Colors significantly affect the perceptions of what we see in a particular way. It is certainly not a coincidence why such companies as Coca Cola and Mc Donalds use red as their main brand color while Nokia and Facebook use blue. The reason lies within the associations that we unconsciously draw with those particular colors. Digging a bit into color psychology, we will find that red provokes appetite while blue color is believed to infuse trust, security and responsibility. Choice of a color for the brand, logo or website has almost become a science in marketing. Even it might sound overestimated at first glance but colors may significantly affect the businesses’ success.
Let’s consider some facts:
– Our eyes process 85 % of information.
– Colors alone increase brand recognition by 85 %.
– More than 80 % of shoppers point to color as a primary reason they buy a particular product.
– According to the customer survey, 42 % of shoppers base their opinion of a website on the overall design alone and 52 % of shoppers did not return to a website because of the overall aesthetic.
– Magazine readers recognize colored ads 21 % more than black-and-white ads.
As you can see, colors do matter. An experiment conducted by Hubstop showed how such a simple action as change of the press button color may increase the conversion rate by 21 %. Two similar ads but with different press button colors (green and red) were displayed on the website. The ad with the red press button got 21 % more interested users than the ad with the green button. Note, that color was the only feature that differentiated the ads.
Kissmetrics analytics company has come up with a research that identified sets of colors preferred by men and women. It was found that most women prefer such colors as blue, green and purple but hate orange, brown and gray. Men usually like blue, green and black but dislike brown, orange and purple. It may be quite useful information when creating the apps targeting at men and women separately.
For sure, general recommendations and color qualities alone are not enough to be taken into consideration in marketing. There are a dozen of other factors that matter as well –industry nature, customer type, business concept and so on. For instance, “red” color depending on the context may characterize two opposite things – warmth, passion and love as well as danger, warning, blood and anger. Also, the color has opposite associations in different cultures. While Chinese associate red with prosperity and happiness, South Africans associate it with mourning.
Hence it follows that in order to come up with the right choice of color it is important to consider other factors as well. Remember that people are driven by emotion rather than logic when making purchasing decisions. When Heinz changed the color of their signature ketchup from red to green, the company sold over 10 million bottles in the first 7 months, which resulted in 23 million in sales. It was neither the quality nor the price but the color alone that was changed. So make sure that the colors you choose contribute to the emotional attachment of the customer to your product you want to create and do not hesitate to experiment.
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