14 Tactics to Make Your Website Work Harder Right Now: Tactic 12 – Words Have to Look Pretty Too

Reading text while surfing the web is a very different exercise than reading text in a book or a newspaper. Reading web pages can be likened to taking a casual drive down Sunset Strip in Vegas. Except the billboards don’t boast half-naked women and mono-syllabic headlines. Instead, they are filled with 500 words of text each. A little overwhelming, don’t you think? And when you’re in Vegas, no doubt you’ve got people to see and places to go. You aren’t stopping the car unless something really catches your eye.

Eye tracking studies (Nielsen Norman Group) using heat maps show that most users scan web pages in an F-pattern before letting their eyes rest on any specific bit of text—if they decide to stay and check out your page at all (let alone the rest of your website). This should influence how you place important phrases and headlines on your pages. Additionally, consider how your text’s appearance contributes or detracts from the overall aesthetic of your site. Most of the time, simple is better. Some rules of thumb:

-> Never, ever put light text on a dark background. It’s very hard on the eyes. Although it’s perfectly appropriate if you want the appearance of an 80s nightclub.

-> No more than one or two font styles for body copy and headlines is necessary, and that’s site wide. Save the fancier fonts for your logo or tag line if you must use them at all.

-> In print, serif fonts are recommended. The opposite is true for online reading. Stick to simple styles like Arial or Verdana. Serifs, however, are okay for headlines or other items that you want the eye to “trip” over.

-> A 10 or 12 point font is a safe bet for the body copy on most sites—it’s large enough for most people without looking clunky. Any smaller than 10 points and you are forcing a lot of users (myself included—and I have 20/20 vision) to lean closer to the screen. Very annoying.

-> Finally, bold important “benefit” phrases or keyword terms in your body copy (if they are not already hyperlinked to another page). This helps your visitors find what they’re looking for quickly. And it reminds them that Yes, they have come to the right place.