Color Impact

You may forget the street address or the intersection, but you easily recall the yellow building with black bumble bee stripe roof. That's not a bad paint job it was the company's intent to impress this in your mind because a bumble bee is the featured element in their logo. Far more people know the "bee building" than know the street address, it's actually a local landmark. Internet marketers can take a cue from this example. Is your web site a landmark? What is distinct about the colors and logo that makes it unmistakably your site?

This company had the right idea in using color psychology to establish their bumble bee brand. They not only used the colors; bright yellow with black accents but they also used the black on yellow stripes as would be seen in nature. Plus they knew how to edit. The stripes can be difficult on the eye and distracting. By using it selectively and as an accent instead of a repeated design, the stripes focused the eye down to the main portion of the building. Internet marketers can imitate this idea on their sites. Overuse of textured, stripe or wavy backgrounds distract the eye and frustrate the viewer. Frustrated viewers are quick to click away. Selective use of these type of backgrounds and placement in a way that draw the eye in towards a product photo or copy can be a strong use of these elements.

Think about how your color choices reinforce or detract from your logo. In the example, the bumble bee on the logo became the color palate for the building and its advertising materials. How well does your product logo connect with the color choices on your web site? Even if you dislike the logo color of a product sold on your site, to use the logo you must have compliments colors around it. You can not paste in the logo and ignore its color impact. If it's your logo, change the colors. If you have to work with a product logo, ask if you can produce it in grayscale. Do not think that having a white background means "everything goes with white". That's true, but the logo and other web site graphic colors do not go with each other and to the eye, it's a total picture. Make smart, thoughtful uses of color to please the eye of your viewers.