3 Tips to Use Your Website’s Color Scheme to Influence Purchase Choice

3 Tips to Use Your Website’s Color Scheme to Influence Purchase Choice

Color is all around us and shapes our lives in some very profound ways. Just one color can trigger an emotion or a memory dating all the way back to childhood. Colors can inspire us to take action on our dreams, and they can bring on a flood of various emotions like joy, excitement, and even sadness.

ColorPsychology.org points out that different colors transmit different messages to people. For example, they say green is good for relaxation while blue and gray are calming colors that portray stability and seriousness.

Because color is such a powerful influence in our lives, it makes sense that it would also extend into the online world – like your website.

How colors affect your website

A peer reviewed journal published an article discussing how it only takes 90 seconds for customers to form an opinion about a product, and 62-90 percent of their decision is made based on the color of the product.

If you have younger kids, you’ve certainly seen this aspect of color psychology in action when they first want the blue drink, and then change their mind and want the green drink. They don’t care what the flavor is, they just want it for the color.

Since colors are so persuasive, it’s important to choose your website’s color scheme wisely. Don’t just choose a color scheme because you think it looks good. By consciously selecting the right colors, you’ll be more in control of the experience you want your visitors to have.

Are you ready to take control of your website user experience through color? Here are 3 tips to get you started:

  1. Use colors to elicit specific emotions

Depending on what you’re selling, you may want to elicit certain types of emotion from your visitors. For example, if you’re trying to build trust, use blue.

Capital One, Paypal and Facebook are perfect examples of how using the color blue helps build trust. Prior to Facebook, nobody used their real name on the internet. Yet, Facebook was able to get people to use their real name and share every intimate detail of their lives on a daily basis on the internet. But the power of color is about more than just what colors you use – it’s also about how you use them.

  1. If possible, coordinate your website colors with product colors

It should be fairly obvious that if the color of your product doesn’t match your website’s color scheme, you’re just asking for lost sales. If your product is bright purple, and your website’s color scheme uses shades of red and green, that combination is going to create mental chaos for people and they’ll probably leave.

Stand out by blending in

On the other hand, if you craft your website’s color scheme to match your product, your product photos will blend in with your website’s design and give it a smooth, professional look.  Check out how this styling product website uses a beautiful soft gold color scheme that matches the colors of the products. This adds a touch of elegance to the whole experience and there is no mental confusion. It also helps that the products come in a color that’s easy to work with on the web.

  1. Use color scheme selection tools

Unless you have Photoshop or another similar program, it’s probably going to be tough for you to select your color scheme. It’s not something you want to do manually, trying to match colors one by one.

Coolors.co is by far the best online resource for choosing a color scheme. You can press the space bar to generate random color schemes, and then customize each color with a single click to change the shade.

If Coolors is too complex, you can always use the Color Schemer Online tool. It’s a bit simpler in design but it allows you to lighten or darken your color scheme with a single click, and provides you with the RGB and HEX values for all colors.

Your website is your biggest marketing asset

Regardless of what you want your visitors do when they reach your website, their experience with your website needs to be seamless and easy. This means there shouldn’t be any barriers to the content they’re trying to reach.

One of the most common barriers that prevents visitors from taking action is a distracting color scheme. So when you follow these tips for generating a smooth color scheme, you can rest easy knowing your visitors are happily and easily navigating your site – undistracted and more likely to buy.