How to Pick a Color Scheme for Your Affiliate Website
Using colors on your affiliate website the right way is a surprisingly subtle process. It’s also not something to take lightly. Like design in general, the color scheme you use has a direct impact on your bounce rate and conversion rate. This means that your site’s color scheme has a direct impact on your bottom line.
In this article I’ll give you 5 tips on how to use colors on your website in the best possible way. I’ll also give you a couple of examples of affiliate websites which have nailed their color scheme.
5 tips to pick a color scheme for your affiliate site
1. Create a strong contrast between your CTA color and the rest of your site
At the end of the day, as an affiliate marketer your goal is have as many people click on your CTA buttons as possible. In order to do so, it’s important that your CTA color strongly contrasts with the rest of your website.
And if you use other bright colors, you want to make sure they don’t divert your readers’ attention too much, as people will have trouble knowing what to focus on. You should try to wash away all other colors as much possible and ensure that only your CTA really pops out. This also means you only should use your CTA color for your CTA: not on other parts of your website.
Here’s an example from my Affiliate24 templates:
As you can see, the orange CTA button really pops off the page. And even though the green and red colors are just as bright, they don’t disproportionally draw the reader’s attention due to them being used as accents.
For an example of this being done wrong by an affiliate video, check out this video from Matt Diggity from the 4:30 minute mark onwards:
2. Use only a few colors
Research has shown that people prefer websites which use simple colors, and not too many colors.
With any affiliate website, figure out which colors you’re going to use beforehand and stick with it. This will ensure a consistent look and feel across your website which makes your site look more professional.
Use only a few colors, not dozens.
3. Manage your website’s colors via a global color palette
When I switched my affiliate websites from Divi to Kadence, one of the many benefits was getting access to a global color palette.
This color palette applies to the majority of your site’s elements. Think titles, text, links, backgrounds and borders.
So if at some point you’re looking to change the colors on your site, you can do this in a few clicks instead of spending days on it manually.
What’s more, whenever you add a new element to your website, you can always pick a color from the palette instead of manually checking which color you used previously for a similar element. This will also save you a lot of time in maintaining your website.
4. Use a color wheel
Let’s say you have decided on a color for your CTA, and are now looking to pick a color for a divider underneath your titles.
How do you pick the right color?
Probably the easiest way to do this is by using a tool like the Adobe Color Wheel. Say that you want your CTA to be red, then which color would go well with this? Well, here’s your answer:
Contrasting with the color red (C) you find a dark blue color (E). This blue color would be a great choice for your dividers.
5. Borrow liberally
I’m not a professional designer and if you’re reading this, odds are you aren’t either. Therefore, if your approach to the color scheme for your affiliate site is to just wing it, you might end up with a color scheme that just doesn’t really work.
Therefore, I recommend you look at the greats and borrow liberally. Colors cannot be patented: use this to your advantage. I’m not telling you to copy the colors from websites in your space outright, but look for unrelated websites and draw inspiration from there.
There are also a ton of websites like FlatUIColors where you can turn for inspiration.
Examples of successful affiliate sites that use colors brilliantly
It’s definitely a good idea to take a took at the color schemes from some highly successful websites. Some of my favorites are the ones below.
Wirecutter
As an affiliate marketer there is a lot to learn from New York Time’s Wirecutter. Besides nailing their product round-ups and adding real value to the internet by digging super deep into the products they recommend, they also do very well when it comes to their color scheme.
There’s a few things that stand out here. One is that they only use a few colors. Shades of dark grey for their text, red for their product links and CTA buttons and blue for the borders of their product boxes and their email optin forms. Then there’s a subtle light grey color for their site’s background.
These colors go together very well. The red color really steals the show: due to the contrast with the rest of their website their CTA-buttons and product links are impossible to miss which without a doubt results in fantastic click-through rates.
NerdWallet
NerdWallet is a really great affiliate website which offers a ton of genuinely useful information. The color scheme on their website is a perfect fit for the subject: money.
Money is a sensitive topic, and you’ll see shades of blue and green being the most used colors on finance-related websites. They exude a sense of calmness and trust. Where the Wirecutter’s red is a great CTA color for consumer products, that color probably would be too aggressive for a site dealing with finance.
NerdWallet used blue for many of their icons, and a dark green shade for their CTA buttons. This works great for their affiliate niche.
Conclusion
Although choosing a color scheme for your affiliate site is no rocket science, it’s a bit more complicated than it might appear at first glance.
I hope the tips in this article were of help to you. If you have any questions about this at all, then please don’t hesitate to drop a comment below.