Color Psychology in Marketing
By Al Martinovic

On the internet we don't deal with face to face selling. The
internet is a visual and psychological medium. The words, or
sales copy, on your website have by far the greatest
psychological impact on your visitors and thus becomes your
most important communication and sales tool.

But another important psychological aspect of your website
that is often overlooked are the colors. Yes, that's
right... I said colors.

Just as you use words to express yourself, colors can be
used as an expression as well and are a language all on
their own.

The background color of your website, the color of your
header, the color of your text, headlines and sub-headlines
etc. can all have a psychological impact on your visitors.

Here is a list of some of the common colors and what type of
psychological emotion they invoke in people:

RED is associated with love, passion, danger, warning,
excitement, food, impulse, action, adventure.

BLUE is associated with trustworthiness, success,
seriousness, calmness, power, professionalism.

GREEN is associated with money, nature, animals, health,
healing, life, harmony.

ORANGE is associated with comfort, creativity, celebration,
fun, youth, affordability.

PURPLE is associated with royalty, justice, ambiguity,
uncertainty, luxury, fantasy, dreams.

WHITE is associated with innocence, purity, cleanliness,
simplicity.

YELLOW is associated with curiosity, playfulness,
cheerfulness, amusement.

PINK is associated with softness, sweetness, innocence,
youthfulness, tenderness.

BROWN is associated with earth, nature, tribal, primitive,
simplicity.

GREY is associated with neutralality, indifference,
reserved.

BLACK is associated with seriousness, darkness, mystery,
secrecy.

You can use the above as a guide when choosing colors for
your website. It really boils down to your target audience
and what psychological message you want to convey in colors.

Blues and white backgrounds work best for business sites.
Maternity sites should consider some pink. Golf or lawn
sites sites should consider green. Food sites should
consider red, etc.

There are also numerous shades of the same color that you
can use too. Here a link that lists 216 colors that work in
all browsers:
http://www.geocities.com/webtvbeth/hexchart.html

It also boils down to common sense too. As far as using
colors in text, black text on white backgrounds may be dull
but it is the most readable and pleasing to the eye.

Yellow text on white background is not only unreadable, but
causes eye-strain which will have people leaving your site
quickly. Nothing will lose sales faster than eye-straining
text.

Here's a link for a "color wheel" that shows which colors
compliment each other, and which ones don't:
http://www.saumag.edu/art/studio/chalkboard/c-wheel.html

In conclusion, not only can the sales copy on your website
have a psychological impact with words but the colors you
use can as well.

Use them wisely...

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Al Martinovic works from home and runs a successful mlm
business at http://www.ineedsmokes.com and also publishes a
popular internet marketing newsletter:
http://www.milleniummarketers.com
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Tags: target audience, seriousness, background color, business sites, affordability, indifference, psychological impact, calmness, secrecy, cheerfulness, softness, ambiguity, playfulness, psychological aspect