Make use of Recognizable and Readable Fonts to Enhance Website Usability

There are many variables that affect the functionality of a website. To make websites more visible to viewers, webmasters must make use of alluring design and functional content. The utilization of fonts is one of the elements that can draw or steer away would be visitors to an internet site. Quality fonts are crucial because they have an effect on how fast users can more easily read whatever content that’s presented on the screen.

Fonts are used to make the greater part of the webpage elements, such as navigation bar, headers, copy, and footers. It is the text that will convey most of the site’s content.

Presently, the fonts that are typically used on the internet are Times New Roman, Serif, Arial and Sans Serif. The principal advantage of Serif fonts is that they are more easy to read on paper, because Serif fonts help individualize each letter. However, this benefit can be rendered ineffective when these fonts are viewed on monitors, since variables such as screen resolution can affect the quality of texts.

So how do fonts affect the overall user friendliness and legibility of a website?

There are 2 main classes of font faces:

Serif

The two fonts above include small appendages in the top and bottom portion of a letter. Examples are Bookman, Century, Courier or Times New Roman. These are some of the most common faces used for a large sum of text.

Sans Serif

These fonts have only principal line strokes, and have a simpler shape. Different types of these fonts are Arial, Futura and Helvetica. Sans Serif Fonts are typically used for short phrases.

Font style relates to the use of features such as italics, underlining, and boldfaces to give greater importance to the contents of a page. It is not recommended to make use of underlining on web pages, since most viewers connect underlining with backlinks. Boldfaces should be used in a strategic way. An excessive usage of boldfaces can distract away from the content, since they are highly visible. Since italics are not extremely legible on the screen, they should be employed infrequently, just enough to give emphasis and meaning to terms.

Stay away from using absolute font sizes. Doing so may impede users ability to adjust the sizes of the text on certain handsets. It is suggested to let users adjust the size of the texts, specifically if one plans to keep webpages short.

Selecting font colors should be done with attention, it should increase the legibility of the text in contrast to the background of the page while setting it apart from colors used for links. For light backgrounds, one should work with fonts in black or darker colors. If the background is dark, fonts in white or lighter colors should be used. When possible, make use of only one or two font colors in a page, not including the colors for the link pages.

There are graphics that look like fonts. Steer clear of using them. There are a few factors why you should not utilize .jpg or .gif images to acquire special effects. First of all, images take a longer time to load, and when they show up, the quality is not the same as the text produced by the by browsers. Second, problems occur when the image is resized by the CMS. Third, text images cannot be recognized by voice-search.

As a rule of thumb, Sans Serif fonts should be utilized for professional website designs, particularly the Arial and the Verdana. It is advised to use the same font throughout a web site. Heading and subheading sizes can be Larger or written in bold form to prevent monotony. Again, it is more suitable to give users the ability to control the size of the texts, since some of the users can be visually-challenged.

Some studies show that fonts that are smaller sized than 10-point gets slower response from internet users. It is a good idea to work with fonts that are at least 12 or 14-point in size when it comes to individuals over the age of 65.

The beneficial quality of a good website is that it can be used by people from all walks of life. Websites should be designed to fit everyone who will be able to visit them.