Before anything else shapes the opinion of a user when they open your website, colours they see once they open it creates the first impression. The colour scheme you choose is the first thing users see when they visit your home page so it is definitely one of the important things related to the user’s experience. That’s why we created a simple guide on how to choose a colour scheme for your website and provide your users with the best possible online experience.
Why website colours are important?
There are many things you can to do to improve your new website – and one of them is picking the right colours for it. The reason is that colours create an emotional reaction with users – without them knowing it. Certain colour schemes provoke certain feelings and stir emotions. Colours set a certain mood on a website and give it a more (or less) professional look. Depending on the business you do, you choose appropriate colours that give the right emotional background to what you offer on the site. It can help you increase brand recognition and ‘make’ the visitors choose click-to-call action buttons much more easily.
Ways to choose a colour scheme for your website
Knowing the websites 101 is not only about the functionality, but it’s also about the looks. Here are the most important tips on how to choose a colour scheme for your website and give it a brand new look.
Study the colours
Before you choose a colour scheme for your website, it’s important to understand the meaning and effects of each basic colour there is. This way, you’ll be able to choose a scheme that causes the feelings that you actually need. This way, you help your visitors understand the vibe your website is sending and they get affected in the right way. For example, blue is associated with trust and safety and that’s why it’s often used with banks. Next, black is often linked to luxury and websites that use it often sell premium and expensive products. Pink, on the other hand, is quite feminine and romantic and that’s why it often targets young, female audience. That’s why you should study the colours first and understand what you want to get by choosing a colour for your website.
Think about your goals
When you start building your website and adjusting its colours, you need to think about your goals and overall demographics. This is a part of building your business idea, and it needs to include the numbers and people you want to reach. Also, think about the emotions you want to arouse when a potential customer visits your website. With a proper plan, you’ll be able to make more effective choices and see immediate results.
Start with your brand colour
Brand colour, the colour of your logo, should be the dominant colour on your website. This should be your starting point, from which you will make the perfect combination later on. If you already have a logo, there’s one less step in choosing the right colour scheme for your website. However, if you don’t have one, be sure to create it following our tips in this article.
Think about gender
If you know which genders like your products and services, you have the job half done already. Men and women tolerate different colour schemes, so by knowing the gender that follows your business you can choose a suitable one for your website. Women generally like soft colours, and colours with tints – white added to it. Men, on the other hand, enjoy achromatic colours – colours without hue. They like bright colours, and some of the most favourite picks among men are black, blue, and green. Women, however, like purple, blue and green the most.
Complement the images
If you plan to include images on your website, you need to pick a colour scheme that complements those images. If you create harmony between photos and colours in the background, as well as the text colour, you’ll have a professional-looking website design what will attract the visitors more easily.
Colour coverage is important
Along with choosing the right colours, it’s important to set off how much of each colour appears on the website. There should be three colours in the scheme, so it looks harmonious and not too-colourful. You should have a primary colour that covers most parts of the website – around 60%. Next, there should be a contrasting colour that covers around 30% of the website and creates a good combination with the primary colour. And last, but not the least is the accent colour – the one that complements either one of the previous two colours and serves as a necessary detail to the scheme.
Make the perfect background and text colour mix
Basically, any colour is okay as long as you can read the text on a website. It is very important to make the perfect combination of text and background colour, which makes the text easy to read. There are many combinations of dark and light colours that create a perfect contrast and make the text easily visible. If you are not sure which combo is the best – choosing a light, greyish background and dark font colour will work for sure.
Take a look at competitor’s websites
There’s nothing wrong in checking with competition businesses once in a while. Of course, you can’t copy what they do, but you can learn the way they do an online presentation and apply similar rules. It’s best to do a bit of research on similar businesses and the way they’ve created their websites. You can learn what colours are dominant in your field of work, so you can have some kind of idea about where to start. Generally, similar businesses use similar colour schemes, so you have blues with banks, greens with health and medical services, reds and yellows in shopping websites, etc. In this case, you should definitely go with the flow, but create a unique version of it. You want to be recognized among many similar businesses and chosen for authenticity and outstanding quality.