Updated 11 July 2025
Do you ever click away from a website because the colors feel too harsh or it doesn't match your expectations?
It's so common nowadays because colors greatly influence our emotions and behavior, especially when shopping online.
In e-commerce, your website is your virtual shop. It's where you showcase your products, share your brand story, and convert visitors into customers.
Like a real store, your website's visual experience is important because it is attached to your customer's decision-making process.
And here's the cool part: picking the right colors for your e-commerce site doesn't just make it look nice; it also helps you sell more products.
In this blog post, we'll explain how to choose the right e-commerce website color schemes and recommend some tools.
Ready to discover the magic of color and turn your e-commerce website into a sales powerhouse? Let’s dive in!
Why Choosing the Right Color Schemes for Your eCommerce Website Is Important
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You can ensure a better e-commerce user experience for your online store by getting the right color scheme. This is because:
The right color scheme acts like a silent salesperson, no matter if it is an e-commerce website or a product landing page. This ultimately influences how customers perceive your brand and their decision to buy.
Let’s find out why choosing the right eCommerce website color schemes is very important:
First impressions always matter
When customers land on your site, the first thing they notice is the design and color schemes. This creates a subconscious impression within seconds. A well-chosen color palette can make your brand appear trustworthy, exciting, or luxurious. On the other hand, mismatched colors can confuse and drive visitors away.
Helps establish an emotional connection
Colors have a strong psychological impact on human emotions. If you can understand the science behind how colors influence emotions, you can target specific feelings in your audience.
For example, warm colors like red can create a sense of urgency, so they use red boards on the road to signify danger. Blues symbolize security, inspiration, and wisdom, like the blue sky. This is why financial products often use blue as their brand color.
Brand identity and recognition
Sometimes, colors become so closely associated with a brand that they become instantly recognizable. When you think of the Facebook logo, you can relate it to the dark blue shade, whereas Coca-Cola is known for its vibrant red.
A consistent color scheme always helps customers recognize your brand and builds a sense of reliability and trustworthiness by being memorable among competitors.
Increases user experience
The right color schemes can also ensure optimal user experience. For example, bright colors work better for a young audience, while muted colors may be better for a more mature audience. Also, a high contrast between the text and background colors can make the text easier to read.
High conversions and sales
According to a study, 85% of consumers say that color is a primary reason for purchasing a product. The right color scheme can subconsciously encourage visitors to click the "buy" button.
Accessibility control
It's essential to ensure that your site's color scheme is accessible to all users, including those with color vision deficiencies. This shows that you care about every customer. You can use color contrast testing tools to achieve this.
Adheres to industry standards
While it's great to stand out, it's also important to follow what's common in your industry. When your customer acknowledges that you are maintaining industry standards, this helps create a sense of familiarity and trust. For instance, if you sell eco-friendly products, use green to highlight your environmental values as everyone else does.
In a nutshell, a well-crafted color scheme can evoke desired emotions, establish brand identity, and enhance user experience, thereby driving engagement and sales.
5 Tips To Choose the Right Color Scheme for Your E-commerce Website
Colors are much more than just visual elements. They are also powerful enough to influence emotions, brand perception, and purchasing decisions.
Some tips to help you choose are:
1. Understand color psychology
People don't just see colors; they feel and relate to them. For example, red is often used to create a sense of urgency or to portray something negative, while blue is associated with trust and stability. Green is linked to nature and growth, while yellow is cheerful and optimistic.
Understanding the psychological impact of colors helps you choose a palette that aligns with your brand personality, eventually resonating with your target audience.
2. Consider your brand identity
Your website's color scheme must be consistent with your overall brand identity. This is non-negotiable. If you already have brand colors, make sure your website design gives a vibe of that. But, if you're starting from scratch, choose colors wisely and make sure that they reflect your brand's values, personality, and target market.
Imagine a playful children's clothing store. Their website should be bright and cheerful with colors like sunshine yellow or playful orange. On the other hand, a website selling luxury watches often contains sophisticated tones like deep navy or cool silver.
3. Analyze your target audience
Who are you trying to attract? Obviously, your potential customers. So, when selecting colors, consider your target audience's demographics, interests, and preferences, as different age groups, genders, and cultures respond differently to certain color combinations.
For instance, a website targeting younger people with vibrant and trendy colors will be more appealing to them. On the other hand, if your audience consists of seniors, you could use softer, more muted tones, which give a classic vibe. Effective web development practices ensure that the design aligns perfectly with the intended audience's preferences and needs.
4. Select a base color
Think of your base color as the foundation of your website's color scheme. This color will likely be used for your background or core branding elements like the header, navigation menu, and call-to-action buttons.
Once you have your base color, you can select complementary colors that work well together and create a harmonious palette. You can also use color theory principles like the color wheel to find similar, opposite, or analogous colors to your base color.
5. Ensure readability and contrast
Aesthetics are essential, but you should not compromise readability for aesthetics. Ensure your website's text is easily read, with sufficient contrast and readable color.
It's usually better to have dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background. Also, do not pick colors that are too similar for the text and background because that can make it hard to read. Last, test your color combinations for accessibility and make changes if necessary.
3 Tools That Will Help You Pick Your Website’s Color Palette
Picking a website's color palette is a crucial design decision that sets the tone and user experience. There are several tools available to assist you in this process, ranging from simple color pickers to comprehensive palette generators.
Here are a few options to consider:
Coolors
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Coolors is a fast and intuitive color scheme generator perfect for designers and non-designers. With just a tap of the spacebar, you can cycle through endless color palettes until you find one that fits your vision. You can lock colors you like, adjust hues, brightness, and saturation, and even create palettes from images.
One of Coolors' best features is its clean interface and the ability to export palettes in multiple formats, including HEX, RGB, and more, making it super easy to plug into your website design.
Color Hunt
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Color Hunt is a curated library of hand-picked color palettes. They offer daily inspiration for designers looking to stay on trend. The tool is free and easy to browse. The palettes are sorted by popularity, newness, or random selection.
Each palette includes four colors, and with one click, you can copy the HEX codes and start applying them to your site. Color Hunt is ideal if you're short on time and need stylish, ready-to-use combinations that work well across web and UI projects.
Adobe Color
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Adobe Color (formerly known as Adobe Kuler) is a free and must-have tool for any designer. It is a comprehensive color palette generator that allows you to choose five separate colors from the color wheel.
You can also generate palettes based on one color, such as monochromatic, analogous, or triad, or extract color palettes from images.
The best part is that this tool allows you to copy hex codes or RGB values for easy use in your designs.
Create Your E-Commerce Website Today
There you have it! We hope you learned how important it is to choose the right color scheme for your e-commerce website. It is an investment in creating your brand identity, as every business is unique, as well as its customers.
Just to remind you, here are some of the key notes from the article:
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Always aim for a balanced color option. This will make your website layout more readable and eye-pleasing.
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Always ensure your color choices are inclusive for users with color blindness. To make sure of this, use color contrast checkers.
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Always maintain a consistent color scheme throughout your website and marketing materials. This will build consistent brand recognition.
The power of branding your e-commerce website is important as well. Make sure always to have your logo design front and center, use your designated typography, and use illustrations, photos, and other visual elements that suit your identity.
Once you’re done with your website, don’t forget to market it. Use our customizable templates for Facebook Ads, TikTok Videos, and more.
Have anything in mind worth mentioning? Let us know in the comments below.
Original Artwork by Khim Jhon Blazo
Written by DesignCrowd on Friday, May 31, 2024
DesignCrowd is an online marketplace providing logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world.
