When was the last time you thought about the effect color has on the things you do every day? From the things you buy to how you feel at the end of the day, color plays a big part in everything you do. But here’s the thing—color is also a subtle thing. Since color is everywhere, it tends to blend into the background and into our subconscious (if we were consciously thinking about what the colors we see are doing to us on a daily basis, there’d be no time or brainpower left for anything else!). For instance, you may not realize why a certain place makes you feel anxious or happy, but chances are the color of the room plays a part in this.
Here at Big Red SEO, our Omaha search engine optimization experts are always hard at work developing new strategies to make your business website more visible to your potential customers. While our emphasis is on making sure your website shows up in the highest positions on Google and other search engines, we also know how important the next step in the process is—closing the sale! Read on to learn how you can use color psychology to influence your customers’ purchasing decisions and jumpstart your conversion rates.
What is Color Psychology Anyway?
Simply put, color psychology is the scientific study of how color affects human behavior. While color psychology is an invaluable field in furthering our understanding of how the human mind works, it’s especially useful when applied to SEO marketing. Simply by tweaking the colors you use on your website, you can optimize its attractiveness to specific audiences and purposes, which can in turn increase your conversion rates! We’ve even designed our office space around the ideas of color psychology!
Our search engine optimization specialists will go over how to use color psychology to your advantage in the course of your SEO marketing efforts.
First of All, Color is Contextual in SEO Marketing
The first piece of advice we can give you is that there is no “best” color to use to increase your conversions. Any color can prove to be effective over another in a particular context. That is to say, if you run a company that specializes in children’s birthday parties, you probably wouldn’t want your website’s color palette to be black, white, and grey, but rather bright colors that reflect the inherent fun and celebration you want to convey. On the other side of that coin, you wouldn’t want to splash garish primary colors all over a site that sells upscale men’s watches. The proper colors to use in your SEO marketing depend on the context of your company.
Blue is a Trustworthy Color
If you want your website to exude feelings of calm, authority, and trustworthiness, consider basing your website’s color palette in blue. Many businesses in the financial industry use blue as their predominant color, whether they be banks like Capital One or credit card processors including PayPal, and this is no coincidence. The same goes for hospitals and other healthcare-related businesses. Use blue if your company image depends on customers putting their trust in your product or service.
Note: Never use blue for any business related to food. Blue has many great uses, but it has been shown to be appetite-suppressing. People eat less from a blue plate, and as there are few naturally-occurring blue foods (can you think of any other than blueberries and plums?), you can decrease your conversions significantly by using blue in a food context.
Orange is the New Color for Impulse Buys
Orange is a “fun” color! It can create a sense of haste, impulse, competition, or confidence. That’s why you’ll see orange used a lot in various sports teams’ logos—the Denver Broncos, Florida Gators, New York Knicks, and even our own Omaha Lancers use orange to this effect.
You can use orange to your advantage in your SEO marketing by tapping into these feelings of fun and impulse. If you’re having a limited-time sale, for instance, try advertising it with an orange banner (Amazon uses this trick effectively) to create a sense of urgency.
Remember, though, that orange can be overwhelming if you use it overzealously! You don’t want the color itself to be more noticeable than the message you’re trying to convey with it, so use orange as an accent for the best effect.
Black is Elegant and Sophisticated
If you’re selling any kind of high-value product to an elite clientele, black is the name of the game. Take a look at many of the world’s best known high-end brands–Lamborghini, Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, and many others all use black as a base color on their websites to convey a sense of exclusivity, luxury, and class. You can incorporate these psychological cues into your own website design by including black elements whenever you want your potential customers to feel luxurious when buying your product.
Yellow is a Warning Sign
Next time you’re driving, take a look around at all the street signs. Those that are put up to warn you of something (lane changes, animal crossings, slippery roads, tight curves, the list goes on and on) are always yellow. This is for a number of reasons: yellow is a high contrast color that’s easy to see at night, but yellow also stimulates your brain’s excitement center—seeing yellow, in other words, puts you on alert.
Whether it’s a biological reaction or simply a result of cultural engraining, it doesn’t really matter when it comes to using yellow on your website—our Omaha SEO marketing team at Big Red SEO suggests you use it sparingly to draw attention to elements you want to highlight and to provoke just enough of an anxiety response in your potential customers to get them to perform the call to action you want.
Green is a Natural Thing for SEO Marketing
Trees are green, grass is green, bushes are green…get the picture? Green is one of the most prevalent colors in the natural world, so it makes sense to use green on your website if what you’re selling has anything to do with nature or natural products. This can include organic products, environmentally-friendly products, outdoor activity services, and much more.
The color green is also said to prompt creativity. According to a recent study, participants were more likely to have flashes of creativity when viewing the color green than any other color. Keep this in mind in your SEO marketing when you want to have potential customers imagine themselves using your product.
Contact Big Red SEO at (402) 522-6468!
Here at Big Red SEO, our Omaha search engine optimization team knows that web design can have a huge effect on your conversion rates. Using the findings of color psychology to your advantage when creating your website can help your entire SEO marketing campaign as well, by improving all kinds of metrics (like bounce rates, time on site, and visits with multiple page views) that Google uses to establish rankings.
We take the findings in the field of color psychology seriously, which is why we’ve designed our office space to make use of many of the colors we’ve covered here! If you need help with any aspect of Omaha SEO marketing or web design, contact Big Red SEO today at (402) 522-6468! We’re ready to start working for you.