Why Are Fonts Important for Your Website?
In web design, the fonts used have a significant effect on the website’s general performance. To encourage readers to keep scrolling your content, you must make it readable by using good fonts. Sometimes selecting a website font can be hard, so we have compiled this guide to help you with this.
In this article, we will also cover other topics such as the importance of website fonts, the 5 font personality types, mistakes to avoid when using fonts and much more.
Let us start off our discussion by exploring the reasons why website fonts are important.
Why Are Website Fonts Important?
• They are a medium of communication.
At a glance on the fonts you have used, people can determine what kind of website you have and the information it contains. The font’s color and how content is arranged act as a medium of communication between the website owner and the visitor.
• Convey mood
Advertisements and games use fonts that represent excitement to bring out the fun and playful content. On the other hand, plain, simple and professional fonts are used in content that requires some seriousness.
• Attract readers
Correct fonts, color and text size are vital to attracting visitors to your website. Ensure the font is clean, not too small and crummy, as good fonts help readers perceive the text better.
• Hold the audience’s attention.
You can attract an audience by using a good design but capturing their attention needs more. To capture your reader’s attention, you need to be creative in how you use your fonts and related elements. You can, for example, use bold, italics, or highlight for the main points.
The 5 Font Personality Types
Various font personality types are used to convey different messages for different target audiences. Here are the 5 font personality types:
1. Strong, Stable, Defined
These fonts are used to deliver important information or give an impression of strength. They are bold and blocky and examples include Futura, Helvetica Bold and Franklin Gothic. Use them sparingly in pull-out quotes, logos and headings.
2. Romance, Elegance, Beauty, Vintage
These use curves to give elegance and a romantic feel in design and are handwritten fonts. Examples are Parisienne, Bickham script and Edwardian script. Curvy italic fonts make the design look more vintage and more round fonts make the design look retro.
3. Contemporary, Modern, Minimalistic, Progressive
This font personality type leans more to a minimal design by using clear font designs with less handwritten qualities, thus appearing more modern. You can use them for your main website page as they are very clear to read. Examples of these fonts include Josefin Sans, Open Sans and Myriad Italic.
4. Themed Font Design
These are defined by the property of having so many characteristics. Perfect examples here are distorted fashion, streetwear and metropolis. They are so stylized and can come in handy when creating a unique brand identity, especially when you don’t have excellent design skills.
5. Traditional, Respectable, Comfort, Reliable
These look classic and traditional and since they have been in use for a long time, they give the impression of trust, reliability and heritage. They include serif font styles such as Trajan, Playfair Display, Merriweather, etc.
How to choose a font for your website
• Use a safe web font
Safe web fonts are available across different operating systems and devices. These include Arial, Times New Roman, Bookman, Tahoma, Impact and Garamond. Using safe web fonts helps in SEO ranking as they are easy to load and the readers will not get tired of waiting.
• Understand your brand
Choose a font that displays your personality and brand. Before choosing any font, you need to understand your brand well. Select fonts that align with your personality, your brand and your target audience.
• Get a balance between your brand and target audience
Getting a font that displays the personality of your brand is perfect. Still, you also need to consider your audience. Choose a font that is readable and appealing to the audience by considering their age, gender and profession.
• Analyze the font you have chosen
Once you have a font, before selecting it, manipulate it to see how it looks in bold, italics, upper case and lowers case and different sizes. Weigh the various aspects and find which is best for your website.
Mistakes to avoid when choosing your website font
If you go wrong on fonts for your website, the results will be demotivating and hence you need to avoid the following:
• Using too many font designs– Using more than two fonts makes the content look cluttered and confusing.
• Using hard-to-read fonts- Since you aim to educate the audience on your services and products, use easy-to-read fonts. For logos and titles, you can use more fancy fonts.
• Poor line spacing– Add enough space between lines to make your content readable.
• Too many font colors– Although colors make the website look good and attractive, you need to strike a balance and use just enough colors which stand clearly against the background.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you have seen how important web fonts are and why you need to select yours carefully. Use the methods we have discussed to guide you in choosing the best font for your website to provide an attractive appearance and preserve the aesthetic value of your site’s content. Also, avoid the mistakes outlined and you will see great benefits, including improving your site’s users’ experience.
