There’s no denying that color has an important role in how people perceive and interact with your website. But do you know the exact impact of paint on your website design? If not, it’s time to find out more about this subject and how you can use color to help make your website design more user-friendly, visually appealing, and effective at conveying your message to visitors.
Color research
If your site needs a makeover, or if you’re still just getting started on your first site, it’s wise to research choosing colors for your designs. Pick from all types of background: dark, light, reds, oranges, and every shade of blue.
Don’t worry about using every color under the sun; as with most things in life (especially when you’re just starting), less is more. Try sticking to three or four primary colors (and maybe a few accent ones). When picking hues for your website designs, think about how they look when viewed with many different monitors.
Color theory
Colors evoke different feelings and emotions. Colors can reflect a brand’s personality or a company’s values. Using colors consistently on your website can help tell a story about your business and improve navigation by making links or text stand out.
And while colors certainly play an essential role in website design, they aren’t necessarily as crucial as some might think. In many cases, colors are overlooked; it’s fairly common for websites to have only one or two colors with hardly any thought, So get the web designing services from constructive visual.
They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but that same notion goes for websites, too – beauty is more than skin deep!
Connecting with your audience through colors
The use of colors can be an effective way to connect with your audience and convey a message. For example, suppose you are selling an organic food product and want to create a farm-to-table vibe for your site.
In that case, green could represent nature and wholesomeness, red could represent passion, orange could represent an energy or active lifestyle, yellow could represent light or healthiness, and blue could represent trust or knowledge.
Using enough colors on your website can take over some of your users’ processing power and force them to engage with your message more than they would normally.
A study conducted by Neilsen Norman Group found that websites that used several different colors saw more user interactions than those that used one color scheme.
Blue means trustworthy, red means dangerous…right?
There is much conflicting advice on whether specific colors should be used to communicate with your visitors. A recent study suggests that people are poor at interpreting color schemes, which may explain why designers like to use combinations that don’t work.
When it comes to selecting colors for your site, use common sense. If you want visitors to take action (like filling out a form or buying a product), you need high contrast between your call-to-action and its background.
If you’re unsure if your designs will produce those results, test them with users (ideally target customers). The right combination can be very powerful, but if you choose an ineffective scheme, it could doom your efforts from day one.
Colors and user emotions
The role of colors in our daily lives, when it comes to things like products or designs, can significantly impact how we feel about them. For example, Coca-Cola uses red as its primary brand color because studies show that people react more positively to it than other colors.
By picking just one strong and universally loved the emotion, companies can instantly gain a leg up over their competitors who choose other emotions for their brands.
Therefore, if you’re creating a design for your product or brand that’s meant to convey something specific (like safety or luxury), you want to select an appropriate color scheme that resonates with that idea and will resonate with consumers. Here you will learn about the benefits of well designed website.
Different cultures/countries/age groups like different colors
We often have assumptions about what our audience likes and dislikes, but testing those ideas can be extremely valuable. Suppose you’re doing some international outreach (or even just an outreach to a different part of your own country).
In that case, it’s worth looking at which colors resonate with people on a cultural level. Research can help you better understand your audience’s preferences and predict their reaction to certain products or services.
And, if you do end up changing things to test how they perform with specific audiences, try to keep a comparison group that isn’t exposed to your changes so you can compare like-to-like.
Good UX designers know how to use color for conversion
You’ve just launched your first website, and now you want to make sure you’re getting all of that sweet internet traffic you paid for. You set up a few links on social media and wait. Nothing happens.
After a couple of weeks, if you wonder why nobody clicked those links, check Google Analytics. Your bounce rate was 80%! What happened? Looking over your code, it seems that all of your hyperlinks are blue, which means they blend right into your background.
You can barely see them! It turns out people can tell at a glance if they think an image might be clickable or not based on color alone.
A cautionary tale about the dangers of using too many colors on a webpage
Your site could look better with more vibrant and contrasting colors, but does it look bad now because you’re using too many? Many inexperienced web designers make a critical mistake: They overdo it on color. There are two main problems with having an overly colorful web page.
One is a bit technical, and one is more aesthetic. Your site will be slower to load if you have too many photos, Flash animations, embedded videos, or other large elements on your page. The bandwidth needed to load your page quickly becomes much greater when you add even one more element, which requires loading.
Conclusion
The right colors can set a strong, cohesive tone for your site and help it stand out. The wrong colors can do more harm than good, detracting from your site’s content or making visitors feel uncomfortable. If you’re designing a new site from scratch, pick an inspiring color scheme with both images and text that speak to what your site represents and where it’s going—after all, at its core, a successful website is about storytelling. You’ll want to ensure each of your pages has a purpose and feels consistent with other pages on your site. Don’t worry about picking only one primary color; often, it’s best to work in complementary or analogous palettes.