Whether you’re looking at a website, a flier in a newspaper, a magazine ad or a retail catalog, color choices are critical to the branding of a company. Most companies have chosen a standard color scheme that is used consistently throughout their marketing materials. When a website is well designed and effectively uses colors that have been branded over the years, the website and the company benefit from the familiarity that the website and the brand have with customers. Loyal customers to the company may be new to the website, but if the website is branded consistently with the company as a whole, those visitors are likely to feel at home instantly because of the consistency.

Colors are critical to building the brand’s image, just as logos are important for the same reason. With many retail companies looking to boost revenue through increased online sales, converting traditional retail shoppers to online customers is a critical step. Many retailers are effectively creating websites that have a very similar look and feel to the actual retail stores themselves. The style and colors of the brand are often replicated as much as possible throughout the website, which creates a more unifying experience for online visitors who have also shopped at the physical retail locations in the past. By building one consistent brand image, the company is able to more effectively meet its customers in the marketplace, whether that is online of offline.

Impact of Color on Visitors

When visitors come to the website of a brand they know very well, they’ll often have certain things they expect to find. Of course, they’ll expect to see a company logo that they’re accustomed to seeing. They’ll expect a certain type of content according to the type of website it is. They’ll expect a design style that fits the corporate identity. And they’ll expect to see familiar colors. In many cases, they probably don’t even realize they have all of these expectations; but imagine a company that has branded itself with a particular color for years and years, and now you visit the company’s website and that color is not a major part of the design. You’ll probably be a little surprised, and the website is unlikely to have as familiar a feel as it would have with the traditional colors.

This post is tagged