The Colour of Online

So here’s an interesting question – what colour is the internet?

Now this may seem like one of those questions where the answer is either ‘who cares?’ or ‘well isn’t it lots of colours?’ But it turns out that there may actually be an answer to the question, and one with more interest than you might first have thought.

A recent infographic from colourlovers.com shows how colour online could be important. The infographic takes a simplified look at the Top 100 web brands and maps their logos out against a colour spectrum. It turns out that blue and red feature most heavily, with a few companies hitting all the colours and a small number veering to other colours such as greens, oranges or purples.

Not surprisingly, Google is the number 1 web brand and as we all know, has a logo based on the four primary colours, but what then becomes interesting is that number 2 brand, MSN is also a multi coloured affair. Another Top 10 brand is eBay which again contains the four primary colours, and three more of the brands featured in the Top 10 (Microsoft, Facebook and AOL) are all blue based logos.

Whether there were conscious decisions to adopt these colours or not, what can be seen from such a visual source is that colour clearly plays a big role online. Whilst product, price and delivery are probably always going to feature more highly on a customers list of requirements, it’s certainly worth remembering that with the size of retail online these days customers have a wealth of choice and perhaps just one of the choices they make in the future will be to choose a brand that appeals to their sensory perceptions too. So worth considering next time you’re looking at a re-brand.

Posted by: Robert Blair