Colours add spice to your business.

They say variety is the spice of life. Now, pyschological stimulation can be considered a necessity. It can be easily achieved through proper use of colour. Colours stimulate us. Use of colours really does have an effect on the decisions you make, and the emotions you experience.
Consider the case of soft drink brands. The most popular of all uses red. It has maintained greater brand recognition and is consumed more often than its rivals. The great energy drink of the 21st century is served in a can of gray, blue and red. Is it a coincidence that it is mostly gray, with blue and red in the middle along with some yellow? Gray is the colour with which is associated neutrality. Blue is associated with intelligence, red with strength, and yellow with confidence. This stimulates you into putting your hand into your pocket and bringing out the wallet, doesn’t it?
Consider the case of sports cars now. How many people like buying sports cars in green, pink, gray, blue or brown? These are not exciting colours. These are boring colours. Fun colours are red, yellow, black, white, and silver.
Now consider what psychologists have to say about these colours:
Red stands for strength, energy and courage. It also stands for defiance and arrogance.
Yellow stands for optimism, confidence, and creativity. It also stands for discrimination.
Black stands for glamour, efficiency, and sophistication. It also stands for monstrosity.
White stands for simplicity, purity, and ubiquity. It also stands for elitism and unfriendliness.
Silver quite naturally is associated with wealth and intelligence.
Also consider the case made for blue and green:
Blue stands for intelligence, trust and serenity. It also stands for aloofness and emotional coldness.
Green stands for harmony, balance, and fecundity. It also stands for stagnation and apathy.
Now consider athletics. All the tracks in athletics vary from red to orange to brown. Now, why would they choose these of all the colours that tracks can be made with? Perhaps because the athletes subconsciously feel better stimulated around these colours. Why is the colour red used for signages all over to indicate that people need to stop motion? Red is considered to be “nearer to you” than other colours. Automobile companies use badges made of particular colours to brand their cars with. A company based in Bavaria, for eg, uses white, black, and blue. These colours in combination would naturally be associated with something luxurious.
Now consider how your business can benefit from proper use of colours or better branding.
The website that you have floated must not only seem appealing, but also activate certain emotions in your prospective clients and customers. They should be confident about doing business with you. They should believe you are the one offering the best terms. They should also feel they are not dealing with fly by nighters.
For this to happen, you can and should creatively use colours in your website. The homepage can have a white or blue background. Now, the details, the design flourishes should look like flourishes. The colour of the font can be red or black to indicate strength and capability. Black should only be used to indicate or activate the feeling that the business is efficient and capable.
The About Us page should have lots of neutrality. Prospective clients shouldn’t feel that a person is simply blowing his own trumpet. This can be achieved through proper use of gray, black and white. Blue is considered pre-dominant because you want people to associate you with intelligent strategies. Because people are spending time on your website, they shouldn’t feel subconsciously that the exercise is a waste of time. Sprinkling over or “salting” this with red and yellow might be a very good idea.
But life is not so easy and simple. If the whole idea were so simple, absolutely everyone would have had the best possible sales pitch. But this is not always so. That’s because every one has a different idea of what is “red”. The saturation of the colour, the general contrast, the width of the text, the empty space between lines of text, the colour of the border and so many other things all have the sort of subconscious impact on the human mind, that makes you associate skill, efficiency and goodness with only certain brands. The other brands simply don’t make the cut because they don’t put in the efforts that others do towards communicating their idea to their customers.
You still need to work hard towards delivering quality products. Don’t be mislead. Don’t believe that effective marketing will allow you to sell shoddy stuff and services. Other things being equal, intelligent marketing will allow you to score the brownie points you need to close deals and transactions.