In the digital landscape, where attention is a valuable currency, the strategic use of colours in design plays a pivotal role in capturing and retaining audience attention. Colours aren’t merely visual elements; they possess the power to evoke emotions, convey messages, and guide user behaviour.
To attract your users with eye-catching colours you will first want to get the answers to these questions:
What is the colour that will sell your product? What colour will create a mood? What colours will invite you to explore your page more?
Do you have to be gifted to sense what colours are attractive? Are there any rules and principles that help everyone in choosing colours?
The Science Behind Colours
The Science of Colour Perception
Colours are a product of light wavelengths that our eyes perceive and interpret. The science behind colour perception, rooted in human biology and psychology, delves into how our brains process and respond to different wavelengths.
- Colour Reception: Our eyes contain receptors called cones, which perceive three primary colours: red, green, and blue. The brain processes combinations of these primary colours to create the vast spectrum of hues we perceive.
- Colour and Emotions: Various colours evoke specific emotional responses due to psychological conditioning and cultural associations. For example:
- Warm colours like red and orange often elicit feelings of energy, urgency, or passion.
- Cool colours like blue and green tend to evoke calmness, trust, and stability.
The Psychology Behind Colours
Colours possess an innate ability to evoke emotions, trigger responses, and guide actions. Understanding the psychology behind colours is pivotal in harnessing their attention-grabbing potential:
- Red: Known for evoking urgency, passion, and excitement, red often drives immediate attention. It’s commonly used for alerts, notifications, and calls to action.
- Blue: Calming and trustworthy, blue engenders a sense of security and reliability. It’s frequently employed by brands seeking to establish trust and credibility.
- Yellow: Radiant and cheerful, yellow captures attention and conveys positivity. It’s often utilised to highlight key information or evoke feelings of joy.
- Green: Associated with nature and tranquility, green signifies growth, balance, and harmony. It’s commonly used in environmental or health-related contexts.
- Orange: Vibrant and energetic, orange exudes enthusiasm and creativity. It’s employed to create a sense of excitement and stimulation.
Particular industries have so-called ecosystems of colours in use. Colours that mostly pop in the fast-food industry are red and yellow, green is usually associated with nature-friendly brands and sustainability, and blue is mostly used for social networking and technology.
Use eye-catching colours with these design principles to boost conversions
Now that you have a basic understanding of colours, you can put it to work. For example, you can research your target audience and conduct interviews about colours that draw attention to your brand. Understanding users’ expectations and colour related neuropsychology are the keys to increasing your conversion rates
Use colour saliency to create a focal point
The distinct visual details stand out noticeably and capture attention when their colour significantly differs from the background.
Saliency is a trait that draws the human eye’s attention, making details visually prominent and acting as focal points, attracting the gaze of webpage visitors.
People tend to rely on visually striking combinations of space and contrast. An infrequently used “accent” colour tends to attract visual attention due to its scarcity and high contrast value.
Saliency is achieved through saturation: the more intense and saturated an element’s colour, the more noticeable it is against its surroundings. Hence, every colour complements the white background, except those that are too faint and have low saturation to stand out on white.
Moreover, achieving contrast and balance in your colour palettes contributes to creating the desired inviting effects.
Balancing colours with the 60-30-10 rule
The 60-30-10 rule is a fundamental principle used in interior design and colour theory to create harmonious and balanced colour schemes. This guideline suggests that when decorating a space, 60% of the room’s colour should be a dominant or primary colour, occupying the largest visual area such as walls or large furniture.
The secondary colour, constituting 30% of the colour scheme, complements the primary colour and is applied to items like upholstery, draperies, or rugs. Finally, the remaining 10% is dedicated to an accent colour, adding vibrancy and interest through smaller elements like artwork, decorative accessories, or accent pillows.
This rule serves as a guideline to maintain a cohesive and visually appealing colour balance within a space, ensuring that the colours complement each other while providing enough contrast and interest.
Using contrast to capture attention
Colour contrast is one of the most effective tools for boosting your design and making particular elements stand out. According to Jennifer Fleming, the author of “Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience”:
“Colour and contrast show relationships between items, establish the importance, and most importantly draw attention.”
First of all, choose the right contrast ratio.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) require that the visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.
Whereas, contrast ratio for large-scale text (at 14pt bold/18pt regular and up), graphics, and user interface components (such as tooltips, input borders, or checkboxes) is expected to be at least 3:1.
Secondly, establish a dominant colour for the main layout and use a colour wheel. Saliency through complementary colours of the colour wheel allows for the most contrast. If the contrast is the sole aim you seek, use the colour wheel’s opposite colours, like red and green, brown and purple, light blue and grey.
Another good option is to use triadic colours. Triadic colours are evenly spaced around the colour wheel and tend to be very bright and dynamic. If you put a triangle on the wheel, the colour on the 3rd corner from the dominant colour would be triadic.
You can play around and choose the best option, but the colour wheel is an excellent reference to pick the colour that attracts attention against your dominant colour.
Don’t forget the importance of white
In the realm of design, the color white holds immense significance and is revered for its multifaceted contributions. Beyond being a mere absence of color, white serves as a powerful tool, offering designers a clean, minimalist backdrop that emphasizes form, space, and texture. Its neutral and timeless nature provides a canvas for creative expression, allowing other colours to pop vibrantly against its pure backdrop.
Test, test, test
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a critical process used in marketing, website optimization, and product development for several compelling reasons:
- Data-Driven Decision Making: A/B testing provides concrete data and insights by comparing two or more versions of a webpage, email, advertisement, or product feature. It allows you to make informed decisions based on actual user behavior rather than assumptions or intuition.
- Optimizing Performance: By comparing different variations, A/B testing helps identify which version performs better in achieving specific goals, whether it’s increasing conversion rates, click-through rates, sales, or other key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Continuous Improvement: A/B testing facilitates a culture of continuous improvement. Small tweaks or changes tested over time can cumulatively lead to significant improvements in user experience and business outcomes.
- Understanding User Preferences: It helps in understanding user preferences, behaviors, and preferences. Analyzing the test results provides insights into what resonates best with your audience, guiding future strategies and optimizations.
- Reducing Risk and Uncertainty: Testing variations before implementing major changes reduces the risk associated with overhauling a website, product, or marketing campaign based solely on assumptions.
- Maximizing ROI: A/B testing allows you to allocate resources effectively by investing in strategies, designs, or features that have proven to yield better results, thereby maximizing return on investment (ROI).
- Validating Hypotheses: It allows you to test hypotheses or ideas before fully implementing them. This validation helps in refining strategies and avoiding potential costly mistakes.
- Staying Competitive: In a constantly evolving market, A/B testing helps businesses stay competitive by keeping up with changing consumer preferences and trends.
In essence, A/B testing serves as a valuable tool to optimise performance, understand user behaviour, and make informed decisions that drive continuous improvement and success in various domains of business and marketing.
Luckily, Re4m enables you to test your visuals pre-launch, and I highly recommend signing up for their free trial and test it out.
Now that you have an advanced understanding of eye-catching colours, put it to work and attract everyone’s attention!
Takeaways
Colours aren’t just aesthetic elements; they are powerful tools in the designer’s arsenal. By leveraging the psychology of colours strategically, designers can create immersive and engaging experiences that resonate with audiences on an emotional level, drive engagement, and leave a lasting impression.
The artful use of eye-catching colours transcends visuals, enabling brands to forge meaningful connections, direct attention, and craft memorable experiences that speak to their audience’s hearts and minds.
He are a few bullet points to remember:
- Attract users attention with eye-catching salient and contrasting colours
- Grab users attention with the values attached to certain colours and colour combinations
- Use principles of balance and contrast in colours to make the user stay
- Combine the given facts, use your creative ability and then TEST it.