When it comes to driving conversions on your e-commerce site, the color of your call-to-action (CTA) buttons can play a significant role. In fact, studies have shown that certain colors can evoke particular emotions and influence behavior. One of the most important CTA buttons on your site is the "Buy Now" or "Add to Cart" button. So, what seems to be the best color for the "Buy Now" button? The answer is not straightforward, as it can depend on your brand identity, the color scheme of your site, and your target audience.
Let's talk action buttons
Add to Cart/Buy button is the main touch point between you and your customer. Everything you do is to force the visitor to click this button.
Now, there has been a lot of talk about call to action buttons (including buy buttons in e-commerce).
Export orders in your Magento (also see Magento 2 solution) with all the relevant data attached for better analysis.
The one side is actively testing the button colors and reports various conversion rate improvements (from legit 130% to questionable 300-400% increase). The other side is saying that there's no use in testing only the color of the button, as we should go deeper in what we offer to our website visitors.
As always, the golden truth is somewhere in between. Indeed, you can't expect your business to skyrocket just because you've changed the buy/add to cart button color. This button works in collaboration of all elements the customers sees on your page.
But the color does mean something, and we can't ignore that.
To a some extent I was curious to know which colors are mostly used on popular e-commerce stores. To break the mystery, I visited several hundreds of e-commerce stores and looked which button colors they were using.
How we picked websites to analyze Add to Cart/Buy button colors
- All the sites were picked from Alexa's Top Shopping websites (Global), which means the sites are mostly one of the most popular stores
- The site button color was counted only if the site was actually working, selling anything, and the product was in stock (no pre-orders, back-orders, 'see in stores' or other options were counted)
- Only the product page buttons were counted. Pop-up, category or search pages buttons and such were not included into the stats
- Simple checks were performed to avoid vivid A/B testing differences. However, we assume that some of them still could be missed and counted as well
What's the best color for Add to Cart/Buy button? The results
As we see, red is the most popular button color among the reviewed websites. Green, blue and orange are very close, altogether making around 74% of the total.
To see if the results differ in various industries, we looked at websites in three categories - electronics, food, and clothes.
In electronics, the results are rather close to the general ones - red is the most popular button color. Red, green, blue and orange are the leading choices here, but the blue color has a smaller share this time.
In clothing, we see a complete change of leaders. Black is new new black! What is more, the share of the 'other' section is bigger: here went pink, violet, purple, brown, white and other colors, getting 1-2% percent each.
Also, the clothing category had the most variety of the 'other' section, if compared to other viewed categories.
And the last but not least - food category. Again, red is the leader here, plus an unusual color - pistachio - is also among the most popular add to cart and buy button colors, too. Notice that blue colors weren't popular in Food at all.
How you can use the stats for you business
- It's good to know the general tendencies and notice if they change with time.
- If you want to change or choose the color for your button, you can start with these options. For example, it's vivid that it's not advisable to use brown, or white (transparent), or baby pink.
- You can also use these button color options if right now you have no time, knowledge and effort to perform A/B tests, or research competitors, or perform a deep analysis of your product page and how its elements are interacting with each other and with your visitors.
When testing, think about the color theory and the mood you're going for as some colors have proven to be more effective than others. For example, red is known to create a sense of urgency, while green can imply safety and relaxation. Blue is a popular choice as it's associated with trust and professionalism - just think about such online brands as LinkedIn, Zoom, Skype. Orange is an attention-grabbing color, making it a good option for sites with a playful tone.
Ultimately, the best CTA colors or best color for "Buy" button will depend on your specific context. Testing different colors and monitoring their impact on conversion rates can help you find the ideal option for your site. And never stop testing and pivoting! Using someone's best practice as a gateway, always find a way to see what works for your audience and try different variants.
