Everything has a colour. whether you intend to see a thing in any particular colour or not, it already has a colour. But in the highly competitive world of business where every other brand is chasing attention, colour remains a crucial brand element. This is why most well-known global brands make an impression with their branding colours. Whether you step inside their offices or stores, buy products shipped or handed over in their own packages or use their business mobile app, you find a consistent colour scheme representing the brand in everything. So, the choice of colour really plays an elementary role in branding.
As business mobile apps serve as extensions of the digital brand presence, colour scheme as in all other brand-specific interfaces and deliverables plays an important role for mobile user experience as well. So, you are less likely to choose different colour schemes for your business store and mobile app. On the other hand, when choosing a colour scheme for your mobile app UI you need to give particular attention to the specific UX related constraints. This is why for any
Android App Development Company building mobile apps for business brands attention to colour scheme is a must.
We need to start by explaining the basic colour theory and how it affects the users emotionally.
Anyone having been a student of art have some understanding about how different colours contradict or complement each other. If you observe a colour wheel, you will notice that the opposite colours actually complement and deliver a better visual balance. Look at the colour scheme used in the app design of the leading brands including Kindle, Google, Uber, and countless others. Yes, most of them conform to this norm of using opposite colours to create better contrast. Strong contrast is also chosen by most apps when showing notification badges.
Now, let’s come to the colours that sit next to each other in the colour wheel. Well, they are called analogous colours. These colours boasting of least contrast are actually helpful when you need to create a sense of harmony and continuity. For instance, meditation and relaxing apps like Calm uses analogous colours like blue and green that instantly create a sense of harmony and peace.
In this regard, colour theory always insists that using analogous colours should be taken with extreme caution as such uses can actually decrease the readability of the copy. Moreover, on a mobile screen, two low contrast color selection can make readability of text doubly difficult due to the similarity in colors and small screen size.
What you think of a brand in clear terms may not always represent what you feel about a business brand. This is why colour scheme is essential to create the right feeling about your brand that instantly makes an impression. This feeling subtly works deep inside your brain without information having anything to do with this. Actually, this feeling at times bigger influence in pushing sales than mere what you think about the business brand in clear terms. This is why a favourable colour scheme that creates the right first impression is so important.
Another important thing is that at times repetition of the colours within an interface actually boasts of the brand-specific feeling. Just think of any instance when you have not seen the logo of Facebook or Twitter appearing with a colour scheme bereft of the shades of blue associated with their brands. Similarly, you can’t think of Coke without red and Uber without a black and white colour scheme. Such repetition of the colours actually insists on the association of the respective colour scheme with the brand.
Some of the key areas where the repetition of the brand-specific colour scheme will happen include logo, business website, storefront, mobile app UI, product packaging, promotional materials, advertisements, e-commerce shop design, third party store interface like that of eBay, etc.
Now, we have come to know about the utilisation of the colour scheme for your business brand and how it makes an impact on your business brand. Now, we need to see how a business should choose specific colours for representing its brand identity. Well, you cannot switch to different choices of colours everyday and hence you need to make a decisive choice once and for all.
The effect of different branding colours is different on the customers and your prospects. To understand the impact of the various colours, let’s have a look at the emotional associations of every major colour.
Now, when it is about picking the right colour scheme for your brand, there are no ground rules for every business brand or UI-UX services to follow. It depends upon your niche, the kind of association you already developed with your customers over the years and the kind of reactions you expect from your audience. When picking colours, remember the following aspects.
Now, let us explain 4 different categories of colour schemes for your branding efforts. Let’s explain them one by one.
The colour scheme should represent a brand in its entirety and showcase different aspects of the brand personality in a coherent manner. The colour scheme for your brand may start with the logo but over time it should expand across all other interfaces and areas where your brand is directly communicating with its customers and target audience.
Just as every industry niche address audience in a specific manner, every one of them has its own mood and tone. This is why a banking app cannot have the same look and feel as a restaurant app or a garment store. The dominant colour scheme for every niche is different. Let us explain this with some examples.
Let’s start with the very basic aspect. Colour scheme for a business app serves the same purpose as it serves to the business website or storefront of that brand. So, once the brand colours are decided, they need to be incorporated across all interfaces.
But if you are a startup and are just launching a new mobile app for the brand, you may be more likely to take a decision about the colour scheme for your business brand as well as the new mobile app. For such a startup business, mobile apps let us provide here a few effective tips.
We all know that colours are equally cultural attributes and consequently creates different cultural connotations for different groups of people. This is why the use of colours doesn’t follow any universal principle. When using colour for a business app you need to keep the demographics of the target audience in mind.
Just because evoking an emotional response from the audience is important for a mobile app, it is very important to have a solid grasp on the demographics and psychology of the intended audience. When you research well about the colour preferences of the target audience, the UI resonates better with the audience.
It is quite likely for your competitors to target the same audience as your business app. This is why it would be always beneficial to analyse and learn from the colour scheme from your competitors. While you should always offer a UI with a different colour scheme compared to your competition, at least you can learn from their sense of proportion or harmony.
Instead of choosing a colour scheme that seems to be right from your own perspective, while choosing the colours put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Always think what kind of response a particular colour scheme can draw, whether you use it in mobile apps or as part of your business website.
Last but not least of advice will be to experiment with the colour scheme from time to time. If your competitive brands are using almost the same type of colours with some variations here and there, you need to stand apart from such brands by using a slightly different colour scheme while confirming the core values or colour significance.
When creating the right colour scheme for your business app and other interfaces you should also insist on being consistent throughout. Consistency in respect to colour scheme is all about maintaining the same base, accent and neutral colour throughout. Since colour scheme is an integral part of your business brand, inconsistency will ruin the branding effort.
For business mobile apps choosing the right colour scheme is akin to making the most important choice to represent a brand visually. If you are going to connect to your audience principally through a web or mobile app interface, the visual impact of the colours on your audience should be given foremost priority.
WRITTEN BY: Atman Rathod
Atman Rathod is the Founding Director at CMARIX Technolabs Pvt. Ltd., a leading web and mobile app development company with 17+ years of experience. Having…
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