Using Familiar Fonts Improves Your Website Usability
Posted Under: Website Usability
By using familiar fonts in your website design, you will improve the usability of your website, and enable your readers to more easily consume it’s content.
Of the many factors that affect web site usability, attractive web site design, and good usable content, are what will make your site stand out the most.
How you use fonts in your website design, can make or break your website. No one wants to stay on a website with ornate fonts, in various sizes, and colors, that you must work to decipher.
Using familiar fonts that are easily readable, is preferred to the ornate, more difficult to read types, for the majority of site designs.
Most website visitors are in a hurry, and prefer using familiar fonts for faster web browsing. Speed is of the essence on the Internet, and providing familiar, easy to read fonts enables faster browsing.
Using familiar fonts also make browsing your web site easy on the eyes.
Eye strain is something most webmasters don’t consider often enough when selecting fonts and font size, however; it is definitely a factor in website design that should be paid attention to.
Navigation bars, buttons, links, menus, and the majority of your web page elements should all be using familiar fonts for easy reading, and to keep your visitors coming back to your site.
Times New Roman, a serif font, and Arial, a sans serif font; are familiar fonts that are now commonly used on Internet web sites.
Serif fonts help to individualize each letter, and are more comfortable to read on paper. However, when serif fonts are viewed on computer screens, screen display factors, such as screen resolution, can affect text clarity.
Serif fonts have small appendages in the top and bottom part of each letter, and are used for large quantities of text.
Times New Roman, Century, Bookman and Courier are examples of Serif fonts.
Sans-serif fonts are simpler and are constructed of only primary line strokes. Sans-serif fonts are used primarily for short phrases and smaller quantities of text.
Futura, Helvetica, and Arial are examples of Sans-serif fonts.
A quality, well designed website can be easily used and accessed by anyone visiting the site.
Judiciously using familiar fonts, in conjunction with the strategic placement of italics, underlining, bold facing, point size and color, will definitely improve your website usability.
