Why does your web­site need real fonts instead of just using images?

1. Quicker load times. Images take much longer to load than html text.
2. Better com­pat­i­bil­ity with mobile devices. These days, 46% of American adults own a smart­phone. (Source: Pew Internet). Real web fonts allow for dynamic resiz­ing of text and increase the read­abil­ity of your con­tent on these devices.
3. Quicker, more afford­able web­site main­te­nance. With html text, edit­ing a head­line is quick and easy; whereas with an image, a graph­ics edi­tor like Adobe Photoshop is needed. It must then be saved as a web-friendly file, uploaded, and linked in your page. And, you must have the cor­rect font file installed on your computer.
4. Better search-engine rank­ing. Search engines such as Google and Bing read html head­lines but they don’t read the text in images. Therefore, any text used in a graphic needs to be added to the code on the page man­u­ally — adding main­te­nance costs and load time.
5. Better acces­si­bil­ity to your con­tent. Some web users — often those with hear­ing or visual impair­ment — pre­fer to read web pages with images turned off. If an impor­tant head­line is an image, these read­ers will never see it. In addi­tion, screen read­ers (a tool for web users with visual impair­ment) are inca­pable of read­ing images that do not have text pro­vided as an alt tag. With web fonts, screen read­ers will be able to read head­lines and sub-headlines, cre­at­ing a more stream­lined and enjoy­able web experience.
6. In some cases – it’s the law! Federal agen­cies must pro­vide a text equiv­a­lent to all con­tent pro­vided in images, video, and audio files to com­ply with Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act. Section 508 requires that elec­tronic and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy that is devel­oped or pur­chased by Federal agen­cies must be acces­si­ble by peo­ple with disabilities.

How’s it work?

In 2009, a com­pany called Typekit began host­ing and serv­ing up web fonts that ren­der beau­ti­fully in most web browsers. They took painstak­ing mea­sures to opti­mize each font’s appear­ance in dif­fer­ent oper­at­ing sys­tems and browsers, and at dif­fer­ent weights and sizes. The com­pany cur­rently has more than 800 care­fully selected fonts to choose from, includ­ing every­thing from ornate scripts to chunky serif type­faces. Google joined the mix in 2010 and is now offer­ing more than 600 web fonts.

In most cases, your web designer or devel­oper can sign up for one of these ser­vices and have com­pelling, web-friendly fonts on your web­site in a mat­ter of hours or even minutes.

Interested in adding these fonts to your site? Contact us and we’ll have you set up with web fonts quickly and easily.

Think of web users as win­dow shop­pers, walk­ing down a crowded city street. They judge store­fronts, win­dow dis­plays, sig­nage, and main­te­nance, among other things. Well, these days with Internet access lit­er­ally in the palm of our hands, your web site is the vir­tual store­front for your brand. Perhaps it’s time you con­sider renovating.

At the most basic level, your web site should com­mu­ni­cate infor­ma­tion quickly and eas­ily to vis­i­tors, while con­vey­ing the val­ues and aes­thetic of your brand. The design ele­ments of your web site, there­fore, should work together to project the right image and cre­ate a pos­i­tive user expe­ri­ence. This design process car­ries a great deal of com­plex­ity and detail, best han­dled by web design professionals.

Consider the fol­low­ing com­po­nents when you’re think­ing about the look of your web site, or online store­front — ‘tis almost the sea­son, after all.

Navigation
Put your­self in the shoes of a vis­i­tor to your web site. You want to be able to eas­ily move around the site, back and forth through dif­fer­ent sec­tions, and it should be as intu­itive as pos­si­ble. Different design ele­ments can help make your site easy to nav­i­gate: clear, well-designed head­ings; col­laps­ing menus; a sub-nav menu; and tabs. For large, com­plex sites, the use of bread­crumbs and a site map help the user expe­ri­ence as well.

Prioritization
While it may seem obvi­ous to pri­or­i­tize your con­tent on the lay­out of your web pages, there are many sites out there that don’t do this very well. Be sure that the most impor­tant infor­ma­tion is at the top of the page, and that it stands out and grabs the eye. Try and keep the con­tent that you con­sider to be a pri­or­ity “above the fold”, so vis­i­tors don’t have to scroll to find the infor­ma­tion they need. Moreover, vis­i­tors to your site should be able to iden­tify your com­pany, under­stand what you do, and locate the nav­i­ga­tion menu for your site in a mat­ter of seconds.

White space and spac­ing
Now that you’ve estab­lished the lay­out of your infor­ma­tion, don’t overdo it. You don’t want to over­crowd the pages of your site; this will con­fuse and over­whelm your vis­i­tors. Use white space, mean­ing space that inten­tion­ally has been left empty, to bal­ance the look of your site, and set the pac­ing for your visitor’s eye. But be care­ful — too much white space at the top can force impor­tant con­tent down­ward, “below the fold”, which leads to higher viewer disengagement.

Typography
Make sure the fonts you choose are easy to read. We know there are tons of funky, quirky, unique fonts out there — we geek out over them, too — but unfor­tu­nately, many of them are not highly read­able, espe­cially on a mon­i­tor. If vis­i­tors to your site can’t eas­ily read your con­tent, they’re not going to remem­ber it, let alone stay there for longer than 3 sec­onds. To that point, make sure the col­ors you’ve cho­sen for your text are read­able as well. If text is hard to read, vis­i­tors will leave.

You should also make sure that you use larger font sizes for head­ings and sub­head­ings through­out the pages of your site. This helps with read­abil­ity for both vis­i­tors to your site and search engines. And pay atten­tion to the line length of your text. If it’s too long, it becomes dif­fi­cult for read­ers to slog through.

Bottom line when it comes to typog­ra­phy: choose func­tion over fashion.

Color palette
Make sure that the col­ors you have cho­sen for your site not only com­ple­ment each other and your estab­lished brand­ing, but also set the desired atmos­phere you’re try­ing to exude. Certain col­ors evoke a tra­di­tional feel, while oth­ers seem more con­tem­po­rary. Some color palettes work well in one indus­try, and not so well in another. Moreover, some col­ors make you feel calm, other col­ors ener­gize you. Choose wisely.

Photography
Photography on your web site lends an engag­ing human ele­ment to your brand. High qual­ity pho­tog­ra­phy, in par­tic­u­lar, has a big impact on the user expe­ri­ence. There is a del­i­cate bal­ance, how­ever, between images and page down­load time — pho­tos with large dimen­sions can impede the time it takes to load your web site, likely caus­ing vis­i­tors to leave your site. On the other hand, pho­tos shouldn’t be so small that your site looks ama­teur and view­ers can’t see the details of the pho­tos themselves.

In terms of select­ing pho­tos for your site, work­ing with a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher is ideal, but not nec­es­sar­ily fea­si­ble for every­body. Stock pho­tog­ra­phy is a budget-friendly alter­na­tive that can still get the job done. Choose wisely, how­ever, as many stock pho­tos are generic and cheesy, and can con­vey an image that’s off-message from your brand.

A web site that reflects a thought­ful design process will not only make your vis­i­tors happy — it will make search engines happy, as well. Just like human vis­i­tors to your site, search engines care about your store­front, too. But that’s an SEO-related blog post that you can read here, if you’d like. Until then, feel free to give us a call to dis­cuss any ren­o­va­tion plans you may have in mind.