Do you ever click away from a website because the colors feel too harsh or it doesn’t match your expectations?
It’s so common nowadays because colors greatly influence our emotions and behavior, especially when we’re shopping online.
In eCommerce, your website is like your virtual shop. It’s where you showcase your products, share your brand story, and convert visitors into customers.
Just like a real store, your website’s visual experience is super important here because it is attached to your customer’s decision-making process.
And here’s the cool part: picking the right colors for your eCommerce site doesn’t just make it look nice; it also helps you sell more products.
In this blog post, we’ll explain how to choose the right eCommerce website color schemes and recommend some tools.
Ready to discover the magic of color and turn your eCommerce website into a sales powerhouse? Let’s dive in ??
Why Choosing the Right Color Schemes for Your eCommerce Website is Important
By getting the right color you can ensure a better eCommerce user experience for your online store. This is because:
- Colors boost brand recognition by an average of 80%
- The color impression is responsible for 60% of the acceptance or rejection of a product
The right color scheme acts like a silent salesperson, no matter if it is an eCommerce website or a product landing page. This ultimately influences how customers perceive your brand and their decision to buy.
Let’s find out why choosing the right eCommerce website color schemes is very important:
- First Impressions Always Matters: When a customer lands on your site the first thing he or she notices is the design and color schemes. This creates a subconscious impression within seconds. A well-chosen color palette can make your brand appear trustworthy, exciting, or luxurious. On the other hand, mismatched colors can confuse and drive visitors away.
- Emotional Connection Being Established: Colors have a strong psychological impact on human emotion. If you can understand the science behind how colors influence emotions, you can then target specific feelings in your audience.
For example, warm colors like red can create a sense of urgency, which is why they use red boards on the road to signify danger. Blues symbolize security, inspiration, and wisdom like the blue sky. This is why financial products often use blue as their brand color.
- Brand Identity and Recognition: Sometimes, colors become so closely associated with a brand that they become instantly recognizable. When you think of the Facebook logo you can relate it to the dark blue shade, whereas Coca-Cola is known for its vibrant red.
A consistent color scheme always helps customers recognize your brand and builds a sense of reliability and trustworthiness by being memorable among competitors?.
- Increases User Experience: User experience is all that matters in an eCommerce, right? You can ensure optimal user experience with the right color schemes too. For example, bright colors comparatively work better for a young audience, while muted colors may be better for a more mature audience. Also, a high contrast between the text and background colors can make the text easier to read.
- High Conversions and Sales: According to a study, 85% of consumers say that color is a primary reason for purchasing a product. The right color scheme can subconsciously encourage visitors to click the “buy” button.
- Accessibility Control: It’s important to make sure your site’s color scheme is accessible to all users, including those with color vision deficiencies. This shows you care about every customer. You can use color contrast testing tools to achieve this.
- Industry Standards: While it’s important to stand out, it’s also important to follow what’s common in your industry. When your customer acknowledges you are maintaining the industry standards, this helps to create a sense of familiarity and trust. For instance, if you sell eco-friendly products, use green to highlight your environmental values as everyone else does.
In a nutshell, a well-crafted color scheme can evoke desired emotions, establish brand identity, and enhance user experience, thereby driving engagement and sales.
How to Choose the Right Color Schemes for Your eCommerce Website – 5 Tips for You
Colors are much more than just visual elements. They are also powerful enough to influence emotions, brand perception, and ultimately, purchasing decisions.
Some tips to help you choose are:
1. Understand Color Psychology
People don’t just see colors, they feel them and relate to them too. For example, red is often used to create a sense of urgency or to portray something negative, while blue is associated with trust and stability. Green is linked to nature and growth, while yellow is cheerful and optimistic.
Understanding the actual psychological impact of colors helps you to choose a palette that aligns with your brand personality which eventually resonates with your target audience.
2. Consider Your Brand Identity
Your website’s color scheme must be consistent with your overall brand identity. This is non-negotiable. If you already have brand colors, make sure your website design gives a vibe of that. But, if you’re starting from scratch, choose colors wisely and make sure that reflects your brand’s values, personality, and target market.
Imagine a playful children’s clothing store. Their website should be bright, and cheerful with colors like sunshine yellow or playful orange. On the other hand, a website selling luxury watches often contains sophisticated tones like deep navy or cool silver.
3. Analyze Your Target Audience
Who are you trying to attract? Obviously your potential customers. So, when selecting colors, consider your target audience’s demographics, interests, and preferences as different age groups, genders, and cultures respond differently to certain color combinations.
For instance, a website targeting young adults, with vibrant and trendy colors will be more appealing for them. On the other hand, if your audience consists of seniors you could use softer, more muted tones which gives a classic vibe.
4. Select a Base Color
Think of your base color as the foundation of your website’s color scheme. This color will likely be used for your background or core branding elements like the header, navigation menu, and call-to-action buttons.
Once you have your base color you can then select complementary colors that work well together and create a harmonious palette. You can also use color theory principles like the color wheel to find colors that are similar, opposite, or analogous to your base color.
5. Ensure Readability and Contrast
Aesthetics are important but you should compromise readability for aesthetics. Make sure your website’s text is easy to read with sufficient contrast and readable color.
It’s usually better to have dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background. Also, do not pick colors that are too similar for the text and background because that can make it hard to read. Last but not least, test your color combinations for accessibility and make changes if necessary.
Here’s a list showing the meanings associated with different colors for eCommerce websites:
3 Tools That Will Help You to Pick Your Website’s Color Palette
Picking a website’s color palette is a crucial design decision that sets the tone and user experience. There are several tools available to assist you in this process, ranging from simple color pickers to comprehensive palette generators.
Here are a few options to consider:
Adobe Color
Adobe Color (formerly known as Adobe Kuler) is a free and must-have tool for any designer. It is a comprehensive color palette generator that allows you to choose five separate colors from the color wheel or generate palettes based on one color, like monochromatic, analogous, or triad. You can even extract color palettes from images.
The best part is that this tool allows you to copy hex codes or RGB values for easy use in your designs.
Canva Color Palette Generator
Another free and user-friendly option. Canva Color Palette Generator lets you easily create graphics in your chosen palettes and export them for use in other design tools. Simply upload a photo or enter a seed color, and Canva will generate a range of harmonious color palettes based on your input. It’s a great way to discover unexpected color combinations that might spark inspiration for beginners.
Paletton
Paletton is another color palette creator based on the principles of the color wheel. It offers a range of customization options to help you create a unique color palette.
You can opt for predefined options or create a palette from scratch, adjusting hues and distances to create harmonious combinations of colors. Paletton allows you to export your palette in various formats, including CSS code and a color swatch PNG.
Create Your E-Commerce Website Today!
There you have it! We hope you learned how important it is to choose the right color scheme for your eCommerce website. It is an investment in creating your brand identity, as every business is unique as well as its customers.
Just to remind you, here are some of the key notes from the article:
- Always aim for a balanced color option. This will make your website layout more readable and eye-pleasing.
- Always ensure your color choices are inclusive for users with color blindness. To make sure of this use color contrast checkers.
- Always maintain a consistent color scheme throughout your website as well as marketing materials. This will build consistent brand recognition.
The power of branding your e-commerce website is important as well. Make sure to always have your logo design front and center, use your designated typography, and use illustrations, photos, and other visual elements that suit your identity.
Once you’re done with your website, don’t forget to market it. Use our customizable templates for Facebook Ads, TikTok Videos, and more.
Have anything in mind worth mentioning? Let us know in the comments below.
Written by DesignCrowd on Friday, May 31, 2024
DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.