What "Type"-ography is Your Website Design?
The concept of typography in small business web design encompasses so many things, it is no surprise that it is often overlooked as an essential part of the overall design. Typography affects the tone of your message and the readability of your website, and includes elements such as the font itself, the font size, the font color (both as an individual element and in contrast to the background) as well as variations such as header sizes, the use of bold and italics, etc. When you consider how much of your website (and the message being communicated) is truly affected by typography concerns, it is incomprehensible why more small business website designers don't spend a larger amount of time on this element. Below are the 4 most important typography elements and how you should be thinking about them.
The Overall Font
First and foremost, you need to decide what font you will be using throughout the majority of your small business website. Of primary consideration here is your target audience... age, gender, income, education, employment status, devices they will be viewing your site on, amount of time the average visitor will spend on your site, and more. Be sure to choose a font that will convey the proper tone to your visitors. If you are an accounting firm targeting professionals for example, fonts such as Times New Roman or Segoe UI (the font used throughout this website) should resonate well. But if you are instead looking to market pink laptop and cellphone skins to women in their teens and twenties, you will might consider something with a little more flair such as MV Boli or Lithos Pro. Be sure to choose a font family that will "speak" to your target audience.
Font Sizing
Again, when choosing a base font size for your website, consider your target audience and what will get them to respond appropriately. An older target audience will have a very difficult time reading text that is too small and will probably move onto another site out of frustration. By the same token, a younger target audience may be able to read smaller print just fine, but they probably don't want to take the time to scroll very much if your font size makes the page significantly longer. Odds are you will have to do a little bit of testing to determine just the right font size to use in the design of your website, but some general rules do apply. Most websites will do fine with a base font between 12px and 18px. Throughout your site you can set various items apart using percentages, as into separate various elements on a page. Using percentages works better than fixed pixel sizes because it takes into account a user's browser settings and allows you to maintain relative font sizes. Using header tags is also an excellent idea, as it promotes consistency across your website as well as helping with how your small business website performs in search engine rankings.
Font Formatting
Again, as a small business website you want your visitors to find your content easy to read, and to convey whatever message you are trying to send. Font Formatting plays a large role in this aspect. Font Formatting refers to variables such as line-height and font-weight, as well as the relative positioning of your text (left, right, center, justify) to name just a few. It is important to the readability and usability of your website to remember that if you increase your font size, you will probably need to increase your line-height as well to make sure that lines don't run into each other. On my website, you can see a visual representation of this. The text in the middle column starts to run together, even with a fairly simple font style (see how the p in jumped and the l in lazy become one character?) if the line-height element is not accounted for. Adding an appropriate value to the line-height property results in what you see in column 3, which is very easy to read.
Font Color
When choosing the color of your typography, it is crucial to consider contrast and user expectations. Contrast refers to how the font color mixes or clashes with the page background. You can read my article on Color Scheme to learn more about harmonious and non-harmonious color schemes. The Contrast affects the readability and usability of your website. Put simply, if your text is hard on the eyes, people will go somewhere else for the information. User expectations refers to doing things in a way that your visitors will be comfortable with. For example, most people surfing the web will expect hyperlinks to be underlined and to be blue in color. The reverse also applies... if text is highlighted in blue and/or it is underlined, your visitors will expect that text to be a link which will take them somewhere. Does that mean that ALL hyperlinks should be blue and underlined? Not at all, but your scheme needs to be intuitive to your visitors to ensure that they find your site easy to navigate. The color scheme of eGriffin Web Design makes blue a poor choice for hyperlinks in terms of visual appeal. So we have chosen the darker of the two greens to make that text stand out. This keeps our visual scheme consistent while still presenting hyperlinks in a way that stands out and makes sense to our visitors. We also have chosen not to underline our links by default. Again this is a conscious decision based on our target audience and visual appeal. However, you will notice that if you hover over a hyperlink, that the cursor changes to the expected hand cursor, the font color changes to a lighter green and the underline appeals. All of these visual cues serve as confirmation that the text is in fact a hyperlink, and reinforces our audience's comfort level when navigating around the site.
Getting to the Point
The point is that when designing your small business website, it is easy to consider fancy graphics and background colors along with what functional elements (contact forms, shopping carts, etc.) need to go into it. It is also easy to forget the importance of typography and its tremendous impact on the usability and readability of your small business website and the affect it has on your visitors.
The Overall Font
First and foremost, you need to decide what font you will be using throughout the majority of your small business website. Of primary consideration here is your target audience... age, gender, income, education, employment status, devices they will be viewing your site on, amount of time the average visitor will spend on your site, and more. Be sure to choose a font that will convey the proper tone to your visitors. If you are an accounting firm targeting professionals for example, fonts such as Times New Roman or Segoe UI (the font used throughout this website) should resonate well. But if you are instead looking to market pink laptop and cellphone skins to women in their teens and twenties, you will might consider something with a little more flair such as MV Boli or Lithos Pro. Be sure to choose a font family that will "speak" to your target audience.
Font Sizing
Again, when choosing a base font size for your website, consider your target audience and what will get them to respond appropriately. An older target audience will have a very difficult time reading text that is too small and will probably move onto another site out of frustration. By the same token, a younger target audience may be able to read smaller print just fine, but they probably don't want to take the time to scroll very much if your font size makes the page significantly longer. Odds are you will have to do a little bit of testing to determine just the right font size to use in the design of your website, but some general rules do apply. Most websites will do fine with a base font between 12px and 18px. Throughout your site you can set various items apart using percentages, as into separate various elements on a page. Using percentages works better than fixed pixel sizes because it takes into account a user's browser settings and allows you to maintain relative font sizes. Using header tags is also an excellent idea, as it promotes consistency across your website as well as helping with how your small business website performs in search engine rankings.
Font Formatting
Again, as a small business website you want your visitors to find your content easy to read, and to convey whatever message you are trying to send. Font Formatting plays a large role in this aspect. Font Formatting refers to variables such as line-height and font-weight, as well as the relative positioning of your text (left, right, center, justify) to name just a few. It is important to the readability and usability of your website to remember that if you increase your font size, you will probably need to increase your line-height as well to make sure that lines don't run into each other. On my website, you can see a visual representation of this. The text in the middle column starts to run together, even with a fairly simple font style (see how the p in jumped and the l in lazy become one character?) if the line-height element is not accounted for. Adding an appropriate value to the line-height property results in what you see in column 3, which is very easy to read.
Font Color
When choosing the color of your typography, it is crucial to consider contrast and user expectations. Contrast refers to how the font color mixes or clashes with the page background. You can read my article on Color Scheme to learn more about harmonious and non-harmonious color schemes. The Contrast affects the readability and usability of your website. Put simply, if your text is hard on the eyes, people will go somewhere else for the information. User expectations refers to doing things in a way that your visitors will be comfortable with. For example, most people surfing the web will expect hyperlinks to be underlined and to be blue in color. The reverse also applies... if text is highlighted in blue and/or it is underlined, your visitors will expect that text to be a link which will take them somewhere. Does that mean that ALL hyperlinks should be blue and underlined? Not at all, but your scheme needs to be intuitive to your visitors to ensure that they find your site easy to navigate. The color scheme of eGriffin Web Design makes blue a poor choice for hyperlinks in terms of visual appeal. So we have chosen the darker of the two greens to make that text stand out. This keeps our visual scheme consistent while still presenting hyperlinks in a way that stands out and makes sense to our visitors. We also have chosen not to underline our links by default. Again this is a conscious decision based on our target audience and visual appeal. However, you will notice that if you hover over a hyperlink, that the cursor changes to the expected hand cursor, the font color changes to a lighter green and the underline appeals. All of these visual cues serve as confirmation that the text is in fact a hyperlink, and reinforces our audience's comfort level when navigating around the site.
Getting to the Point
The point is that when designing your small business website, it is easy to consider fancy graphics and background colors along with what functional elements (contact forms, shopping carts, etc.) need to go into it. It is also easy to forget the importance of typography and its tremendous impact on the usability and readability of your small business website and the affect it has on your visitors.
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