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Using the right call-to-action colors is one of the keys to profitability when it comes to email marketing and landing page conversions.
In this guide, we explore how to choose the best colors for your brand that boost clicks and conversions and share 18 fantastic examples to inspire your next steps.
Are call-to-action colors important?
As we progress further into the age of digital shopping, ‘buying a product’ now often means clicking a button. Naturally, the ‘Buy Now’ button holds a lot of importance, and every click directly translates into sales for your brand.
And not just sales.
Call-to-action buttons are universally powerful. Every CTA button prompts your customers’ emotions to take an action you want. This could be:
- Downloading a free resource
- Signing up to your email list
- Adding your product to their cart
- Buying a subscription service
So, the color you choose for your CTA buttons invokes a feeling and impacts decisions directly. But tilting the odds in your favor isn’t as complicated as you may think, and it begins by understanding the basics of color theory.
What is color theory?
While color theory as a whole is a complicated and nuanced subject, marketers find it to be most useful when analyzing landing page conversion rates.
Your consumers react to every color they see on their screens, whether consciously or subconsciously. Each color sends out subliminal messages in association with your brand, so learning which colors suit your mission best can be the difference between a successful or failed landing page.
Making your CTA buttons more click-worthy has a lot to do with your products and messaging around them. But the color you choose for the button itself can make the reader much more likely to want to click it. Once you have invited them in with your landing page’s design and content, the CTA button should almost feel like a no-brainer.
Generating this feeling of immediate trust is not much of a guessing game when you know how different colors impact feelings and choices online.
18 examples of great colors for call-to-action buttons
Your call-to-action buttons are prompts you use to lead prospects to become your customers, and perfecting them comes with trial and error.
The best way to learn quickly?
Study examples of call-to-action buttons that are performing well for you and others!
Let’s take a look at the top nine colors we use for CTA buttons, along with two examples for each color. We will cover both landing page examples and email examples by creators and brands we love, let’s dive in!
Colors that can inspire you to write impactful CTAs:
Blue = trustworthiness, loyalty, and sincerity
Blue is an easy color to find on websites, and for good reason. Being an objectively calming color, blue represents feelings like sincerity, loyalty, and reliability. This makes it a professional choice for software displays, landing pages, and CTA buttons. We here at Kit are fond of the color too!
1. Blue CTA color example: Thomas Frank
The YouTuber, entrepreneur, and Notion nerd uses a dark shade of blue on his website to promote his Notion API Crash Course for Beginners. The CTA text ‘Start Learning’ paired with the blue color lends his course an air of intellectuality and logic.
Not only that, Frank can also be seen wearing a light blue tee against a dark blue color backdrop when posing for the thumbnail for this course. He loves this color, and we can’t blame him!
2. Blue CTA color example: Laura Belgray
Once Laura has convinced you of her exceptional copywriting skills and you want to start receiving her weekly emails, she sends over a subscription confirmation email with a bright blue CTA button. The purpose is clear—’Confirm your subscription’.
Powered by Kit, her focus is on introducing her newsletter’s purpose. The blue color also instills immediate confidence and excitement in the reader to click the button and start receiving her emails.
Yellow = youthful, optimistic, and attention-grabbing
The bright yellow hue immediately reflects signs like the McDonald’s logo or the Best Buy tag we are all familiar with. This sunny color is attention-grabbing, making it a popular choice for a CTA button. Both creators and brands love to use yellow as it portrays the emotions of creativity, warmth, and positive energy.
3. Yellow CTA color example: Katelyn Bourgoin
As a marketer and brand consumer growth expert, Katelyn Bourgoin offers 60-minute strategy calls with a yellow ‘Book call now’ CTA button that immediately stops the scroll. Designed to intrigue every reader, she uses Kit’s Sponsor Network to leverage this attention and turn her newsletter into an income stream.
As the founder of the media company Customer Camp, she also successfully employs this neon yellow shade in all of her CTA buttons.
4. Yellow CTA color example: Heatonist
Well-known hot sauce brand Heatonist hosts an email list sharing their latest sauce releases, updates, and promotions with subscribers.
Their theme colors follow the warm/hot feel of their sauces, and choosing yellow for their email CTA buttons follows suit.
The simple intimation to readers with the text ‘Browse Sauce’ also increases their chance of bringing in more sales.
Red = energy, strength, and urgency-promoting
Red is the color of the Netflix logo and ‘Stop’ signs worldwide, so we tend to associate it with feelings of energy, courage, or urgency. A red CTA button almost jumps off the page, so if you want readers to take notice of what you have to say, this is a confident choice.
5. Red CTA color example: Sanjeev Kapoor
World-renowned masterchef Sanjeev Kapoor hosts a series of cooking courses on his website with a classic black and white theme.
The red CTA button prompts action with the text inviting you to ‘View Courses’.
Being a leader in the food industry, choosing a color often associated with hunger is a smart choice to go along with the copy on the webpage.
6. Red CTA color example: Jesús Enrique Rosas
Body language expert Jesús Enrique Rosas hosts an online community where he shares expert tips and advice on human behavior.
Emails to his subscribers have red CTA buttons that encourage immediate action. This bright red-with-white text also complements his bold approach to learning self-confidence with a humorous tangent.
Green = balance, refreshment, and restoration
Being the color of nature, green reflects balance and is a soothing choice for environment-friendly products and marketing campaigns.
What else does the color remind you of? Money.
Banking facilities also love using green as the color of wealth for their CTA buttons across all channels of communication.
7. Green CTA color example: Hello Fresh
Hello Fresh is a popular ready-to-cook meal kit delivery service that offers customers subscription services that suit their needs.
The website’s landing page displays a bright green CTA button pushing you to view their plans and choose the one you like best. This green color also subliminally communicates how health-conscious the brand is, sending a positive message to every viewer.
8. Green CTA color example: Paul Millerd
Paul Millerd is a self-employed writer who runs a Substack email newsletter sharing his thoughts on several topics, and his color of choice is grass green.
The simple ‘Subscribe Now’ button immediately catches the reader’s eye and syncs well with his brand’s theme.
Given that he talks about work and life beyond the default path, the green emphasizes his ideology of freedom too.
Orange = fun, passion, and security
Orange is a bright and inviting color marketers often use to command attention without being overpowering.
It lies exactly opposite blue on the color wheel and both colors are the most popular choice for CTA buttons today. Orange is also a fun color to attract children and we see it a lot in campaigns such as ‘Back to School’.
9. Orange CTA color example: LivinLeggings
LivinLeggings is a yoga studio that offers online classes, challenges, and more to its students.
The landing page of all its products and subscription services boasts a combination of a vivid orange against a dark purple backdrop. Orange complements the energizing attitude of the brand well, and this makes every CTA button easy to spot and irresistible to click on!
10. Orange CTA color example: Ericka Anderson
The freelance copywriter and solopreneur offers her audience a book proposal writing service.
Readers who have subscribed to her email newsletter receive weekly updates with her signature orange color theme.
The CTA button in its bold orange ‘Book a free call’ invites clicks and stands out against the white background.
Pink = warmth, nurture, and tranquility
The release of the Barbie movie has only made us all fall in love with pink again, from its pastel shades to brighter tones.
The color can stand for romance, femininity, youthfulness, and sexuality, so it’s no wonder creators love to use it everywhere.
When suitable to your call to action, a pink button can make the audience’s job very easy.
11. Pink CTA color example: The Petite Club
Launched by YouTuber Tina Yong, The Petite Club offers a range of false eyelashes to suit different eye shapes and makeup styles.
Its tranquil designs and packaging go hand-in-hand with the subtle pink shades she uses for all her CTA buttons on the website. This careful use of pink to highlight elements like the discount and the ‘Add to cart’ button makes this page look charming.
12. Pink CTA color example: Revolancer
Started by freelance writer and serial entrepreneur Alex Fasulo, Revolancer is an online job board and portfolio site for independent professionals.
The website and email newsletter brighten up with the neon pink CTA buttons they use to persuade readers. Once a freelancer has signed up to their platform, this email encourages them to take the next steps using the pink ‘Complete My Profile’ button.
Purple = luxury, vision, and truth
Whether you are fascinated by mystery, magic, spirituality, or royalty, purple can be your color of choice.
This rich color is enterprising and a good choice if you want to stand out from the crowd online.
Purple isn’t used as much as other popular color choices, but if it fits your brand’s vision, your recall value among consumers will skyrocket thanks to it.
13. Purple CTA color example: Piecework Puzzles
Contrasted by the fiery red, Piecework Puzzles uses the cool purple color to highlight the most important button on the shopper’s page—Add to Bag. The lighter purple background also adds to the luxurious feel of the brand and boosts confidence in the eyes of the shopper. When used sparingly, purple can add to a page’s engagement rate without being forceful.
14. Purple CTA color example: Vistara Airlines
This commercial airline flies to 14 countries with their striking purple-colored design on every element.
Every email is equipped with the same purple, gold, and white theme, and passengers also get an email with the purple ‘Upgrade Now’ button to avail added benefits during their journey. This shade of purple is now synonymous with the brand and lends a touch of royalty to the airline.
Black = sleekness, sophistication, and efficiency
Rarely is any color as timeless as black, and its stylishness is likely the reason it’s picked up by so many impressive brands.
From Apple and Sony to Prada and Chanel, black is a favorite because of how it exudes a sleek, sophisticated, and powerful vibe. While many creators prefer using it as a contrast color, it is a bold choice for primary typography.
15. Black CTA color example: Chamberlain Coffee
YouTuber Emma Chamberlain’s coffee company has an eclectic website where she sells a range of products.
The minimalistic theme of the landing page offers first-time customers an added incentive to make their purchase.
Clicking the black CTA button offers a 10% discount and pairs well against the white and grey theme of the webpage.
16. Black CTA color example: Kat Boogaard
Kat Boogaard sends a weekly email newsletter to her readers with freelance tips and advice every Friday, along with tools and templates for purchase. She recently launched a series of freelance-themed coffee mugs, and her email included a simple but effective black CTA button. The text also explained why her reader should click that button—’Get your coffee mug here!’.
(Okay, in all fairness, this is more of a very dark grey, but that is almost black and very chic so…)
Ghost (translucent backgrounds)
Translucent backgrounds have always been a fashionable choice for CTA buttons, but don’t think this understated choice can’t have a big impact on the audience too.
If your brand’s primary color is a bold one, it can pay to have a ghost button floating on the page and immediately catch your consumers’ attention.
17. Translucent CTA example: Yoga with Adriene
Adriene Mishler runs an online community of 11 million subscribers under her label ‘Yoga with Adriene’. Her page takes on a minimalistic approach to design and the translucent CTA button with the text ‘Join Today’ matches well with the overall appeal of the brand. She covers yoga through a lens of relaxation, peace, and growth, so her audience can fully appreciate the ghost theme for the call to action.
18. Translucent CTA example: Dominique Cosmetics
Makeup expert and beauty creator Christen Dominique runs an email newsletter to update her audience on the latest launches and product queries. This edition encourages readers to join the rewards program with a translucent CTA button ‘Join Now’. Given the brand’s clean and soft pink aesthetic, the button still manages to attract attention and generate clicks.
Tips and best practices to choose the right call to action color
With all these examples that we’ve just discussed, are you feeling inspired to go out there and choose your perfect CTA color that will inevitably transform your business and help you skyrocket revenue?
Before you begin, we’ll leave you with 5 essential tips and best practices that might come in handy.
Tools to help you test and find great call-to-action colors
There are myriad choices for tools to help you find great call-to-action colors. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Coolers.co is a tool that helps you generate unique new color themes and pick accent colors to complement your primary brand color.
- Adobe Kuler allows you to upload your brand’s photo and extract an entire color scheme from it seamlessly. You can also download your palettes and integrate them with other Adobe apps.
- Contrast Grid lets you test your foreground and background color combinations against the WCAG requirements.
- COLOURlovers is a creative community of people discussing the latest color trends and share their own palettes and patterns.
Make your CTA button color an eye-catcher
Dull colors don’t catch the reader’s eye, so making your CTA buttons bright and striking is in your best interest.
One thing to keep in mind here is the contrast between your button color and your text color.
You should be able to read what the call-to-action is clearly, so white and black are the easy choices.
Knowing color harmony will help you pick a color that complements your brand identity without being too loud or in-your-face for your audience. Picking colors opposite to each other on the color wheel is a good starting point, and you can always experiment with different shades and tints of your chosen colors.
Don’t betray your brand colors
Your brand isn’t just a website or collection of products and services. It has a personality with which your customers bond. This is closely tied in with your brand colors, so keep those in mind when deciding your CTA button colors as well. A feminine hygiene products company using a dull brown color for its calls to action wouldn’t work, right?
Do not switch CTA colors back and forth
Good marketers know the importance of consistency in messaging, and this extends to the colors you employ as well. Don’t confuse your readers with changes, instead have a set color or two that you use for clickable buttons on all your communication channels.
Use A/B testing to choose a winner
Once you’ve narrowed it down to a few choices, A/B testing your landing page for conversion rate monitoring can help you choose the winning color combinations. For every element you can get your audience’s approval of, you boost your chances of persuading them to take the action you want.
So, whether you want them to begin their free trial of your premium service, purchase a ticket to your next masterclass, or leave a positive review online, picking the right call-to-action colors for your landing pages and email marketing campaigns can make a huge difference.
Click here to start your 14-day free trial with Kit and start putting these tips into action today.
