Button Colour For Conversion Optimisation – Red Or Green Or Other?
In Conversion Optimisation circles button colour is on par with the moon landings for controversy, some will hotly contest that one colour works better over others yet some say that button colour makes absolutely no difference whatsoever but case studies do show that some colours work better than others, but is it as clear cut as it seems?
I remember a PPC management client from many years back hiring a well renowned conversion rate expert to come in and do some conversion optimisation tests, he charged $8,000 per test and did four of them charging $32,000 in total for his well researched and thought out tests. At the end of the tests 3 had failed to yield any improvement but the fourth test yielded a worthwhile improvement, it showed that a Green add to cart button worked 5% better than a Red one. – We referred to that as the $32,000 button from that day onwards.
To be fair the client was doing so much business that the 5% conversions increase paid for the $32,000 of tests fairly quickly so they didn’t really mind and didn’t see the failed 3 tests as a waste of $24,000, they (wisely) just figured they’d spent $32,000 to get 5% more business ongoing and confirmed that the other 3 areas were as good as they could be already.
Some people go to extraordinary lengths to test colours, Google once tested 41 shades of blue for the background colour to their toolbar to see which one created the most user interaction so don’t be so quick to judge that colour doesn’t matter if Google bother to test 41 shades of the same colour!
Dan McGrady of Dmix.ca ran a test and found the opposite to our old client and for them, changing from Green to Red yielded a 34% uplift in conversions on their button below :
Dan also changed the button wording from “Signup for Free” to “Get Started Now” after 1000 trials their conversion rate improved by a further 7% as it seems less “commitment” oriented wording resonated with their target audience better and resulted in 7% more conversion. *Call to actions are a separate issue that needs far more thought and testing so we’ll cover that in another post.
Hubspot ran a button colour conversion optimisation test to see which worked better too, the first tested were Red and Green and the results mirrored the test above too, a significant number of people favoured the Red button, 21% more people clicked it. Nothing else on the page was changed, just button colours :
Most people would say that Green is associated with OK, Go and safety, and Red is danger, caution or stop but the stats don’t back this up and another thought is that Red quickens the heart rate and promotes urgency. It also represents for energy, strength, excitement and warmth whereas Green is a relaxed colour that emotes health, refreshment and balance.
The conversion and interaction increases on red buttons is quite definitive or so it seems but take another look at the Hubspot example and one other thing becomes evident; there’s quite a bit of Green on the page already so the Red button actually stands out more, it’s the same with the example by Dan here too. So before you all go running to get your buttons made Red just hold on a moment as this may actually be more a case of differentiation and the buttons just standing out more on the page than it is Red being awesome in it’s own right for conversion, it’d be wise to consider your page’s current colour scheme before just settling for Red as it worked for other people.
The two examples above aren’t isolated cases there are many other examples of Red outperforming Green but be careful as if you search hard enough you will find some sites where Green (or another colour) won over Red (or another colour) so the main message her is that YOU should test it on YOUR own site and see what happens, but also don’t just test Red or Green make sure you go a little further and test Blue, Orange etc. as your background or page colour scheme may give a Blue, or Orange, or even Gold button more emphasis and make it stand out or resonate more with your users and therefore convert better.
