Does your font size drive people away?

November 17, 2010

Many of the businesses that tell me, “We already have a website”, or “We have someone who does our website”, or “We do that in-house”, have a common mistake: the font size is small, if not tiny. Here’s an example from www.fischerfirm.com.

What’s so bad about small fonts?

The research site, Science Daily, has a great article that shows that text read from a computer screen is significantly harder to read and less persuasive than print text. The article even dates back to Aug, 2000! So, why would a website designer make it even harder to read by making the font size so small? That’s the difference between designing for aesthetics and designing for utility and purpose.

There was a trend during the early and mid-part of the 2000′s to use small font sizes to get a “sleek” feel. As the W3C guideline web design standards point out, this does not make for readable sites. The purpose of your business website is to motivate the visitor to:

Call You
Fill out the Contact Form
Sign up for a Newsletter
Download an eBook
Email You
Buy a Product or Service Online

Aesthetics and Effectiveness

Having an aesthetically beautiful or sleek or any other quality is only useful to the extent it motivates people to do one of the above actions. Many businesses hire a designer to build a site that has some aesthetic quality but ends up being hard to read, hard to navigate, hard to find information, and frustrating. Central Bar NYC purchased an expensive design, but see how the font size is small, its hard to read in white off of a varying background, the navigation is small, and the information is limited.

How big should the font size be?

I’m not advocating some gigantic font size, what I’m interested in is websites that are easy to read, easy to find information, easy to navigate, and have compelling content. Like a good frame on a work of art, the design should enhance the picture and keep your eye focused on the picture. You don’t want to look at a Monet and say, “Wow, that’s an ugly frame”, or even the opposite, “Wow, what a beautiful frame!”. The goal is to not even notice the frame.

Likewise, your font doesn’t have to be abnormally big, it just shouldn’t be abnormally small. Here’s an example of MohrmannElectric.com.

Notice how the font size is not huge, but also notice how there are headlines, bullet points, bolded text, and highlighted color text. These varying features make the text easier to read and easier to scan the page to find the overall gist. The content becomes more compelling simply by the way it is laid out on the page.

How can you improve your website?

Take a moment on look at your website with a critical eye towards effectiveness. Also look at your website analytics. What pages do users spend the most time on? How does the font layout and size and color vary between those pages and how users behave? Can you make use of varying font sizes with headlines, bolded text, and bullet points?

What are your opinions and findings about font sizes and text/design layouts?