Can you visualize a world without colours? Dull, dreary, bleak and dismal isn’t it? Be it in terms of attracting attention, invoking emotions or stimulating senses, colours play a noteworthy role in our daily lives. Similarly, one cannot undermine the significance of choosing the right colour palette for your website and the powerful impact it creates on the psyche of the end-users.

The right colours can make all the difference for your website by:

•    Making a positive first impression
•    Attracting attention and creating awe
•    Aiding in effective communication of messages
•    Increasing the aesthetics of your site.
•    Represents your organization’s personality, ideology and vision.
•    Enhancing your brand image and strengthening brand identity
•    Enticing visitors and increasing website traffic as well as conversion rates

On the contrary, using inappropriate colours can have a repulsive impact on visitors, and drive them away from your site. Hence, a good web designer should necessarily be well versed with the psychological impact of colours.

Psychology of Colours: What Major Colours denote?

Although it is not possible to exactly pin-point what each colour signifies, owing to varied geographical and cultural perceptions, it is definitely useful to know the generalized version as laid down in Colour Psychology. To understand the positive as well as negative psychological properties of each individual colour, read this article: – psychological affect on colours

Tips to choose the Right Colour Palette for your Website:

1.    The first thing you need to do is to choose a colour that is suitable for the objective of your website. For instance, if you are selling pizza, you can’t imagine having a grey and white website! You definitely need a colour like red, yellow or orange that would stimulate appetites. Similarly, if you have an eco-friendly website, green would be your natural choice.

2.    Consider the psyche, age group and gender of your target audience. For lower age groups, you can use bolder colours, while for age groups around 45 and above, mellow tones are suggested.

3.    Colour perceptions vary from country to country. Based on the geographical location where your target audience is primarily based, use colours that are culturally and socially appropriate or neutral. For instance, if you are designing a website for wedding planner, you should be aware that white represents purity and weddings in Western countries, while it symbolizes mourning in India and China. So based on where your target audience is based, you must use colours decisively.

4.    Refrain from using more than 3 colours; if you want variation, you can always use different hues, shades, tones and gradients of the same colour. More than 3 colours will only look confusing, distracting and chaotic, and drive away visitors.

5.    Out of the 3 colours that you choose, you should ideally use one as the primary colour for your site, followed by a contrasting secondary colour that is used for highlighting important areas and buttons. If you wish to use a third colour, always choose one that accentuates the effect of the primary and secondary colours.

6.    Contrast between the font colour and background colour is very important to ensure the legibility of the content on your website. You will lose a major chunk of your visitors if they find it difficult to read the text on your site.

Online Tools that help you choose colour palette for your website

A number of online tools like ColorJack, Adobe Kuler and Colour Lovers can help you to experiment with different colours, and gain a better understanding of what combinations will work well for your site.

Last but not the Least

Do remember that despite choosing the right colours based on the widely accepted norms of Colour Psychology, you will still find a fraction of people who do not approve of the colour scheme you have chosen. Perceptions are highly individual-centric; so your best bet here would be to choose a colour palette that invokes a positive response from majority of your target audience.