Wouldn’t it be cool if you could change the colour of your “Buy Now” buttons on your website and immediately double your conversions? If only it were that simple…but it’s not.
One of the most interesting and controversial aspects of marketing as it relates to persuasion is the psychology of colour. Lots of people have tried to classify consumers responses to specific colours ie, yellow = optimism, blue = trust, purple = creativity etc. However, most don’t take into account the fact that personal preference, experience, cultural differences, context and even colour blindness all influence the affect colours have. So the idea that certain colours elicit certain emotional responses is about as reliable as today’s weather report.
When it comes to choosing the “right” colour, research has found that predicting your customers reaction to the colours appropriateness is far more important than the individual colour itself. Does the colour fit the product. For example, if you are selling vegan soy-based meat replacement products, using blood red on your packaging may be a little disconcerting.
Our brains also show preference for easily recognisable brands – which makes colour an important element when creating a brand identity. This is know as the isolation effect. So, your hot pink financial services logo is likely to stand out quite vividly in a sea of blue competitor logos – all created in the belief that blue instills trust in financial service customers. In this example, Virgin America chose to stand out with the design on their site and in their app. While it seems highly unusual for an airline website, it is definitely memorable:
So where does this leave us when trying to get more conversions? Well, you likely already know the answer to this question. There is no ‘best colour’ for conversions. Make sure that your colour choice is appropriate for your product/service and then make sure that your buttons and CTA’s stand out. Colour contrast is the most important element to catch the eye of your potential customer’s so you’ll need to select a highly contrasting accent colour (complementary or triadic colours) for your buttons and CTA’s.
So, what do you think, do you find that colour psychology works for you? Or have we raised more questions than answers here? Please let us know what you think in the comments section below.
If you’d like some help optimising your CTA’s for more conversions, I’d be happy to help you out with some UX and AB testing to find out what is working and what’s not.
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