Typography is an often under-appreciated element on your site that may be costing you visitors. If your text is difficult to read or simply doesn’t fit the look of your site, it may be contributing to a poor user experience. If you haven’t evaluated your font styles lately, it might be time for a refresher.
Thankfully, reviewing and updating the typography on your website doesn’t have to be difficult. Once you know what to look for and how it should be fixed, all that’s left is to execute the change! Moreover, there are many tools available to help you find and upload new fonts.
In this post we’ll reveal how to improve the typography on your site in three steps. If you’re ready to improve the look of your site and lower bounce rates, let’s get started!
Poor typography can have a direct, negative impact on your website.
Firstly, typography plays a huge role in the general user experience. Usability is a major factor when it comes to keeping visitors on your site. Studies show websites can reduce their bounce rate by 92% with a simple redesign! Moreover, as the competition gets stiffer, usability becomes even more important when choosing where to make purchases. This directly impacts your conversion rates.
In other words, being proactive about usability makes you more likely to hit revenue goals.
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Secondly, typography contributes to the accessibility of your website. Your text should be scalable and shouldn’t cause any unnecessary strain for readers. This will benefit the visually-impaired, while improving general usability for all visitors.
The process of updating your typography is easier than you think! We’ll show you how to do it yourself in the following three steps.
We don’t expect you to sign up for night school to become a graphic designer. Professional typography is a complex art, with details like descenders, serifs, and other odd words most people don’t use in daily life. While you might be interested in learning more, you don’t necessarily need to worry about the finer details!
Right now, you only need to focus on the basics. Here are some important questions to ask about your website’s existing typography:
Armed with these answers, it’s time to take what you’ve learned and choose some new fonts.
By now, you should have a good grasp on how typography gives feeling to your content by setting a visual mood. It’s time to figure out which fonts you should choose to strike the right setting for your business. The fonts in the below example complement each other and are easy to read. Moreover, the limited use of font color cleverly incorporates a hue that matches the bright color in the image, making the word “ultimate” really pop:
While you can always shell out hundreds of dollars for fonts, there are many stellar choices available in the free font world. We recommend starting with these, and only worrying about premium options if absolutely necessary.
A few places you can start your search for free fonts are Smashing Magazine, Font Squirrel, Google Fonts, Open Font Library, and Adobe Typekit (free with choice Adobe memberships). Can’t find a font you love? You can also try creating one yourself.
Now that you’re armed to acquire the fonts you want, here are some best practices to help you make the right choice:
Once you’ve chosen a your new fonts and colors, it’s time to make the changes live on your site.
Now comes the moment you’ve been waiting for! It’s time to update the typography on your website and hopefully see an impact on your bounce rates and conversions.
If you don’t use WordPress, you can add your new font by following these instructions. Some font resources such as Fontspring also offer handy tutorials to help you. However, if you are a WordPress user, you might opt to use one of the various plugins available to help you such as Easy Google Fonts:
These typically make it easy to control your typography no matter which theme you use. Here are a few of your choices and what they can do:
Once you’ve installed and activated your plugin, you can use its documentation to guide you through the process of customizing your fonts.
Difficult-to-read or poorly-paired typography can cost you visitors and conversions. On the flip side, an excellent typographic design can create a better user experience and a more attractive site. Now that you know how to fix your website’s fonts, you can get started on making the necessary improvements!
In this article, we’ve revealed the three steps you need to take to improve your typography and lower bounce rates. Let’s recap them quickly:
What questions do you have about the typography on your website? Let us know in the comments section below!
Image credits: n3xia