TURNS OUT, SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS TWEAKING THE COLOR OF A BUTTON CHANGES USER BEHAVIOR OR ENDEARS PEOPLE TO YOUR PRODUCT. BUFFER'S LEO WIDRICH EXPLAINS THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOR IN WEBSITE AND BRAND DESIGN.
Why is Facebook blue? According to The New Yorker, the reason is simple. It’s because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green color blind; blue is the color Mark can see the best.
Not highly scientific, right? That may not be the case for Facebook, but there are some amazing examples of how colors actually affect our purchasing decisions. After all, sight is the strongest developed sense in most human beings. It’s only natural that 90% of an assessment for trying out a product is made by color alone.
So how do colors really affect us, and what is the science of colors in marketing, really? As we strive to make improvements to our product at Buffer, studying this phenomenon is key. Let’s dig into some of the latest, most interesting research on it.
First: Can you recognize the online brands just based on color?
Before we dive into the research, here are some awesome experiments that show you how powerful color alone really is. Based on just the colors of the buttons, can you guess which company belongs to each of them?
Example 1 (easy):
These awesome examples from YouTube designer Marc Hemeon, I think, show the real power of color more than any study could.
How many were you able to guess? (All the answers are at the bottom of this post!)
Which colors trigger which feeling for us?
Being completely conscious about what color triggers us to think in which way isn’t always obvious. The Logo Company has come up with an amazing breakdown that shows which colors are best for which companies and why. Here are 4 great examples:
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When we feel compelled to buy something, color can play a major role. Analytics company KISSmetrics created an amazing infographic on the science of how colors affect our purchases.
Green stands out to me as the most relaxing color we can use to make buying easier. We didn’t intentionally choose this as the main color for Buffer--although it seems to have worked very well so far.
At second look, I also realized how frequently black is used for luxury products. Here is the full infographic:
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How to improve your marketing with better use of colors:
This all might be fairly entertaining, but what are some actual decisions we can apply today to our website or app? The answer comes yet again from some great research done by the good folks over at KISSmetrics.
If you are building an app that mainly targets women, KISSmetrics suggests that women love blue, purple, and green, and dislike orange, brown, and gray.
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In case your app is strictly targeting men, the rules of the game are slightly different. Men love blue, green, and black, but can do without brown, orange, and purple.
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In another experiment, Performable (now HubSpot) wanted to find out whether simply changing the color of a button would make a difference in conversion rates.
They started out by trying to guess the outcome of a simple choice between two colors (green and red) and trying to guess what would happen.
“Green connotes ideas like 'natural' and 'environment,' and given its wide use in traffic lights, suggests the idea of 'go' or forward movement. The color red, on the other hand, is often thought to communicate excitement, passion, blood, and warning. It is also used as the color for stopping at traffic lights. Red is also known to be eye-catching.”
So, clearly an A/B test between green and red would result in green, the more friendly color. At least that was their guess. Here is what their experiment looked like:
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So how did that experiment turn out? The answer was surprising: The red button outperformed the green button by 21%.
What’s most important to consider is that nothing else was changed at all: 21% more people clicked on the red button than on the green button. Everything else on the pages was the same, so it was only the button color that made this difference.
This definitely made me wonder: If we were to read all the research before this experiment and ask every researcher which version they would guess would perform better, I’m sure green would be the answer in nearly all cases. Not so much.
At my company, we’ve also conducted dozens of experiments to improve our conversion rates using changes of colors. While the results weren’t as clear, we still saw a huge change. One hypothesis is that for a social media sharing tool, there is less of a barrier to signup, which makes the differences less significant.
Despite all the studies, generalizations are extremely hard to make. Whatever change you make, treat it first as a hypothesis, and see if the actual experiment supports your ideas. Personally, I’m always very prone to go with opinion based on research I’ve come across. Yet, data always beats opinion, no matter what.
Quick last fact: Why are hyperlinks blue?
This is something that always interested me and is actually a fun story. In short, it's offers the highest contrast between the colors used on early websites.
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Here is the full explanation:
“Tim Berners-Lee, the main inventor of the web, is believed to be the man who first made hyperlinks blue. Mosaic, a very early web browser, displayed webpages with a (ugly) gray background and black text. The darkest color available at the time that was not the same as the black text was that blue color. Therefore, to make links stand apart from plain text, but still be readable, the color blue was selected.”
I think it's fascinating that tweaking something as small as the color can completely change an outcome. What have been your findings in terms of colors and marketing? Tell me about it in the comments.
Solution to the riddle: Example 1: Facebook, Example 2: Google, Example 3: Flickr, Example 4: LinkedIn
COMMENTARY: According to Harris Interative, here are the brands held in highest esteem in 2012 by the 19,000 random people who participated in the poll (along with our attempts to figure out how they got there):
- Amazon: It could be the fact that Amazon remains the first and biggest online retailer with a reputation for security and an endless inventory. It could be the brand’s truly innovative recommendation system. Or it could be Amazon’s plan to create its own “virtual” currency – because no dishonest individual would ever make his own money, right?
- Apple: Of course the public respects a brand that has long dominated the world of innovative technology and customer service. But Apple hasn’t released any “wow” products for a while, and the company’s new semi-desperate PR approach tells us that they probably won’t rank so high next year.
- The Walt Disney Company: We could be wrong, but we’d like to think people trust Disney because Pixar still somehow manages to make great movies. We also feel like everyone took a cue from the horrible promo campaign and skipped John Carter.
- Google: The “Don’t be evil” company’s “premature” earnings statement was a big PR fail, but it has maintained a reputation as a great place to work. And we don’t care how many cute videos Microsoft releases–we’re still not going to use Bing.
- Johnson & Johnson: We find this one surprising in light of all the product recall business. But the PR team did as well as it could with damage control, and any brand known as “the baby company” has already earned some trust from the public. Keep your eye on J&J next year, though.
- Coca-Cola: While some say that the public loves Coke because it “sells happiness”, we will attribute this position to its bold decision to admit that Americans should probably consume a little less of its product unless they want to end up like this unfortunate lady. It can’t be because our fellow Americans trust Taylor Swift more than Beyoncé–Bey would never write a breakup song that is so obviously about John Mayer.
- Whole Foods: It’s expensive–and its CEO is very good at placing his foot in his mouth. But Whole Foods does sell top-quality products, and it’s well-known for its CSR and purpose marketing successes. The whole “in-store drinking” experiment was pretty cool too.
- Sony: “Green” isn’t everything–quality products like the ever-popular Playstation guarantee a good reputation for Sony, which seems to have emerged from a 2011 hacking scandal with an even stronger public image. It also gets great marks for customer service.
- Procter & Gamble: The other “baby company” has always earned high marks for leadership within its industry. We don’t quite understand why, but we’re going to say “Moms. Moms. Moms.”
- Costco: It’s simple: people love cheap stuff. People also love underdogs, a tag that could apply to any company competing with Walmart. Costco also doesn’t have too many problems with things like fake PR stunts, terrible labor practices, large-scale employee protests or testy relationships with major media outlets.
In January 2013, Ragan’s PR Daily and 24/7 Wall Street compiled the worst of the worst based on “stock performance, employee and customer satisfaction, and management decisions.”
Here they are, along with our past and present theories on why they suck:
- JC Penney: The brand clearly doesn’t listen to its customers (strike one). It consistently disappoints its investors (strike two). And while the Ellen Degeneres controversy was bad news, we think we can blame consistently poor management for strike three.
- Dish Network: Sure, they invent cool things sometimes, but customers and employees still hate them! They’re two for two!
- T-Mobile: The AT&T merger was the only thing that could have saved this “challenger brand.”
- Facebook: We don’t even know where to start…
- Citigroup: We’re going to say the decision to fire 11,000 people right before Christmas had something to do with this one (but it’s probably just the investors again).
- Research In Motion, Ltd.: Do you know anyone who still owns a Blackberry? Neither do we.
- American Airlines: Poor public relations? Poor employee relations? Celebrity snafus? They’ve got it all, baby!
- Nokia: A phone company that fell behind on the smartphone trend? We don’t know if the world’s best PR can save them now.
- Sears: Well, we don’t think it’s the obnoxious Black Friday sales or the “poor” employee reviews…but it might have something to do with a gradual 60% stock drop and the graceless resignation of a CEO who couldn’t quite point the ship in the right direction.
- Hewlett-Packard: The “end of the PC” doesn’t bode well for one of its top two producers. Also: The company is notorious for awful management, and “accounting improprieties“–and employees who mention “misplaced priorities” don’t rate the experience very highly. All good things!
Column Five and Marketo developed the following infographic which analyzes the importance of colors to your business and what it says about your business:
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Courtesy of an article dated May 6, 2013 appearing in Fast Company, an article dated January 15, 2013 appearing in MediaBistro.com and an article dated February 14, 2013 appearing in MediaBistro.com
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