Early newspaper ads had no colour and yet, products still sold. Nowadays, colour is omnipresent in marketing. But how does it actually impact the consumer’s mind and directly contribute to sales?
There is a claim stating that colour contributes to 62-90% of our judgements about a product. While it is repeated constantly online, it does not tell the full story. Colour psychology in digital marketing does impact a customer’s choice but in a different way than one might think.
This article aims to decorticate how colour psychology in digital marketing affects purchase intention. Starting with what colour psychology is and evolving towards common metrics of the field such as click-through rate (How many people interact with a link or button) or conversion rate (How many people complete a specific goal).
What is colour psychology in digital marketing?
Colour psychology aims to evaluate the way colours affect the human brain. A review paper by Elliot & Maier (2014), stated that colour can have an important influence on people’s affect, cognition, and behaviour.
Colour psychology in digital marketing becomes a more practical subject. New studies are produced yearly to evaluate whether the colour of a logo, product page or interactive button change an individual’s actions. While that sounds promising, the same review by Elliot & Maier (2014) warns that this field of experimentation is still young. Developing research is still needed to uncover when the effects of colour appear, what impacts them and whether they have any tangible use in real life.
What does the research in digital marketing actually support?
Findings on the subject tend to highlight the impact of colour in marketing and human decision making. The first is that colour shapes brand perception (How people perceive a brand). Labrecque and Milne (2012), found that colour helps form consumers’ idea of a brand, with red signalling excitement and blue signalling competency. Their study confirmed that colour plays a pivotal part in influencing brand perception such as brand personality (Way to describe how the brand is perceived through personification).
Colour psychology in digital marketing also plays a role in purchase intentions. Yu et Al. (2018) tested the impact of personal colour preferences on products people intended on buying. Results showed preference did matter, but it ultimately depended on the product category. Additionally, the study showed aesthetic preferences ranked behind practical factors such as how a colour affects a product’s function. A coloured pencil is a good example of that. While an individual’s favourite colour might be green, they would purchase a blue pencil if required to draw the sky.
Liang et Al. (2024) reviewed a total of 37 studies and found a similar pattern. Colour was found to affect purchase intention as a medium between other considering factors such as product and brand perception.
Popular claims in digital marketing, myths or reality?
Claims about the effect of colour in marketing travel fast online and are often repeated without a source. Here are four common ones:
| Claims | Source of evidence | Limitations |
| Colour drives 62-90% of fast judgments | Stated in a literature review (Singh 2006) | Author notes the experiments are not scientific |
| Colour is the first aspect people notice | Stated in a Adobe survey, only 16% said so, against a larger 34% focused on the logo (Adobe Express, 2025) | Self-reported survey of 1000 US consumers. |
| Red buttons are more effective than green ones | The HubSpot test found 21% more clicks for the colour red than green (Babich, 2017) | One test on a singular page; author mentions red likely stood out in contrast |
| One shade of blue earned Google $200m a year | Stated by a Google executive at an event (Cobley, 2014) | No data or method of evaluation was ever published. |
This last claim is a perfect example of how these stories spread. The author of this blog first encountered that claim approximately 10 years ago on social media, which prompted him to write about this particular topic today. Dan Cobley, Google’s UK managing director stated during an event that a particular shad of blue on ad links generated an additional $200m a year. However, that was a spoken claim not a study and has yet to been proved. The company Bing also made a similar claim which ended up being an estimate based on user feedback, not a reliable scientifically proven figure.
Peer-reviewed (verifiable) research on colour in the digital marketing field is far less studied although online sales are evolving by the year. Two lab experiments from 2003 found that blue links were more efficient than red or black ones (Pearson & Van Schaik; Van Schaik and Ling), measured through speed and accuracy.
Ultimately, colour may matter less than the contrast it creates on its website page. Adobe’s explanation of its HubSpot test suggests that red probably won because it was the only colour that stood out in contrast.
Where is the evidence on colour in digital marketing still unclear?
For digital pages, the open question is whether colour affect people’s intentions and whether looking leads to clicking. Researchers start by eye-tracking individuals using cameras reflecting what the eyes are focusing on. Chiu et Al. (2017) realised through that methodology that banner ads with a background colour most similar to the background colour of a website held the eye longer. A longer attention span also correlated to a more positive attitude towards the advertised brand.
On the other hand, Simonetti and Bigné (2024) found that time spent observing banners did not always affect whether people clicked. Therefore, strong attention to a banner or other interactive items may not translate into higher click-through or conversion rates. The authors also concluded by stating that banner positioning did not lead to more clicks. Therefore, it is presently not possible to assume whether colour or positioning have an effect on a banner advertisements’ click-through rate.
What should digital marketers do with the information provided from this blog?
- Test your own pages: Colours that succeeded in improving conversion on one site may not have the same effect on yours. Running an A/B test (showing two versions of a page to visitors) is the only way to successfully examine what works for your digital advertising.
- Do not assume one rule fits all: This article demonstrates that results on the topic can differ depending on context: banners matching the colour of their page attracted the eye longer, while a red button generated more clicks. Therefore, it is recommended to test both approaches on own digital pages.
- Measure the right data: Clicks and conversions are reliable and measurable types of data to examine when building an online page. Relying solely on attention span or individual opinions could lead to unoptimised results.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):
- Does button colour affect conversion rates?
While button colour can affect conversion rates, there is no miracle solution. What seems to matter the most is how well the button (or interactive material) stand out from the rest of a digital media.
- What colours should links be on a website?
Blue links have been shown to have a higher impression on individuals than red or black links. While there is no suggestion that the colour itself has a higher impression on individuals, researchers think this might be due to a residual historical habit of clicking links that are exclusively blue.
- Does banner advertising colour affect click-through rate?
Not exclusively. Matching banner colour to a website colour can preserve attention span longer. However, attention span does not always translate to more clicks.
To conclude:
Colour has its importance in digital marketing, but less specifically than popular claims suggest. Several famous statistics rest on insufficient evidence while better studies show colour’s impact in the digital marketing depend on context. That area of study is still young, so conclusions have to be considered with a pinch of salt. For digital marketers, the practical answer is to test different options on their own pages and to measure results using quantifiable results such as clicks and conversions over qualitative results such as assumptions or individual opinions.
References:
- Adobe Express. (2025, May 14). The top color trends for branding in 2025. Adobe. https://www.adobe.com/express/learn/blog/color-psychology-of-branding
- Babich, N. (2017, September 18). The impact of colour on conversion rates. Adobe Blog. https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2017/09/18/impact-colour-conversion-rates
- Chiu, Y.-P., Lo, S.-K., & Hsieh, A.-Y. (2017). How colour similarity can make banner advertising effective: Insights from Gestalt theory. Behaviour & Information Technology, 36(6), 606–619. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2016.1267264
- Elliot, A. J., & Maier, M. A. (2014). Color psychology: Effects of perceiving color on psychological functioning in humans. Annual Review of Psychology, 65(1), 95–120. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115035
- Labrecque, L. I., & Milne, G. R. (2012). Exciting red and competent blue: The importance of color in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 40(5), 711–727. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-010-0245-y
- Liang, L., Zainal Abidin, S., Shaari, N., Yahaya, M. F., & Jing, L. (2024). A 10 years systematic review on corporate visual identity element color impact on purchase intention. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 14(8), 3295–3344. https://doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v14-i8/22536
- Hern, A. (2014, February 5). Why Google has 200m reasons to put engineers over designers. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/05/why-google-engineers-designers
- Pearson, R., & Van Schaik, P. (2003). The effect of spatial layout of and link colour in web pages on performance in a visual search task and an interactive search task. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 59(3), 327–353. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1071-5819(03)00045-4
- Simonetti, A., & Bigné, E. (2024). Does banner advertising still capture attention? An eye-tracking study. Spanish Journal of Marketing – ESIC, 28(1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1108/SJME-11-2022-0236
- Singh, S. (2006). Impact of color on marketing. Management Decision, 44(6), 783–789. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251740610673332
- Van Schaik, P., & Ling, J. (2003). The effect of link colour on information retrieval in educational intranet use. Computers in Human Behavior, 19(5), 553–564. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0747-5632(03)00004-9
- Yu, L., Westland, S., Li, Z., Pan, Q., Shin, M.-J., & Won, S. (2018). The role of individual colour preferences in consumer purchase decisions. Color Research & Application, 43(2), 258–267. https://doi.org/10.1002/col.22180