The Psychology of Color in Lead Generation

Colour advice online tends toward the mystical: blue for trust, green for growth, red for urgency. Treat it carefully. Colour associations vary by culture and context, and the research behind the popular claims is thinner than the confidence with which they are repeated.

What colour reliably does

Contrast works. A button that stands out from everything around it gets found faster than one that blends in, and that is a question of contrast rather than hue. The most common mistake is not choosing the wrong colour for a call to action, it is using the brand colour for everything, so nothing stands out.

• Reserve your most saturated colour for the action you want taken, and use it nowhere else on the page.
• Keep text contrast high enough to read comfortably in daylight on a phone.
• Do not signal anything with colour alone - an error state needs words as well as red.
• Check the page in greyscale: if the call to action still stands out, the layout is doing its share of the work.

What it does not do

Changing a button from one colour to another will not rescue a page whose offer is unclear. Colour is a finishing decision. It makes a good page easier to use; it does not make an unconvincing one convincing.