joe Hallock’s Colour Assignment Study from 2003 which explains in detail how different age groups look on different colors. What you need to do is take it into consideration after you’ve figured out the age range of your target audience. Leave nothing to chance when it comes to picking colors for your website and you’ll be well on your way towards success.
Number of Colors Used
Most websites use three colors for maximum effect, but you can go for more than that if you feel the need. To break it down, it usually looks like this:
Dominant (or primary) color – around 60%
Secondary color – around 30%
Accent color – around 10%
Whatever your primary and secondary colors are, you’ll want your accent colors to be in contrast so they can do their job and highlight what’s important on the website.
Online Tools to Help You With Your Color Choice
If you’re still unsure about how to approach the issue (and even if you’re not), you can use a number of online tools to help you choose the best colors for your website. Adobe Color is a great tool which can help you choose your whole color scheme based on the dominant color that you picked. It takes a little time to get the hang of how the tool works, but once you do it will become absolutely invaluable. If you don’t like it, you can go with a tool like Colorspire instead.
Final Words
There’s no denying the fact that good usage of colors has helped build a number of brands throughout the decades and it can do the same for you. The choice of colors comes through careful consideration and strategy, and not by accident. By reading this guide you now have a good head start, but the most important thing is to experiment yourself and to do a lot of testing as well. Only that way you will come up with a uniquely colored website that is going to attract people’s attentions.
