What Color is your Website

What_is_the_color_of_your_website

Psychology behind the colors that can make or break your website's success. Did you know that the values associated with colors can have a significant impact on your website's success? And did you know that you can change your visitor's feeling, mood and reaction by using different colors on your website?

Here is a list of some of the common colors and what type of psychological emotion they invoke in people:

  1. RED is associated with love, passion, danger, warning, excitement, food, impulse, action, adventure.
  2. BLUE is associated with trustworthiness, success, seriousness, calmness, power, professionalism.
  3. GREEN is associated with money, nature, animals, health, healing, life, harmony.
  4. ORANGE is associated with comfort, creativity, celebration, fun, youth, affordability.
  5. PURPLE is associated with royalty, justice, ambiguity, uncertainty, luxury, fantasy, dreams.
  6. WHITE is associated with innocence, purity, cleanliness, simplicity
  7. YELLOW is associated with curiosity, playfulness, cheerfulness, amusement.
  8. PINK is associated with softness, sweetness, innocence, youthfulness, tenderness.
  9. BROWN is associated with earth, nature, tribal, primitive, simplicity.
  10. GREY is associated with neutralality, indifference, reserved.
  11. BLACK is associated with seriousness, darkness, mystery, secrecy.

You can use the above as a guide when choosing colors for your website. It really boils down to your target audience and what psychological message you want to convey in colors.

Blues and white backgrounds work best for business sites. Maternity sites should consider some pink. Golf or lawn sites sites should consider green. Food sites should consider red, etc.

There are also numerous shades of the same color that you can use too. Here a link that lists 216 colors that work in all browsers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors#Color_table

It boils down to common sense. As far as using colors in text, black text on white backgrounds may be dull but it is the most readable and pleasing to the eye.

Yellow text on white background is not only unreadable, but causes eye-strain which will have people leaving your site quickly. Nothing will lose sales faster than eye-straining text.