Colors are vitally important for your branding and your website. How do you choose the best colors and use them to increase website traffic and conversions?
You might think that this is going to be one of those articles that tells you what each color means and how to use the right colors to manipulate your audience to do whatever you paint. Nope, this is not that article, but you can find plenty of those by performing a quick search on the Internet. Some of these articles even have pretty info-graphics and charts. I was tempted to write on that topic, but the more I thought about it, the more I discovered that I would be perpetuating the false notion that all colors mean the same things to all people.
Like most things in life, feelings that come from color are shaped by our experience. Until the 20th century, blue was a feminine color and pink was manly. Even today, blue represents women in China, so it’s not inherently masculine. Red can mean stop or danger, but it can also be exciting and adventurous.
This is all to say, don’t believe in a magic color to use in your branding and on your website. At the same time, color theory is very important in persuasion. Don’t use colors inappropriately. Here are some guidelines that you should use for real estate websites.
Use Colors in Context
Choose colors that people associate with you. If you have an established brand and logo, use those colors as your main website colors. There is evidence that learned color associations are strong. People learn brand colors and come to expect those colors. If you don’t have a defined color scheme for your business, look at other real estate professionals around you and decide if you want to use similar colors, or really stand out and define your own turf. Discordant color choices aren’t good. Look around and see what other businesses are using. If silver is predominately used by jewelers in your market, it might not be the best idea for real estate, but if your niche is horse properties, then maybe green and brown would be appropriate colors.
Limit Your Color Palette
You might think that using a ton of color will be exciting and attention-getting. Flashing marquees and a whole box of colors can grab attention, but not the kind that you want. Unless you are a clown or children’s’ toy marketer, you should tone down the amount of color that you use on your site. Stick with two or three that go well together. This will be plenty colorful, without inducing nightmares for your visitors. Of course, these colors should complement each other, so I recommend visiting a site like kuler, to experiment with complimentary or analogous colors.
Point Out the Important Stuff
Make calls to action stand out. If you want someone to click on a button, make it obvious and different from the rest of the page. If your entire site uses a green theme, then a slightly different shade of green won’t get many people to click to sign up or view more properties, but orange would stand out and increase your click-through rate. Use this action color sparingly, as it only works in contrast to the rest of the site. Draw attention to buttons because they are different and stand out.
Built into each Agent Evolution theme is the ability to change the color scheme, allowing you to make your site unique and represent your sensibilities. I just ask that you choose well and make pleasing websites that attract visitors and encourage them to click through and start a good business relationship.
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Is there a way to automatically change our font so that it shows up on the dark background? Some of my blog posts have black font on the black background. So, it can’t be seen unless I manually go in and change each post to a light gray. Is there a ways to make it consistent with Agent Evolution curb appeal theme?
Hello Jen. You certainly can change these fonts with CSS in your site. For additional information, please check out the forums to find out how to set the font colors.