Proper use of color in your website design is of paramount importance. The wrong color scheme may drive away traffic while an ideal color scheme can help foster user retention and sales. Mostly due to social conditioning, colors can influence moods or help convey certain thoughts and evoke emotion. A simple example is signal light colors. After generations of people using them, the colors themselves have assumed the meaning of the signal light… red has been translated stop, or a bad status. Yellow denotes caution or the need for heightened alert or attention, and green of course is for go, and can also mean good or convey the notion of good status.
I have personally witnessed lawyers use colors to try and convey these feelings in a court case:
The incident involved parties from two vehicles, the offenders in a green car and the victims in a red car. While drawing up a diagram of the incident, the prosecuting attorney slyly had the witnesses use a red marker to draw the position of offenders’ vehicle (the green car) and a green marker for the victims’ vehicle (the red car) By the time the defense attorney had realized what the prosecuting attorney was up to made a motion to object, the precedent had been set and the judge ruled that the color selections would stand as they were, so as to not confuse the jurors.
This was defiantly a shrewd maneuver on the part of the prosecuting attorney, and you should keep such things in mind while considering colors of font text and backgrounds for your website.
Here are some tips on how colors may influence and affect people:
Red is linked to blood, fire, strength and passion, and can also denote danger. If used sparingly on a light background color, it may be used to entice attention and highlight.
Blue is the largest leading color and it could denote confidence, loyalty and authority. The darker end may allude to strength, while the lighter shades may be used to express fantasy and dream. Blue may also mean depth, professionalism, trust and honor. Dark blue is used by myriads corporate companies, but this color could also be construed as cold.
Green is linked to trees, money and envy. The larger calming color in the spectrum, it is a favorite with web-sites that are associated with nature. The color green could summarize instincts of durability, safety and harmony. It is also a sound color to use to emphasize calm and relaxation.
Yellow could be a superlative color to bring attention to certain aspects of a web page. It could be linked with happiness and summer, and conversely to caution and the need for alertness. The color yellow could also symbolize wealth, joy optimism and activity. Using yellow in web design is a famous style to make components stand out from the rest of the site.
Black is a very notorious, background color as it displays other colors very well. It is associated with feeling of sexiness, style, elegance and power. The color black can also evoke feelings of evil and mourning. Rock bands usually use black backgrounds because of its association with the dark side and anger.
White is linked with simple and clean designs, so it is favored by legions design companies. It conjures up instincts of cleanliness, simplicity, honesty and innocence. The color white is very common in design web-sites like interior design and graphic design. It may create a feeling of spaciousness and it is linked to peace, simplicity, purity and light.
Gray can be a strange color as it is not very strong. Gray can be connected to respect, humility, decay and boredom. It is used a lot to create shiny gradients in website design to give a slick, up to date feel to a website. It is used heavily on technology websites.
Orange is associated with fire, enthusiasm, heat and danger. But it is also a very friendly and youthful color that is used frequently in web sites aimed at youth. Orange is strongly related to spirituality and healing. It is the color that symbolizes Buddhism and as such, it has assumed a healing initiative about it. It is a bold color that is not as bright as yellow yet not as deep as red.
In website design, purple is an underused color, doubtlessly because it can be remarked as a feminine color. The color is also linked to royalty, indulgence, luxury, romance and wisdom.
The color brown is associated with tradition, stability, depth and nature. But it is very similar to green in the fact that it is also related to trees, mother earth and calm.
The role of color is not just to give the website an appearance that is pleasing to the eye. It may be used to evoke senses and emotions from the end user. Choosing colors that irritate the user will have damaging effects on your site traffic, while selecting color cleverly can convey the professionalism the user expects. The psychology of color may play a massive role in creating a successful web site. The ability to subliminally create an expectation amongst the user may be a powerful sales tool. Selecting colors without thought may inadvertently put users off the site. Creating color schemes that guide users to an end goal could generate more sales and make the whole user experience stress free.