Selecting the best brand color for your online business is one of the most important decisions to take to identify your brand. Understanding the psychology and the impact of colors on your audience, will help you creating a winning brand and becoming successful.
Each business has its own niche and work better with a specific color. Research reveal that most of consumers behave differently with colors when shopping online. Visual appearance has a big impact on human being, and is heavily used every day by big brands in their marketing strategies to create emotions and feelings towards their brands.
The good new is, you also can create your own online business, and having your marketing strategy to use for your brand. So, in this article, we are going to show you all the secrets behind the brand color psychology, and help you decide which is the best color for your brand.
Why Brand Color Is Important
Brand color can tell a lot of things about your business. it is important to use the color’s psychology to send the right message to your customers. Keeping using the brand color everywhere in your business, website, logo, banners, products, and anything related to your brand, will help you get customer’s Trust, and have a big impact on your sales.
What Is Brand Color Psychology
Brand color psychology is the study of how colors affect and change the way we think about brands and products. Colors have an impact on our emotions which play a major role in how we behave as buyers. Research revealed that brand color influence 60% to 80% of a customer’s purchasing decision. Choosing the right color for your online business will affect your total sales, and make your brand having a big success.
How Brand Color Can Affect Customers
As you may noticed that only few colors are used in 80% of the time in almost all online businesses. Like the Blue, Red, Green, Orange, Yellow, Purple, Black and White. Every color affect the human being differently. Some can be associated to Energy and Excitement, while others associated to Calmness and Serenity.
Now, what color do you use for your brand ? Here is an explanation about the most used brand colors and what differentiates each of them. You will define which color will match the best your brand, and be the right choice for your online business.
Brand Color’s Meaning
Blue
Blue is the most popular brand color used by a lot of top brands. Is always related to Trust, Security, Confidence, Peace, Integrity, Sincerity and Tranquility. Blue gives the Relax feeling like sky and ocean, is also Soft color comparing with the black when it used in websites, logo and marketing banners.
Here are only few of hundreds of brands using the blue as their brand color : PayPal, Ford, Walmart, HP, VISA, American Express, Pfizer, DELL, Intel, Samsung, Facebook, IBM, EMERSON, Lowe’s, Sysco, Skype, GE, Cintas, Citi, Oral-B, Oreo, and much more.
The blue color can be used almost with any brand, except if another color match better with your niche. When you want to be viewed as Trustworthy and Cool, blue is the best color for you. Blue also comes with many different levels, make sure to choose the best blue for your brand color.
Red
The Red color is used for Love, Passion and Romance. Is always associated with Energy and Excitement. According to research, the Red color increases your heart rate, makes you breath faster, and has also the Appetite effect.
When it used in logo, marketing banners, landing pages and websites, especially in the shop buttons, it Grabs Attention and makes customers click to buy. Some of big brands are using the Red color to grab attention and/or make customers to buy, like : CNN, Netflix, Coca-Cola, Red Bull, McDonalds, Tesla, Costco, Honeywell, Target, H&M and more.
Use the red color in your logo if you want to grab people attention to your website. If your main brand color is not red, but you want to make customers click to sell your online products, use the red color only in your website shopping buttons.
Always make sure to pick the right red color from the palette and avoid the darker once, since they can have the opposite effect of Danger and Anger.
Green
Green is a color that is synonymous of Nature, Freshness, Health, Wealth, Calmness, Generosity and Prestige. Green tends to be associated with Life along with the feelings of Peace and Serenity. Many big brands are using the green color, like : Fiverr, Starbucks, Lacoste, Invidia, Carlsberg, Android, Acer, Land Rover, Tic-tac, and more.
The green color is best for many niches, and it’s widely used by the health and wellness brands, like Diet, Vegan, Nutrition, Weight Loss, Food and Climate Change. Almost all levels of green palette are good, but still avoid using the darker once, since they can have the opposite effect.
Yellow
Yellow color is popular for brands that want a Positivity feeling. It’s usually association with the Sunshine, which brings Happiness and Optimism. Yellow also stands for Warmth, Intellect, Friendliness and Creativity.
You need to use the yellow color with caution, since it can have the opposite effect. It can also be seen as a Cheapness products and services. If your niche is all about cheap products and services, then the yellow color will be good for you.
The most popular brands using the yellow color are : Best Buy, Schweppes, National Geographic, Nikon, Post-it, Hertz, Mailchimp, CAT. Some use the yellow as a second brand color, like : McDonalds, IKEA, Shell, Kodak, DHL, Burger King, Denny’s, and more.
Orange
Orange is the best color for brands that want the brightness of yellow and the energy of red. It is a Creative and Innovative color that evokes a Friendly and Warmly feeling. Orange also have Cheapness and Good Deals meaning. Amazon use the orange as brand color in his logo and website, to show the good deals you can find with affordable prices. Don’t use though the dark orange since it has the effect of Frustration.
Many well-known brands use the orange color like : Amazon, Fanta, Reese’s, MasterCard, Tangerine, Home Depot, TNT, nickelodeon and more.
Purple
Purple is not a very popular color, it’s used with few businesses like : FedEx, Yahoo, Viber, SyFy, Always, Milka and few more. It’s usually referred to Royalty, Wisdom, Nostalgia and Dignity.
Even though the purple color is not popular, but has a nice looking color. If you think this color is the best fit for your brand, use it with confidence, because almost all purple palette levels are good and has no negative effect, from the lighter to the darker.
Brown
Brown represents the Earth and Simplicity, it’s preferred by brands that want to be Simple and Durable. Even though the brown color is associated with the earth, it can also refer to Dirt, so be careful when using the brown as your main brand color. This color is not popular and only very few brands are using it, like UPS, A&W, Dreyer’s and Nespresso.
White
White represents Cleanliness, Purity and Simplicity. It gives the feeling of Honesty and Innocence, it can also bring out a feeling of Trust. White is a very beautiful color when it’s applied perfectly. It’s usually used in the marriage and Happiness events. If your niche is all about cleaning, marriage, luxury clothing, the white color will be perfect for your online business.
When we talk about the logo color, almost all brands has the colored version and the white version. For the website, the white color is also used in almost all websites at least as a background or text. The white color can’t be used alone as the main brand color, it has to be mixed with another color to be readable.
Almost all brands using the black color as main brand color, they also use the white color as the second color, to make their content readable and their website easy to navigate.
Black
Black is also one of the popular brand color for businesses, is related to Luxury, Classic, Dramatic and Sophistication, it gives the feeling of Prestige and Power. Black color is the one that can be combined with other colors, to add a stronger emotion, without losing the Value effect.
You need to use the black color with caution, since if it’s not used well, can have the negative effect of Evil, Darkness and even Death. To avoid these negative effects, always use the black color mixed with other colors like Red and/or White.
Many brands use the black as the brand color, we can list : Apple, Nike, Adidas, Puma, Gucci, Prada, Sony, Channel, Uber, StarLink and much more.
Brand Color Combination
Using at least one color for your brand to represent what your company do, and having the feeling you are looking for your customers to have, is one of the best strategy for your online business branding. However, it’s also possible to have more than one color for your brand if you are looking to have more that one feeling about your business. Like McDonalds who use the Red for Appetite and Yellow for Affordable Prices. Many other brands use a brand color combination in their business, like : Walmart, Microsoft, Pepsi, Subway, DHL, IKEA, Shell, UPS and much more.
What Colors Are Best For Marketing
Here I listed the best colors used by 90% of businesses in the world. There is other colors you can use, like Pink and Gray, or any other color not listed in this post. However, research revealed that the best colors for marketing are the once listed here, Blue, Red, Green, Orange, Yellow, Purple, Brown, White and Black. These are the once that have a big effect and create different emotions on the human being. Using one of the best colors to market your brand, will help your business grow and attract more customers, which makes your business successful.
Where To Use Your Brand Color
When the color brand is selected after studying your business goal and using the color psychology, your color or colors will be used everywhere in your online business to identify your brand. Starting by your logo, website, blog, landing pages, sales pages, business cards, flyers, store if you have a physical location, and in any places representing your brand. This will help you marketing strategy and grow your audience.
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Final Thoughts
It’s very important to understand the psychology of each color when creating your online business and defining your brand’s identity. Your selected color is very important for your brand’s health in the years to come. It can be the right choice to target the best audience, or the worst making you loosing money. Choosing the best brand color evoking the right feelings for the right audience, is one of the most important decision entrepreneur need to take.
However, after few months or years of study and analytics, and after well understanding of your audience and business, it’s always possible to change your brand color and logo. Like the majority of big brands did. Here is just one example of Amazon’s logo history, from creation to now.
The most important thing in creation an online business, is to start taking actions. As you may know, “the perfection is the enemy of progress”. Don’t overthink, just pick the color you think is best for your brand, start using it and adjust as progressing. This will give you an advantage of perfecting your brand and making money at the same time.
What about your brand color ? did you already have the color you love. I’d like to hear from you in the comments below, share your story and your online business ideas. Always remember, choose the color your audience like.
