Facebook is blue-> According to The New Yorker, it’s because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind. This means that blue is the color Mark can see the best. In his own words Zuck says:
“Blue is the richest color for me I can see all of blue.”
Not exactly scientific lol. There are fantastic examples of how colors actually affect our purchasing decisions.
Most of us are Visually stimulated, we get appealed to things based on how they look. It makes sense that 90% of our judgement for buying a product is made by color.
So how do colors really affect us and what is the science of colors in marketing really? Do builders of web pages really need to worry about the perfect website colors? Let’s explore some of the latest, most intriguing research on it.
First-> Can you identify the brands below based on color?
First, let’s test your recall that shows you how powerful color alone really is. Based on just the colors below, can you guess which company belongs to each of them:
With the first photo, we can easily recognize the brand is NIKE without the Nike name, right. Exactly, and if we were to eliminate the letters NBC, above their logo we would still recognize the brand from the colors alone.
The Feelings That Colors Trigger in US?
Lets begin the journey to being conscious about what color triggers us to think/feel in a certain way. The Logo Company has determined specific colors are best for specific types of businesses and why. Here are four examples:
The Color Black:
Qualities-> definite, credible, strength, powerful, precise, professional, direct, accuracy.
Best Used For -> corporate, construction, oil, finance, fashion, manufacturing, Cosmetics, mining, marketing, tradesman.
THE COLOR GREEN:
Qualities –> natural, Organic, Youth, Nurturing, Instructional, Education, adventurous, ecological, calming, nature.
Best Used For –> medicine, government, science, recruitment, ecological-business, tourism, human resources.
THE COLOR BLUE:
Qualities –> credibility, calming, clean, focused, medical, professional, judicial, power, business like.
Best Used For –> medical, scientific, utilities, government, healthcare, high-tech, recruitment, tradesmen, legal, information technology, dental, corporate.
NOW when we LOOK at major brand LOGOS, WE know their secret as to why they selected that color! Shhhhh (lol) Their color choices make more sense now, don’t they. Companies are seeking to trigger a very specific emotion:
When we want to buy something, the colors can play a major role. Analytics company KISSmetrics created an fabulous infographic on the science of how colors affect our buying.
Especially the color, “Green” because it is the most relaxing color we can use to make buying easier. The color black is used frequently for luxury products.
How To Improve Your Marketing With Better Use of Colors:
Here are some cool tips we can apply today to our website or app! Based on the research from KISSmetrics.
If you are building or have an app or website that mainly targets Women, here is KISSmetrics suggestions for you:
- Women love: Blue, Purple and Green
- Women hate: Orange, Brown and Gray
In case your app or website is strictly targeting men, then suggested colors are different:
- Men love: Blue, Green and Black
- Men hate: Brown, Orange and Purple
A EXCITING experiment, conducted by Performable (now HubSpot) wanted to discover if changing the color of the buying button, would make a difference in conversion rates.
They started out with choosing between two colors (green and red).
For green, they thought:
“Green connotes ideas like “natural” and “environment,” and given its wide use in traffic lights, suggests the idea of “Go” or forward movement.”
For red, they thought:
“The color red, on the other hand, is often thought to communicate excitement, passion, blood, and warning. It is also used as the color for stopping at traffic lights. Red is also known to be eye-catching.”
TRY GUESSING WHICH COLORED BUTTON HAD THE HIGHEST CONVERSIONS (people who bought more)?!?!
A A/B test between green and red would result in green, they thought. Were they right???
The answer is (DRUMROLL)…………………………………………….
The RED button outperformed the green button by 21%
It is very important to keep in mind that nothing was changed but the color:
21% more people clicked on the red button than on the green button. Everything else on the pages was the same, so it was only the button color that made this difference.
I am not surprised at all. Red to me has always represented a powerful color, after all it is the a color we use to represent fire.
Will you be changing the colors of your web sites now, graphics etc….?? Let me know, love to hear your thoughts below 🙂
Social Media With Rita 
i was just having this discussion with a ciient yesterday! We were talking about how colors affect buying habits. I was using a hint of purple in my webiste. I just changed the whole design of the site (shows more purple) and the response has been great:)
Interesting Choice Toni 🙂 I must say. Purple is a color well-liked by creative/eccentric types. The colour Purple communicates:
1. Royalty, 2. Value, 3. Sacredness and 4. Bravery.
Few brands choose purple for its logo. Royalty and value can be seen as positive, they also have negative connotations, and can often communicate in an arrogant way. Another reason is that on the color spectrum, purple lies at the very shortest frequency of wavelengths visible to the human eye. In other words, it can be a difficult color to work with.
Some brands that have chosen purple are the: LA Lakers (With yellow as its complimentary color, purple creates a bold, high frequency palette. The LA Lakers’ color scheme is just one example of this energetic combination.), Monster.com (Their use of purple relates to any age, culture or gender.), and Yahoo (Yahoo! chose purple to communicate the value of the information they can provide on the web.).
So happy you have had a great response, Toni! I find playing around with colors so fascinating! Super fun! Have a socially empowered day, Toni 🙂 Rita
Funny, this has always been the case even back in the day with print. It seems Color has lost importance and attention over the years. But now with Mobile and tablets it’s suddenly bubbled back up. Great post, thanks for sharing and keeping top of mind. Cheers!
Hi Ravin, Yes I agree. I see more people becoming more aware or wanting this knowledge with the advent of today’s technology because now more people can enter the marketing and advertising space online with relatively much lower costs compared to traditional marketing. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Ravin. Cheers!
Thank you, I have recently been searching for info about this subject for a long time and yours is the best I’ve came upon till now. You’re very intelligent.
Thank You, and I am happy to provide you with the information you were looking for 🙂 Now, you can look no further 🙂 Rita
nice information, many thanks to the author. it is incomprehensible to me now, but in general, the usefulness and significance is overwhelming. thanks again and good luck!
That’s amazing! I thought green would get the most! lol This is an awesome post! I love it! I am going to re-think my blog colors! Thanks so much!
BloggingTips MomNDaughterSavings
Hi Rita,
A fantastic lesson in colors and how they can make or break your business brand. Thanks for sharing this valuable information to help up take our businesses to a new level of greatness.
Best,
Stacie Walker
Woman in Leadership Founder
Thanks Stacie! I love contributing to the flow of greatness! 🙂 I appreciate your comment 🙂
That is a great tip especially to those fresh to the blogosphere.
Short but verfy accurate info… Many thanks for sharing this one.
A must read post!
You are very welcome Clarissa! Ensure you subscribe to this blog with your email to get more powerful tips to grow your business! Plus releasing a new Free Webinar Replay on this blog site, so look out for it and take tons of notes!! 🙂