Can Colors Make Your Online Strategy Work?
We all are very sensitive to our environment… the smells, the textures, the sounds, and the colors. Different colors make us feel different; they can change our mood, our trust and our perception of value.
Colors have three different dimensions: shade, luminosity, and intensity which must be carefully combined. Knowing the best ways to use colors in online businesses is an important challenge for managers. For instance, it is possible to reduce competition by using color to create a different environment. Colors can also decrease the importance of prices in online buying intentions.
By understanding how screen back colors of a site may change consumers perceptions of price, online shops can better fit their scenario with prices. For example, consumers don’t like to find high prices on a very bright screen.
Red vs Blue
How clients understand the prices of a store’s site depends on its colors. On one hand, when clients see a blue or pale scene, if a product is expensive, they will think it has a worth value and spending the money to buy it will not be hard. On the other hand, in a red or bright scenario, clients will pay more attention to prices and will try to spend the less they can.
Customers looking at red or bright scenarios pay more attention to prices and avoid buying expensive products. On the contrary, customers looking at blue or pale scenarios have more intentions to buy the products they see regardless their prices.
When clients see a blue scene, they identify the products as having a higher quality than when they see a red scene. This difference in the way clients identify product quality is more important for higher prices.
When consumers see expensive products in a digital store with a pale scenario, they identify these products as having worth value.
Changes in prices don’t affect so much clients’ buying intentions when the digital atmosphere is blue or pale as they affect when the digital atmosphere is red or bright.
Quality, Value, and Sacrifice
Prices can be seen as a measure of quality but spending money is hard. When products are expensive, and the scenario is pale customers recognize the products as having a worth value and don’t mind spending the money. When the scenario is bright customers are willing to find cheap prices and pay more attention to prices that to the products’ quality.
Customers are always aware of price versus quality of the products they intend to buy but when the digital scenario is red this association is only important when the red is dark red.
Conclusion
In an online shop if managers want their clients to pay more attention to products’ quality than to prices, a blue or dark scenario should be used; if the focus is to be on prices a red or bright scenario should be used.
Colors have three dimensions, and it is important to find the right balance, because it matters!
This article was written by Alexandra Correia, Clara Luxo, Gonçalo Costa and Paulo Conceição was based on “Do Colors Change Realities in Online Shopping?”
