Have you ever thought about the effect the color of your landing page has on your users? With the average time on page decreasing from year to year (now 2.4 seconds), we have a limited amount of time to “convince” users to stay on our site. Images and colors are processed much quicker than words and so they play a very important role in your conversion.
In the past we’ve written about creating the right call to action buttons and landing pages, emotionally and technically. Color has a very powerful hold when it comes to persuading your users to take the action that you require. Colors have proven emotional effects on people and can affect the performance of your landing pages dramatically.

For example, in 2011 a research  found that people who are exposed to the color red react in greater speed, or a another very interesting research found that the usage of blue streetlights was believed to prevent street crime! Emotional conversion optimization takes the color emotional guide into account when creating hard-working, successful landing pages & call to action buttons.

The Emotional Effect of Colors

Choosing the color palette for your sales site is a science. Wired into the human psyche is our emotional response to different wavelengths of color. Every color on the color wheel evokes a different mood or feeling. While color effects can be subjective, and vary from culture to culture, some colors have a universal meaning. For example, red is perceived as a warm color, and blue as a cold one.

Since every color stimulates a corresponding reaction, we can use these emotional built-in triggers to our advantage on landing pages and in call to action buttons.   Check out these call to action buttons below and the emotional effect of colors on conversion:
buttons
The Conversioner

Let’s consider a few examples:
  • Impulse shoppers respond best to red, black and royal blue. You’ll find these colours in fast food outlets, outlet malls and clearance sales – and they can work well as call to action buttons for impulse purchases.
  • Brands with a friendly, cheerful and confident brand personality will use orange in their corporate livery and on their websites: Fanta for example, is all about taking action, right now!
    fanta
    The Conversioner
  • Looking to attract users who want stability and safety? Check out the brand colors of companies like American Express, Skype, and Pfizer and choose blue for your website. A call to action button in blue will be saying: lean on us; you can trust us; we will give you a reliable service. Navy blue catches the attention of shoppers on a budget.

The Emotional Effect of Colors on Conversion

Whilst it goes without saying that your call to action buttons need to command attention without overwhelming your design, you can go a long way to improving your landing page performance with the right colors. So, if you find yourself asking, which color converts best, think of the qualities your target audience admires or resonates with, think about the action you want to provoke in your users. Guide your users through your sales funnel by using color cues to persuade them to make the choices that lead to conversion.
Consider Skype and their colors: which landing page below would you bet on conversion wise, and why?
Screenshot 2014 01 23 11.12.42
The Conversioner

More from The Conversioner:

This post originally appeared at The Conversioner. Copyright 2014. Follow The Conversioner on Twitter.