What’s Your Favorite Color? Your Answer May Change Once You Better Understand How Color Theory Can Boost Your Conversion Rates.

Easily dismissed by some, color theory (color psychology) is often viewed as marketing “black magic.” In reality the very best color theory is the result of countless studies and the compellation of real-world data over decades of research.

As with many disciplines in this same vein, when these metrics are viewed from a distance, often times, some very clear conclusions can begin to be drawn. It is no mistake that some of the worlds most distinguishable brands have adopted, and stayed with, a single color scheme deeply rooted in this type of study. 

Campbell’s Soups is one of my personal favorite successes within the realm of color theory. Even at first mention, it’s difficult to think of anything other than the distinctive shade of red that has been used on their cans for decades.

Please understand that this is no mistake.

Red has long been recognized as being associated with food, impulse and action, all perfectly suited for grabbing a shopper’s attention while perusing the grocery market aisles.

So, how can you begin to see results by using color theory within your website?

First - Gather some baseline information about how proper use of certain colors has historically shaped the way in which customers perceive products and brands.

Examples of how customers often perceive color:

Red: excitement, strength, passion, speed, boldness, determination, desire, courage 

Yellow: warmth, sunshine, happiness, comfort, energy 

Blue: trust, reliability, belonging, loyalty, professionalism (This is one of the most popular colors, especially for businesses.) 

Orange: playfulness, warmth, vibrant, enthusiasm, creativity 

Green: nature, fresh, cool, growth, abundance, harmony 

Pink: soft, sweet, security 

Purple: royal, spirituality, dignity, nobility, luxury, elegance 

White: pure, clean, youthful, innocence, simplicity 

Black: sophistication, formality, seductive, mystery 

Gold: prestige, expensive, elite 

Silver: prestige, cold, scientific

It’s interesting to note that some studies have shown that color impression alone can account for as much as 60% of customer acceptance or rejection of a product or service.

Second – Determine which of these colors will work best and worst with your existing color theme.

If you are heading up the design/re-design for a well established brand, it’s important that the color choices you make fit with your established theme.

Often times, by slightly altering the shade of the desired color can make a world of difference in whether your call to action button simply contrasts with the body of your site enough to grab someone’s attention, versus being perceived as a blatant and unnecessarily [visually] “loud” advertisement. As you might imagine, this can have an adverse effect on conversion, rather than what you may have hoped for by incorporating color theory into your sites design.

Fortunately, the web is a wonderful (and free) resource for scouting other designers’ efforts for using color in this way to drive conversions. Have a look around at sites both inside and outside your industry to get a feel for what is working and what may not be working as well. Trust your instincts. That, after all, is what color theory is all about. 

Chances are you will never see a call to action button in the same way again.

Third – Test, test, test.

While trusting your instincts can be a perfectly suitable way to get started in using color theory, it can’t stop there. Nothing will better measure the success of your assumptions than cold, hard data staring you in the face.

HubSpot offers an easy to use A/B testing solution within its Inbound Marketing platform. We would suggest that you take full advantage of these tools, or get a little outside help in doing so.

You can go as crazy as you want with testing, and generally speaking, more testing is better than less. But one example that has always stood out to me at the far reaches of color theory testing took place at none other than Google.

The story goes that the designers at Google could not decide between two shades of blue to use for their text links. So to best settle the argument for good, they tested a staggering 41 shades of blue in order to determine which shade would convert the optimum number of text link clicks.

Over the top…perhaps. But only through testing in this manner could Google decisively point to the shade of blue that converted above all others.

That folks is Inbound Web Design at work.