Home Insights What Colours Should You Use On Your Website?
8th January 2014 in Web Design

What Colours Should You Use On Your Website?

Louise Towler

By Louise Towler

What Colours Should You Use On Your Website?

Colours can change our mood, in a blue room you may feel more relaxed and calm, whereas in a yellow room you may feel anxious.  So what difference does colour on your website design make?

Well colours can make a big difference to how your visitors feel when they are looking at your website, and research shows that small things like the colour of buttons can make a big difference to conversion rates on e-commerce websites.  So here are some guidelines on how to use colour effectively when you design your website:

Red

Red is a powerful colour and creates a feeling of urgency. It is popular for marketing and is a great accent colour to highlight sales and offers on a website.  Too much red can be offputting so it needs to be used carefully.

Pinterest uses red to hold their visitor’s attention and encourage interaction on their website.

Orange

Orange is an energetic colour but not as intense as red.  This colour invites people to do something, rather than pushing them, and studies have shown that orange buttons have the highest click through rates.

Amazon uses orange for the ‘buy now’ button to increase sales.

Blue

Blue is a calm colour and is trustworthy and cool.  Tones of blue are used by business and corporate websites to make think they are dependable, secure and experienced.

Facebook has a blue theme to make visitors feel safe.

Green

Green is a versatile, optimistic colour and associated with the environment and green living. It is also the colour of money and websites dealing with money often use green to make their visitors feel wealthy and optimistic.

Groupon uses green to encourage visitors to spend money.

Purple

Purple is the colour of imagination.  Dark purple is a royal colour adding prestige and elegance, whereas light purple is romantic and soft.  It is popular for beauty and fashion websites because it can also calm visitors whilst adding luxury.

Yahoo uses purple to signify creativity.

So what colours should you be using on your website?

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