Implementing these best practices in branding on your websites is crucial as it ensures a cohesive and visually compelling user experience, fosters brand recognition, and establishes a strong, trustworthy online presence that resonates with the target audience. It’s very easy to want to use several colours to help users move across the website or to give your website a pop of excitement. Instead, focus on giving the colours in your branding a purpose. For example if green is your accent colour then consider using it strictly for CTAs, hoover states, or link indications.
We have put together some simple tips to help protect your branding on your website:
Consistency is Key: Ensure that you consistently use your brand’s primary colours across all elements of your website, including buttons, text, backgrounds, and accents.
Limit the Colour Palette: Stick to a limited colour palette to avoid overwhelming visitors. Primary and secondary colours should dominate, while tertiary colours can be used sparingly for accents.
Accessible Colour Choices: Ensure that your colour choices meet accessibility standards, allowing users with visual impairments to navigate and understand your content. Provide sufficient contrast between text and background colours.
Understand Colour Psychology: Consider the psychological impact of colours. Different colours evoke different emotions, so choose colours that align with your brand identity and the message you want to convey.
Hierarchy with Colour: Use colour to establish a visual hierarchy. For example, use a bold, attention-grabbing colour for CTA buttons to guide users through your site.
Responsive Design: Test how your brand colours appear on different devices and screens to ensure a consistent experience across various resolutions and sizes.
Whitespace and Contrast: Use whitespace effectively to enhance colour contrast. A clean layout helps colours stand out and improves readability.
Branding Elements: Integrate your brand colours into essential elements like logos, headers, and footers to reinforce brand identity consistently.
Complementary Neutrals: Incorporate neutral colours (such as whites, greys, or blacks) to balance and complement your primary brand colours. This helps prevent visual overload.
Adaptability: Consider how your brand colours will adapt to different marketing materials, such as social media graphics, email campaigns, and printed materials.
A/B Testing: Experiment with different colour variations using A/B testing to understand which combinations resonate best with your audience and drive desired actions.
Create and adhere to brand guidelines that detail the correct usage of brand colours across various platforms. This helps maintain a unified and consistent brand presence, we do encourage you to take time to create an official brand guidelines document, this will be useful for any suppliers or agencies you work with as well as internal teams who are exposed to branding materials and assets.
