In this day and age of technology, our visual experiences on the internet are as profound and impactful, if not more, as they are in the real world. Colours affect our senses, mood, perception, like/dislike. Have you ever felt the influence of colours when you visited a website or a store and on the shopping you did there? Had you thought of buying that item before entering the store or visiting the web store? If no, you have just become a victim of colours which were carefully selected by the merchants to influence your buying behaviour to their advantage. No kidding!

Numerous researches have proved that colours have a very noticeable impact on our buying experience; as much as 92% of people claimed colours played a major role in their choice of object while shopping, a number which is much more than the numbers for sense of touch or smell.

There was a time when blue colour reminded us of the sky, now it reminds us of Facebook. It turns out that the blue colour is linked to our brains psychologically as the colour of knowledge, trust, intelligence, peace and responsibility. Not just the colour blue, every colour has a subliminal psychological impact on human behaviour a fact which is effectively being capitalised by almost all of the popular ecommerce web stores to attract customers right up to their check-out pages. This way by selecting the right mix of colours, they affect perceptions of the visitors on their web store to convert them into a customer and if not, at least make an impact which lingers on for quite some time. It is the subtle influence of colours that makes us like one website and dislike another one.

A lighter shade of blue defines calmness and creativity. Blue’s qualities, especially trust and calmness, make it a perfect colour for ecommerce stores like drugstores, banks etc. A closer cousin of blue, purple is known to be a rather feminist colour, therefore lot of women oriented websites use it to evoke Femininity. A deeper shade of purple reflects royalty and dignity, hence it is perfect for websites selling luxury items.

Like blue, brown is another colour which directly affects the customer’s mind. Brown gives off a confident vibe increasing customers’ trust and comfort level about the product and the store and therefore successfully converting visitors into customers most of the time.

Orange is another colour which gives a hint of freshness to the eyes and mixing it with blue can give off a very cool vibe. Because of its fruity reminiscence, orange is also used for ecommerce web stores selling health related products. This is the reason why many new websites, particularly youth oriented stores use orange along with blue colour. Close on the heels of orange is yellow, a very cheerful and jolly colour. Also yellow reminds us of buses and taxis, a reason why many cab services use it for their websites.

The combination of all colours – White- can really evoke confidence in the consumer’s mind about the product. It is a reason why many websites have a strikingly white background when they are trying to build confidence around their product and also to show the perfection of their product by displaying it against a white background. White’s polar opposite colour black is also very useful in affecting customer buying decisions, by displaying qualities like strength, elegance etc. and causing feelings of obscurity, suspense and mystery. Black is the perfect colour when launching a new product or creating a teaser campaign for the same. Art sellers who deal with the abstract can also use black to create a shroud of mystery around their frames. Whether you go with the research or rely on personal experience, colours do influence your decisions while shopping online.

Here is an interesting infograph showing the effect of colours.

Courtsey: Kissmetrics

Colours have not only been used by merchants to their advantages, their use have been also while designing logos of companies. Have a look at below infograph showing how various companies have taken their knowledge of colours to the next level by incorporating them in their logos.

Courtsey: WebpageFX