Colors for the Web - Emotions and effects on people

The theory of colors has been developed with numerous studies whose beginnings date from the fifteenth century and are associated with names like Batista Alberti, Da Vinci, Newton, and many more. These studies are today the basis of the "Science of Vision" and are used in Marketing as a way to understand the message that a color - or combination of several - can transmit in isolation. But, unfortunately, there are few who make use of the power of colors in the creation of pieces of communication, including websites.

Recently I read a post by Seth Godin in which he comments on the design problem of the signage at the Minneapolis airport which, although it is quite new and cool, finding the address to find the taxi stand is very complicated. To discover why, it occurred to me then to propose this brief exercise.

GET IT:

Think you're at that airport for the first time, come from a long trip, looking for the signs that indicate where to go ….

Are you there? Well, now, what color would you expect to find the following signs?

A. Departure ………….. B. Taxis ……………. C. Only authorized personnel

Most likely, unless you are a lifelong color blind, come from an uncivilized Amazonian tribe or have landed recently from a remote planet, you will have assigned the green color to "Salida", the yellow to " Taxis "and red to" Only authorized personnel ". True?

Seth wrote angrily why it took him twice to find the taxi sign that was black and white, very consistent with the design of the rest of the signage and colors of the airport, but very impractical to skip some very powerful standards as there will be could check in the previous year. That is what, among other things, the power of colors …

Do colors on a website can impact on the ability to attract and convert it?

Of course yes; absolutely.

In the following table you will see the emotions or impulses that denote the subliminal effect of colors and some cases in which you can agree to use them with examples of known websites that make good use of them.