Of the many different considerations involved with website design, text is one of the most significant, yet it is also one of the most overlooked. You can have the best layout and graphics possible, but if visitors to your website cannot easily read what you have written then they will not stay on your site for very long.
Fortunately, getting the text part of your website design correct is not overly difficult. All you need to do is adhere to the guidelines laid out below…
- Only make use of fonts that are available on all computers, such as verdana and arial. Though you may not consider these to be the most visually appealing fonts, they are the most practical ones. This is because they are the easiest to read on a computer screen. Another reason is that every computer definitely has these fonts stored on their hard-disk. If you choose a random, fancy font, then many computers will not have it stored, in which case the computer will automatically select another to display your website in, and so you cannot be sure how your website is going to render on other people’s screens.
- Do not use small font sizes as visitors to your website will click the back button on their web browser straight away. You may have good eyesight but many people do not, and so you have to take the middle ground rather than just making your website for yourself. Using a font size of 11 or 12 is generally recommended for the main body of your website content, with sub-titles and headings being a font size or two larger. Be consistent too, by ensuring that you use the same font sizes for your content, sub-titles and headings throughout every page of your website.
- Limit your written content to roughly 15 words per line. By doing this people will only have to move their eyes to read your content, and not their whole head. This number is based on research and studies that have been carried out which show that 15 words is as far most people’s field of vision will stretch. Not every line has to be exactly 15 words, as some sentences will a greater or lesser number of small words such as ‘a’, ‘to’, ‘and’, etc., so you just need to use that number as a rough guide.
- The color(s) you choose for your text should sharply contrast to the color(s) you use for your background. Black text on a white background is easiest for people to read, but it is not necessary to limit yourself to that if it does not suit the overall style of your website design. If the background color is light, then make your text black or a dark shade of gray, and if the background color is dark, then use white as the color for your text. Using non black, dark gray or white text hardly ever comes across well, so be extremely careful if you are intent on using a different color for your text.
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This article was written by a website design expert who has more than 10 years experience in the industry. He is currently doing website design in Chappaqua, Westchester and White Plains and can be contacted at http://kinneymedia.com