The psychology behind colors

Regardless of the media, our perception of colors remains the same. Whether you see the color blue in the sky or on your twitter page, it brings about the same sense of serenity and calmness to your mind allowing you to settle down and relax. The same principle is to be used to design your website as well. You may have noticed that most websites used the colors blue, green and orange and may have thought – ‘why couldn’t they just go for another color and stand apart’? But the simple fact of the matter is, as humans these three colors are the only ones that our eyes feel comfortable looking at. So here let’s take a brief look at how to effectively use these colors and get the best UI possible for a website.

The ever calm and serene safety of the color blue

Blue is often associated with calmness, serenity, trustworthiness, reliability and safety. And it should be the color of choice for websites of financial institutions, corporate organizations, and companies dealing with sensitive issues. Also blue is one of the safest colors to use in the web as well, as it has proved time and again that it simply doesn’t fail – think Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and numerous other successful websites. The simple advantage of using blue is that the chances of failure are pretty slim for most websites, but at the same time blue can be cold and unwelcoming to a lot of people as well. This means, the color is strictly forbidden for use with any website that’s dealing with selling products online, or websites of restaurants or other eating joints, it is a great marketing strategy for these websites, we suggest to check https://www.salesforce.com/solutions/small-business-solutions/win-customers/what-is-help-desk/ for more tips.

• Do not use blue in places where grabbing attention is more essential than keeping it.
• Use plain blue only when you want to be absolutely safe, use a mix of green and blue in other situations.
• Blue is definitely not the recommended color for use in situations when a striking deal is to be made, such as in ecommerce sites.

Think green, think growth

While most people relate green to health, green also symbolizes growth and it’s easy to understand why. Almost everything that’s green represents life and continuous development and nourishment, so if you’re building a site for an ambitious startup, green can be a great color to go for. But that’s one way of looking at it. Since green relates to health for most people, it’s the ideal color for use with online retail outlets that deal with organic products, food, consumables, and cosmetics and even for fast food joints as well – think Subway. If you’re designing a physical retail store, ask your chosen retail graphics company to incorporate green into the design. Green also augments well with other color, and provides a spot for the human eye to rest on. So to effectively use green, apart from the base theme, try to include green colored tables or light green images amidst endless content to grab the attention of weary users instantly. Needless to say, green is the perfect color for call-to-action buttons that lead to business making deals, or crucial options.

• Green works ideally when used in between chaos, such as too much text content, images, and so on.
• Never use green in fonts, close buttons, or in combination with transparent colors to avoid annoyed visitors.
• Green works great with white, when using in places such as blogs.

Use the power of orange to your advantage

Most scientists agree that the color orange causes restlessness and actually provokes hostility as well. And it is often referred to as a cheap color that represents risk taking. So why do people continue to use orange in their websites? Well, it’s all about turning negatives to positives. For instance, the restlessness caused by orange makes it ideal for use in elements such as popups, ad banners, call-to-action buttons and others those demand attention. Also the hostility provoked by orange causes customers to make quick decision as well; so if you’re selling a product, make sure the checkout buttons are in orange.

• Orange is perfect for warning people, so use it in places where you want induce a sense of adventure.
• Never use orange in a landing page or as a base theme, always mix a more calming color with orange.
• Orange and black is quite possibly the best combination you can make for banners

The term ‘cheap’, over the years has come to be regarded as a bargain rather than a derogatory term. So, using orange in ecommerce websites also leads customers to believe that they are getting a great deal out of the purchase (look at this for more details). So if you’re slashing prices or adding a discount tag over the product price, the color you will have to go out for is orange. The best example of a company using orange to its advantage is Amazon. But take from their lead, too much orange can be detrimental, use it in the right amount, in the right places, at the right timing.

Learn to mix things up for creating a perfect art

No one plans to build a website using the same color throughout, so to effectively utilize the three magic colors of success you need to know how to mix them up. The colors for the logo and the base theme aren’t going to change, but the font colors, icons, buttons, navigation bars, CTAs, drop downs, tables, border and many other elements can change from time to time. So here is a quick review of which color to use where in the single page.

As previously mentioned, blue allows users to rest on the page for more than a few seconds, so be sure to include blue in the header image or other places where your visitors are likely lay their eyes upon. Use a mix of green and blue to act as a buffer when conveying something important, to grab the maximum attention of your viewers. Try to avoid using orange anywhere except in places which require immediate attention and requires your users to make decisions quickly. Purple or lavender can be effectively utilized as background for galleries and portfolio sliders, as the color is proven to stimulate creativity and productivity. Finally use red in places where you have to tempt your users, such as in promotions of sales clearance outcomes and so on.

There is no absolute hard and fast rule for using colors in a webpage, but the basic principles and psychology of colors described above suits all. So use your imagination and creativity and create the perfect blend and make the colors work for you.