The Psychology of Color in Marketing

Color is not only a visual aesthetic but also a powerful psychological trigger.  Visual appearance strongly influences buyer's decisions and color improves comprehension, learning and readability. A recent survey showed that 85% of consumers purchased a product based on color.

This is the first in a series I am doing about the psychology of color. I am first focusing on how important color is in branding and marketing. I will follow up with entries on how it relates to photos.

 

Different colors evoke different moods and emotions. So selecting a color for your website or marketing an important choice as it has a huge impact on your potential customers. This is because our subconscious assigns common characteristics to different colors and associates them with different things.

Understanding the psychological connotations we have with certain colors can significantly increase the effectiveness of your marketing, advertising, and branding by appealing to your target market on a subconscious level.

Orange represents a friendly and confident brand while green is associated with nature, wealth, and tranquility. Green is used by places like organic food stores to show a connection to nature. You may notice that most social networking sites, such as Facebook, Skype, LinkedIn, and Twitter, use blue for their images and logos. Blue creates not only a relaxing atmosphere for people to socialize, but also a sense of security and trust.

Knowing the psychological power of color can help designers, art directors, and consumers make better decisions.

The people at WebpageFX put together this handy infographic to show some of the psychological connotations that different colors have.

Infographic by WebpageFX