As a leading Essex web design team, here at Crisp Design we understand the role great typography plays in supporting a site’s bottom line…
Typography is an often-neglected aspect of web design – yet it plays a key role in how impactful your content and messaging is.
Given you have just a few seconds to grab a user’s attention once they land on your site, it’s clear that font selection and overall typographic layout deserve some serious consideration. To neglect it is to miss out on a powerful tool – an extra arrow for your quiver.
Beautiful Fonts Make a Difference
Beautiful fonts in the right position can help make headlines and snappy marketing slogans pop on the page – rather than being overlooked – and help lead the reader on a journey through your site. In short, it can make your website a much more visually pleasant place to be – and help keep users on for longer, increasing the chances of them connecting with you or making a purchase.
But can great typography help you make more money?
Assuming you have a great product or service in the first place (which all of our UK and Essex web design clients do!), then a carefully chosen – or a bespoke-designed – font can support:
- Readability
- Professionalism
- Brand identity
- Emotional connection to your brand
- Differentiation (from competitors)
…all of which can help you turn more visitors into paying customers.
Make Great Typographic Choices
Here at Crisp Design we work with clients of all sizes and in all sectors. With such diversity, it’s not easy to make hard-and-fast rules about typography because every website has its own unique set of goals.
That said, here are some general typographic rules we stick to:
Go Heavy and Large for Titles
It may sound obvious, but you need to make your headlines stand out. The best way to do this is by harnessing heavy fonts that are larger than sub-headers and body text.
Advertising supremo David Ogilvy was big on headlines. He said: “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
This underlines the importance of making your headlines ‘pop’. Of course, this demands a fantastic copywriter in the first place – but it also demands fabulous typographical awareness and overall design.
Create a Clear Hierarchy Among Headers
There should be a clear difference between your H1, H2, H3, and H4 headings, which must in turn be distinguishable from the body text font.
The importance of having a good font hierarchy is underlined by the British Government (gov.uk), which has undertaken many tweaks to its famous GDS Transport font. You can take a look at the complex usage guidelines here.
Create Spaces Between Paragraphs
Large blocks of text are a real turn-off – especially given today’s goldfish-level attention spans! Ensure you break up your text with regular spaces. In fact, it’s smart to keep each paragraph to one or two sentences (you’ll see this is common practice across most news websites).
But Make Them Easily Readable…
While you can get away with some chunky text for your headlines, when it comes to the body copy you need something a little easier for the human eye to scan.
Body copy should have:
- A tall “x-height” – this is the height of the lowercase letters, like r, a, x, etc.
- A noticeable height difference between capitals and descenders – e.g., “i” and lowercase “l” are easily distinguishable.
- Characters should not be mistaken for one another – e.g. a, c, e, o; and L, l, and 1.
- Fonts that have distinguishing features among mirrored letters like p, b, d, q – so they don’t get confused with each other.
Try to avoid:
- Narrow width fonts
- Thin weights on small fonts
- Block capitals
The Essex Web Design Font of Wisdom
Here at Crisp Design we’ve worked with scores of companies across Essex and wider East Anglia to deliver stunning, usable websites that harness typography in the most eye-catching, visitor-pleasing way – while supporting their bottom line.