Ever wonder why Facebook is blue? Maybe it's some scientifically calculated blue that makes people stay hooked online for hours at a time liking cat meme's and Miley Cyrus Videos. Nah...it's actually because Mark Zuckerberg is red/green color blind; and blue is the color Mark can see the best.
Not as intricate and scientific as you might have imagined, but that is not always the case with internet marketing. Smart companies use color to their advantage and have some amazing examples of how colors actually affect our purchasing decisions.
After all, sight is the strongest developed sense in most human beings. It’s only natural that 90% of an assessment for trying out a product is made by color alone. (source).
Fast Company recently wrote an amazing article on the topic of color and brought new research to light. Here is what they found:
Colors often trigger certain emotions and we are able to add them to our memory banks. For example:
What Colors Really Trigger in Marketing:
Black:
Qualities: Definite, credible, strength, powerful, precise, professional, direct, accuracy.
Best For: Construction, corporate, oil, financial, fashion, manufacturing, cosmetics, mining, marketing, tradesmen.
Green:
Qualities: Natural, organic, youth, nurturing, instructional, education, adventurous, ecological, calming, nature.
Best For: medicine, science, government, recruitment, ecological-business, tourism, human resources.
Blue:
Qualities: Credibility, calming, clean, focused, medical, professional, judicial, power, business-like.
Best For: Medical, scientific, utilities, government, healthcare, high-tech, recruitment, tradesmen, legal, information technology, dental, corporate.
These colors have been applied over countless logos in different shades, transparency, etc., but there is something to say about what their goal was for their brand. Take a look at a few of these great examples below.
How Can You Apply These Colors to Your Internet Marketing?
Obviously changing your logo might be a little bit much, unless you see the need, however there are still small adaptations that can be made using color. Changing your call-to-action buttons like "Buy Now" or "Sign-Up" can go a long way. If your busines has banners or images that showcase special offers, sales, or eBook downloads, you can apply colors to the images that might drive clicks and increase your sales.
Can Changing the Color of a Button Really Make a Difference?
Hubspot wondered the same thing in a test between red and green buttons. So they did a test and found that: The red button outperformed the green button by 21%.
“Green connotes ideas like “natural” and “environment,” and given its wide use in traffic lights, suggests the idea of “go” or forward movement. The color red, on the other hand, is often thought to communicate excitement, passion, blood, and warning. It is also used as the color for stopping at traffic lights. Red is also known to be eye-catching.”
Even More Color Evidence:
Kiss Metrics did a great job in this image, showing that color can affect the buying decisions of your website visitors.
Now to the Big Question, Why are Hyperlinks Blue?
Here is the full explanation from Fast Company:
“Tim Berners-Lee, the main inventor of the web, is believed to be the man who first made hyperlinks blue. Mosaic, a very early web browser, displayed webpages with an (ugly) gray background and black text. The darkest color available at the time that was not the same as the black text was the color blue. Therefore, to make links stand apart from plain text, but still be readable, the color blue was selected.”
Hopefully this article gave you a little more insight into the world of Internet Marketing and why color is so important. If you have any fun or interesting examples of how color was used for a website or business please share in the comments below!
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