As posted in the Gaston Gazette
It’s a well-known fact that color can be the spark that ignites a person’s desire to purchase. According to Social Media Today, color is the main reason that 85 percent of consumers buy a particular product. But what we don’t always think about are the many other nuanced ways in which color can affect your customers and what that means for your business.
How else can color make an impression? Here are a few ways that the colors you choose for your brand and business can impact the people who are walking through your door or visiting your website:
- It can make your brand more recognizable. Writer and editor Melissa Stanger notes at Business Insider that some brands are “instantly recognizable” by their color and can use that color to communicate everything from trustworthiness to the quality of their products. Linking a brand or business to a color can also make customers think of the brand or business when they encounter the color in other areas of their lives. A well-chosen color palette can attract the eye and make that business stand out among others at a festival, on a billboard, or within a city landscape. Using a vibrant color in conjunction with your tagline, logo and other marketing and advertising materials can really help customers locate and then select your business over others.
- It can elicit particular emotions or feelings. Colors are masterful at stirring up certain feelings. The factors that impact those feelings the most are brightness and saturation. Colors that are less saturated, but brighter, elicit relaxation and those that are more saturated and less bright elicit more energy. Individual colors also call up particular feelings as well: green encourages creativity and red can lead to a burst of strength. It’s a good idea, then, to carefully consider what types of emotions you’d like to call up in your customers before you align your brand with a particular color.
- It can connect to customer nostalgia. Not only can colors elicit emotions, but in many instances, they also can connect customers to established feelings. Those feelings about color are often deeply personal and linked to our own cultural environments, understandings and memoires. In other words, the colors you use for your business might have one meaning to you, but another meaning to your clients. It’s important to recognize that your color choice has the chance to connect to a customer’s established emotions and memories. This is a good reminder to ensure that your brand and business appeal to customers on a multitude of levels so that color isn’t the only element making a strong impression.
- It can impact website usage and customer experience. Given color’s dramatic impact on emotions and its ability to tap into customer nostalgia and experience, it’s no surprise that it can have a profound impact on the way in which your customers can experience and use your website. A research study by web designer Joseph Putnam found that 94 percent of customer comments on whether they trusted a website had to do with design as opposed to content, and lack of color was high on the list of features that created mistrust. Color also matters when it comes to customer conversion rates, or how you get a customer to engage in your website in a way that could lead to a purchase. Big, bold headlines in red encourage action and a navy “Call to Action” button can create trust. The right use of color can create a rapport with your customer and make them feel like they’ve come to the right place for their purchasing needs.
- It can appeal to women and men differently. Although the move toward products and services that aren’t highly gendered is a positive step for equality, it’s likewise important to understand that women and men still find different things appealing. Color is no exception. According to Social Media Today, women tend to be receptive to tints and enjoy softer colors such as teal blues, purples and lime greens. Men tend to like bolder colors such as brighter blues, greens and blacks and select shades rather than tints. Both men and women tend dislike browns and oranges. The moral? Consider whom you want your product to appeal to most, and don’t forget that appealing to women is always wise for your purse: per Bloomberg, women are responsible for 70-80 percent of all consumer purchasing decisions – and are heavy influencers on more than that.
So don’t be afraid to be decisive and bold in how your business uses color. Whether it’s vibrant or muted, sparingly used or expansive, color can have a profound impact on establishing customer trust and creating repeat customers.