Color Tips that Will Improve Your Website Conversions

1. Women don’t like gray, orange, and brown. They like blue, purple, and green.

In a survey on color and gender, 35% of women said blue was their favorite color, followed by purple (23%) and green (14%). 33% of women confessed that orange was their least favorite color, followed by brown (33%) and gray (17%).

Other studies have corroborated these findings, revealing a female aversion to earthy tones, and a preference for primary colors with tints. Look at how this is played out. Visit nearly any e-commerce site whose target audience is female, and you’ll find these female color preferences affirmed.

2. Men don’t like purple, orange, and brown. Men like blue, green, and black.

If you’re marketing to men, these are the colors to stay away from: purple, orange, and brown. Instead, use blue, green, and black. These colors — blue, green, and black — are traditionally associated with maleness. However, it comes as a slight surprise to some that brown isn’t a favorite pick.

3. Use blue in order to cultivate user’s trust.

Blue is one of the most-used colors, with good reason. A lot of people like blue.

Read the literature on blue, and you’ll come across messages like

• The color blue is a color of trust, peace, order, and loyalty. 
• Blue is the color of corporate America and it says, “Chill . . . believe and trust me . . . have confidence in what I am saying!” 
• Blue calls to mind feelings of calmness and serenity. It often is described as peaceful, tranquil, secure, and orderly. 

There is wide agreement in the research community on the psychological effects of the color blue. Its subtle message of trustworthiness and serenity is true. You can use this to your advantage on your website and landing pages.

4. Yellow is for warnings.

Yellow is a color of warning. Hence, the color yellow is used for warning signs, traffic signals, and wet floor signs.It seems odd, then, that some color psychologists declare yellow to be the color of happiness. Business Insider reports that “brands use yellow to show that they’re fun and friendly.” There is a chance that yellow can suggest playfulness. However, since yellow stimulates the brain’s excitement center, the playfulness feeling may be simply a state of heightened emotion and response, not exactly sheer joy.

5. Green is ideal for environmental and outdoor products.

Perhaps the most intuitive color connection is green — the color of outdoors, eco-friendly, nature, and the environment. Green essentially is a chromatic symbol for nature itself.

Apart from its fairly obvious outdoorsy suggestiveness, green also is a color that can improve creativity. Labeled “the green effect,” one study indicated that participants had more bursts of creativity when presented with a flash of green color as opposed to any other color.

5. Orange is a fun color that can create a sense of haste or impulse.

The positive side of orange is that it can be used as the “fun” color. According to some, orange helps to “stimulate physical activity, competition, and confidence.” This may be why orange is used heavily by sports teams and children’s products.

6. Black adds a sense of luxury and value.

The darker the tone, the more lux it is, says our internal color psychology. An article from Lifescript describes black as “elegance, sophistication, power,” which is exactly what luxury designers and high-end e-commerce sites want you to feel. The article goes on to describe black as the color of “timeless, classic” which helps further explain the use of black in high-value products.

8. Don’t neglect white.

In most of the color psychology material I read, there is a forgotten feature. Maybe that’s because color theorists can’t agree on whether white is a color or not. I don’t really care whether it is or not. What I do know is that copious use of white space is a powerful design feature.