What Your Font Choices Say About You

Experts can determine a great deal of information about a person by studying his or her handwriting. The style of the writing as well as the size and flourish of the letters indicates different personality traits. In similar fashion, visitors to your website will establish certain perceptions about you or your company, based on the way your pages are designed. Color choices indicate certain things, but as important are the font styles you choose.

If you use large, bold, eye-catching fonts, it tells visitors that you have a message to get across. The image below shows the difference between using a mild font or one that conveys excitement. Both fonts are the same size, same boldness, and the same color, yet they look very different.

The size of the fonts you choose can also send other messages. Does your site contain a great deal of small print? This may lead visitors to believe that you have something to hide, or that your terms are not straightforward. Using attractively styled fonts in sizes that are easy to read, is a much better way to draw in customers as well as repeat visitors.

Carefully considering the way your font style and color choices work together is also important. A dark background with light colored lettering can be very dramatic, but it is also more difficult to read. If you decide to use this look, you need to make sure you choose a bold font so visitors can read your copy easily. Otherwise, they will probably choose a competitor’s site.

When people surf the web, they want instant information. They don’t want to wade through a lot of copy that is difficult to decipher or time consuming to read. They want to quickly scan the page and move on. Using different font styles is a good way to break up pages and make them scan-able. Use bold fonts for headings and subheadings, and a clear, easy to read style for the main copy. Just don’t go overboard using too many different fonts, as doing so will make your pages look less than professional.

Look at your pages with a critical eye as if you were viewing someone else’s site. Ask others to give you an honest appraisal of your pages. It’s also a good idea to look around at other popular pages to see what works. Not because you want your website to look exactly like other sites, but to discover elements that might work for you. You can also look around for unique fonts that you can purchase or download, to give your site an edge.

Another wise idea is to look at your pages with different browsers and different resolutions, so you can see how your copy looks to different people. You may learn that a particular font does not present well with low resolution or a particular browser. This way, you can change the font style, perhaps to something simpler that looks great on any computer, before going live.

close
Login into your account