By implementing a carefully selected colour palette for your business website, this crucial area of design can work to establish a memorable and easily recognizable identity for your company.
Not just relating to design, branding can also be a vital aspect of marketing; many of today’s leading corporations continue to weave branding into their products, not only to draw the eye, but to evoke emotion and communicate a sense of who they are.
But what about new businesses on the scene? How should they go about creating their own brand’s unique visuals? What’s the best way to pick colour palettes and apply them to their fledgling websites?
Choose the Best Brand Colours for Your Business Website
Let’s start with the process of how to actually land on a stylish, memorable set of colours that will best showcase who you are, what you do, and what you’re all about as a company.
How Many Colours Make a Brand?
While you’re free to choose as many colours as you desire, the industry standard does tend to consist of between one to five – with five probably being what you should be aiming for here.
By staying within this margin, you’ll stand a greater chance of creating a concise, attractive palette that remains flexible. Furthermore, five is a nice round number that should be simple to implement into most of your website’s design elements.
Brand Colour Types & Basic Guidelines
Before you begin the process of exploring and narrowing down numerous colours batches, it’s wise to firstly get a fundamental understanding of what different colours can offer, and how marquee businesses tend to apply them on their websites. Let’s dive in…
Primary Colour (x1)
Typically bold and solid, these colours are used to draw the eye to very specific page elements (such as logos, call to action buttons and important copy), and to create a memorable, vibrant first impression.
Colours aren’t just for making websites appear professional and sleek – they can also be used to evoke a certain kind of response. So, the question is, how do you want your prospective customers to feel?
Try to pick a colour that imbues a suitable vibe and tone for your brand. To help you achieve that, here’s a brief insight into what certain colours can mean to visitors:
- Red – Joy, pleasure and excitement (arguably the most provocative colour of all).
- Yellow – Happiness, peace and optimism.
- Blue – Reliability, reassurance and calmness.
- Green – Organic, nature and freshness.
- Purple – Royalty, luxury and distinguished quality.
- Orange – Fun, playfulness and warmth.
- Black – Luxury, elegance and mystique.
- Brown – Nature, security and strength.
- White – Purity, elegance and sleekness.
Note: The above emotions are just a general guideline. If you are targeting a particular demographic or culture, it may be worth doing some research to ensure that your primary colour doesn’t carry any negative associations with it.
Additional Colours (x1/2)
Popularly implemented to enrich logos and create accent colour within other elements, including copy, graphic borders and hyperlinks, wisely chosen additional colours can greatly complement a website’s primary.
When it comes to this area, it’s often best to limit yourself to just one or two; remember, selecting colours that are dark and/or light accented should help to make your primary more visually prominent.
Typeface Colour (x1)
Landing on a suitable typeface colour should be relatively easy. Remember, while typefaces tend to be dark, consisting of shades of black, grey, brown and blue, it’s probably best to avoid an overly strong, unrestrained colour like solid black.
Background Colour (x1)
As with your Additional Colours (above), it’s typically best to pick a lighter shade of colour for backgrounds, such as a pure white or grey (think neutral-leaning – not overbearing), that can help to further complement and strengthen the impact of your primary.
Picking Brand Colours (Imagination vs. Research)
There are three key methods that can be used to help you decide on a brand colour palette. The first option is to call upon your own imagination and intuition, using these individual qualities to choose colours whose relationship you may already be familiar with.
The second is more of a market research-minded approach, in which you would seek out and explore various en-trend colour palettes. Check out your competitors’ websites, among other inspirational content on the internet; also, ‘real-life’ media and places, such as glossy magazines, catalogues, books, and department store windows.
Moreover, bear in mind that you don’t necessarily have to follow in the footsteps of your rivals; you can create a brand palette that, while similar, remains distinctive enough to separate you from the pack.
You may well find that the most effective way to pick a colour palette is by not limiting yourself to just one method. When balanced right, a combination of personal instinct and market research can really work wonders – taking your branding design skills to the next level!
Create a Brand Colour Guide
Now that you’ve completed all your research and have decided on the most effective colour palette to stylize your content and create a sense of identity for your company, it’s time to take note of those decisions.
Unless you have a superb memory (for hex codes like #FFCE30 and #E389B9), the task of documenting your palette, along with any relevant notes, will ensure that everything is recorded on file, ready for when the time comes to apply colouring to your business website.
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