How To Choose The Right Colors For Your eCommerce Website
Launching an online store involves a significant amount of planning and management. You will need to conduct market and competitive research, develop a business plan, and devise a marketing strategy. It’s easy to lose sight of the importance of good graphic design amidst the myriad of other concerns that must be addressed. However, when you create online store, the layout of your store must not be ignored as its visual appeal might influence a customer’s buying decision. Visitors’ eyes are drawn immediately to the site’s color scheme, which can greatly affect the site’s overall aesthetic and sense of uniformity. The study of color’s psychological effects is grounded in science and has practical implications for business. It has been observed (in a study titled “Impact of color on marketing“) that color alone can account for as much as 90% of initial impressions of products. That’s why it’s critical that you use appropriate color schemes when you plan to create ecommerce website.
Website Color Scheme: Overview
What we call a “color scheme” for websites is actually just a group of colors that a designer settles on. Color schemes, which are often referred to as color palettes, can contain any number of colors that the designer chooses. Because of the flexible nature of the website’s design, any color may serve multiple purposes across different parts of the site. In general, color palettes are separated into two groups of hues: primary and secondary hues. Backgrounds, logos, menus, and other prominent elements of a website will often be one of the primary colors, whereas secondary colors are frequently used as accents or in smaller doses.
Commonly, a color palette will feature a wide range of tones within a single hue, allowing for visual variety while maintaining a sense of cohesion. One of the most important aspects of developing a color scheme for a website is ensuring uniformity.
Maintaining a consistent color palette while using an online store builder helps to establish your brand identity, which is vital to the success of your business since your target audience will begin to associate your brand with the colors and aesthetic choices you make over and over again.
Choosing The Right Color Scheme For Your Website
Learn Your Way Around the Color Wheel
Primary, secondary, and tertiary colors make up the segments of the color wheel, and learning the distinction between them is the first step in mastering color theory. The color wheel’s primary colors are red, blue, and yellow; the rest of the colors are made by combining these three. The secondary hues come next. When you combine any two of the basic colors (orange, green, and purple), you obtain secondary colors. Tertiary colors, sometimes known as “middle colors,” are the last category. When you mix a primary and secondary color, you get these. Pairs of complementary colors include the familiar red-orange, yellow-green, and blue-purple.
The study of color relationships does not end here. However, given that we are now aware of the process by which colors are produced, we can understand how colors “interact” with one another, which is to say, how they collaborate with one another, as well as how we create our own color schemes.
Understand Different Color Schemes
Each hue has its own unique personality and meaning, and the same holds true for the interactions between colors. Depending on the specific “personalities” of the colors involved, the combination you choose for your website can communicate a specific idea or message to the user.
- Monochromatic Color Scheme
If you’re going for a monochromatic look, that means you’ll be sticking to one primary hue for your site’s theme and utilizing various tints, tones, and saturation levels of that color for everything else. For those just starting off, a color scheme like this is ideal. To highlight prices and discounts, use contrasting colors and lighting. Images and low-key hues like gray can be employed to round out the design. Sites that use monochromatic color palettes have a professional, polished appearance.
- Analogous Color Scheme
Analogous hues are those that sit next to one another on the color wheel. These hues provide a website with an approachable and subdued appearance. The gentler effects of an analogous color palette are hard to mess up. If you’re having trouble making an impact with your color choice, you might want to give this a try. Group colors in sets of two or three, and don’t forget that you can utilize different intensities of the same hue.
- Complementary Color Scheme
To use a color wheel analogy, complementary hues are those that sit directly across from one another on the wheel, such as blue and orange, red and green, etc. These contrasting tones can help your design stand out. This layout successfully combines subtlety and boldness, making a strong impression. It’s possible that a brand’s target audience would be turned off by a design centered solely on contrasting colors. If you believe this to be the case for your organization, you can supplement specific features of your website, such as a call to action button, with supplementary elements.
The Psychology of Colors
Color psychology is predicated on the theory that various hues elicit various emotional responses from people, each of which leads to a unique behavioral pattern. According to the principles of color psychology, the mood you set with your website’s color scheme will have an effect on how consumers perceive your brand, as well as on how they respond to your site.
As soon as we have an understanding of what each hue is known to symbolize, selecting the color palette that is going to be most effective for our website is going to be really obvious. If you’re creating a website for a spa, for instance, it makes sense to utilize colors that reflect nature and healing, like green, as well as potentially blue, which indicates serenity and trust.
Focus on Action-ability
Not everything can be judged by appearance. To clarify, we mean that a well-balanced color scheme is one of the most basic requirements for a successful website. The impact of your color scheme on the user experience is, however, just as crucial. The colors you use on your website can have a significant impact on your visitors, especially if you want them to do a certain action while they are there.
Keep In Mind Responsive Design
Every web designer should keep in mind the necessity of responsive design. While it’s quite obvious that you should make adjustments to the site’s size and layout in order to make it mobile-friendly, it may not be so obvious that responsiveness extends beyond these factors. The appearance of a website on a mobile device is heavily influenced by the color palettes that are used. The design process can be simplified significantly by prioritizing mobile responsiveness when selecting colors. You can ensure that your text elements are legible across all devices and that your icons and buttons are equally obvious on mobile and desktop by adhering to these guidelines.
Conclusion
It should be clear by now that colors play a crucial part in influencing a customer’s purchasing decision and preserving the brand’s identity. If you follow the tips mentioned, you should be able to establish a successful brand and color scheme for your online store.
