what is the best font for your website?
It’s the tiny detail that makes your website stand out. The font that you use on your website pages is one of these tiny details that can make a huge difference to the look and feel of your website. Different font styles convey different subconscious messages to your visitors. It is vital that you consider the font style for your website carefully. So what is the best font for your website? Read on for some insight.
Font Style
If you want your visitors to see you as trusting and responsible, use a traditional font like ‘Trajan’, ‘Georgia’ or ‘Times New Roman’. If you want to portray your business as modern, then try a minimalistic font with thinner weight. What about a website perhaps that deals with romance, weddings, flowers; you may want a font with lots of curves. When in doubt, use Arial, Helvetica, Times, Courier, Verdana, Open Sans, Droid Serif, Lato, Lora, Georgia and Myriad Pro. These are all great fonts to choose for your website.
Use a web safe font
Try to use a web safe font. These appear across all operating systems. This means that whoever visits your website doesn’t have to have your particular font on their computer. If you choose some obscure, stylised font, you, as the visitor may not see it unless it is on your system. Instead, the font you see would default back to something basic like Times New Roman. Google fonts are safe and are rendered perfectly on any computer
Font size matters
Regarding the size of the font, recommended font sizes are 8,16, 24, 32, 48,… Choose at least 16px for your main body text. It is neither too big nor small and readers find it best for reading text. Don’t have it any smaller for mobile phones. It’s not comfortable for mobile users.
How many fonts?
Do not use more than 3 font types on a website. Choose 1 font style for headlines. This can be slightly heavy and bold and prominent. Choose another font for body content which should be easily readable. Use an accent font – one for quotes, calls to action and so on. All the fonts that you choose should work well together. You don’t have to use 3 different font styles – you can change the font style or size of the font. Too many font styles can make the website look messy and unprofessional.
Think about load time
The way you use fonts on your website can have an effect (albeit a small one) on how quickly your website loads. Some fonts take a lot of time to load and visitors to your website won’t have the patience! Each typeface you use on your site requires the download of a file, so the more fonts you use the more time they take to download. To keep load times a minimum, use a small number of typefaces and choose a google typeface. Long loading times, can mean a negative user experience (UX) and basically annoy visitors to your website. Read more on how to encourage a positive user experience (UX).
Font Trends
At the moment, the creative use of typography is centre stage when it comes to web design. It can be as important as images and video. As video has less favourable effect on mobile browsing, typography is becoming even more important. We are seeing more manipulated fonts with animated and even moving letters. Fonts are not just for showing text but they can express the personality of a product. This is a useful and concise article on fonts and typefaces.
Websites take a lot of hard work and consideration but it is important not to underestimate the importance of the font that you use on your website. It’s a small thing to consider, but has the ability to take your website design to the next level! Surrey Web Studio will carefully advise you on the font styles that best suit your website.