The Psychology in Colour in Website Design

How Does Colour Reflect Your Personality

What’s your favourite colour? Ever wondered why?

• Love red? You’re probably bold and passionate, a lover of adventure, perhaps a bit impulsive, and maybe even perceived as intimidating.
• Drawn to orange? We bet you’re playful, fun, and admired by more people than you realise. You probably identify as an extrovert, love hosting parties and deep conversation.
• How about yellow? Optimistic, cheerful, and positive are probably the best adjectives to describe you. You have an infectious laugh and smile and you bring good vibes to those around you.
• People who claim blue as their favourite colour are calm, peaceful, and trustworthy. They are dependable, strategic, and loyal to everyone they work with.
• Green is the colour of balance and practicality. Those who identify with this colour likely give great advice, offer creative solutions, and stay centred amidst any storm that arises.
• If you prefer purple, you are unique, creative, and quick-to-act. You are have a deep inner power and self-confidence that can sometimes make you perceived as arrogant or self-centred, but you’re actually just an old-soul that’s hard for others to understand.
• Pink is whimsical and fun, often associated with femininity but also, conversely, with power and intense self-love and love of family. You may be a bit naive, and you wear your heart on your sleeve, but you know that and aren’t ashamed of it.
• White as a favourite colour isn’t common but those who do prefer this colour above others unusually prefer clean, orderly, minimalistic spaces. You’re also likely very calm but perhaps a bit innocent about worldly topics.
• Finally, those who prefer black can be too serious at times, which can be intimidating, especially to those that don’t know you well. You’re uniquely powerful, ambitious, and strong but can take too many risks, especially because you can be overly-impulsive in your decisions.

Using Colour in Your Web Design

Does your favourite colour accurately match your personality? Is that personality also reflected in your company’s brand? Likely yes, as it should. Your brand should reflect your personality, so it should include your favourite colour, at least partially. Your website is the same. When designing your website, always keep your branding, including colour choices, in mind, but also consider these general colour rules that have been shown to have a direct impact on viewers:

• Don’t rely on pink for women-centric websites. It’s a common misconception that if you’re marketing to women you should use the colour pink. The reality is that most women prefer the colours blue, purple and green and will be more drawn to websites that use these colours.
• Do use blue, green and black when marketing to men. Notice the overlap between men’s and women’s preferences in colours? That means that if you market to both men and women, you can’t really go wrong if you use greens and blues on your website.
• Don’t use yellow. Although in people it’s associated with happiness and cheerfulness, in marketing, especially in web design, yellow triggers anxiety which is not the state of mind you want potential customers to be in when they visit or remember your website.
• Use blue for new products. Blue is a colour that envokes trust and confidence. If you’re launching a new product or service, using plenty of blues in the digital marketing surrounding it can subconsciously give your audiences a greater sense of trust in it, which can lead to more leads and higher sales.
• Use green, but sparingly. Apart from the use of green as an obvious colour for companies that sell outdoor or eco-friendly products, green is also known to inspire creativity and create memories, so try using it in interactive areas of your website -especially in isolation with contrasting colours, to make a big, memorable impact.
• Don’t use orange for luxury products or VIP services. When it comes to your web design or marketing plan, research shows that the colour orange is seen as cheap. If this is part of your marketing strategy, by all means, use orange predominately on your website. But if you’re a high-end or luxury brand that wants that lux vibe, you’ll want to opt for a different colour (like black).
• Don’t use black in your calls to action. For that matter, don’t use any dark colours. Bright, bold, primary colours get higher click-though rates.
• White space is perfectly acceptable. If done intentionally, that is. A big white space or light tones throughout your website can bring a sense of calm and peace to visitors that can keep them exploring your site longer than they would on bright, chaotic, or cluttered ones.

Remember that colour is absolutely not the only consideration when creating or redesigning your website. To use psychology of colour information effectively for your company, you’ll want to work with your banding specialist to determine the best colour combinations to use in your marketing plan, including your digital marketing and website design. They can not only advise you of options that are working in your industry or for your ideal client, they can also set up A/B testing to make sure every colour you use on every element of your website is generating the best results. They will also be able to offer the best ways to combine the psychology of colour with your unique branding look and feel, quality website content, effective typography, navigation, back-end design, hosting and much more to build the most successful (read: most profitable) website for you.

If you don’t already have a marketing professional onboard to help you with creating or updating your website to make it the best it can possibly be, contact Peppermint. Our full-service digital marketing agency based in Estepona near Marbella is made up of creative design professionals that have proven records in web design, copywriting, search engine optimisation, branding, strategy, public relations, graphic design, and more and who will all be available to you to deliver a website that you and your customers will love!