I had in mind pictures of deep red buttons. Start mixing it in with other colours in a similar context - even between pages - in a way that has no clear pattern or reasoning, and red will start to lose it's effectiveness.Ī curious thing happened at the end of writing this answer. So to clarify - red makes a good primary button colour in isolation.

That's when people give up and avoid making a decision at all. However, if the CTAs on a page are such that they need to be compared for the best option, or for one that least likely leads to a loss, or that fights against one of hundreds of other cognitive biases, then the conscious mind is going to actually have to make a decision - not just to vett the content, but to resolve conflicts. So yes, red probably makes a good primary button colour. The 'stop and think' step, paired with a positive assessment of the situation can be a more progressive step than a subconscious ambivalence. All the time, your subconscious is trying to process all the information you see, only deferring to the conscious when an automatic (instinctive or gut) reaction can't be made. This surfacing of a situation to the conscious is an effective 'stop and think' step, the outcome of which is 'it's ok to proceed'. The conscious analysis of a red submit button says 'that's fine, it's just a submit button, it's not dangerous' or 'it's ok, that's clearly just the brand colour'. Obviously we can't ignore the red=danger aspect, but people don't go round thinking 'I'm not clicking on that because it's RED and dangerous'.īut what red might do is appeal to the subconscious to defer to the conscious mind in order to asses the situation for actual danger before continuing. Higher contrast ratios make for a more legible text, and therefore make it stand out more.

There is the contrast ratio to consider - white text on a red background has a higher contrast ratio than white text on a green button. There could be a whole bunch of reasons, some centered around subconscious human behaviour, and some related to an actual physical difference.Ī straight A/B test between red and green buttons with a white label does not reduce simply down to 'colour of the button'. All we know really is that red was more effective because more people clicked on it. But you have to ask why the A/B test swung that way.

There are A/B tests that tell us red is more effective than green.

Red button up