|
|
6 Ways to Improve Your Website's Readability
One of the most important characteristics of any website or online material is it's readability. In order for the content to be effective and to do its job, people must be able to easily read it. It sounds simple, but with the amount of distractions that are online and the difficulty that some people have with reading from a screen, it's not uncommon for a site to suffer from poor readability.
If you want to learn more about making you website readable, this article will cover some of the most important factors.
Spacing and Alignment
Many websites have problems with spacing, especially content-heavy sites. Trying to fit huge amounts of content into small areas of above the fold will make it very hard for visitors to read the text as it will all be crammed together.
Whitespace or negative space is a big key. It may seem like wasted space, but it's actually allowing everything to have a greater impact. Less is more.
Size of Text
Not everyone prefers to read fonts of the same size. People with poor vision typically like larger fonts because it prevents straining of the eyes, but others may prefer to read smaller text. Styling your text in percentages or ems instead of pixels will allow visitors to use their browser to change the text size.
In addition to giving flexibility, you can also use font sizes to make certain text stand out. Increasing the size of text will generally make it more noticeable, but keep in mind that the more you use large text the less impact it will have.
Font Selection
There are only a handful of "web-safe" fonts that are universally available to all of your visitors. For this reason, standard fonts like Arial and Georgia are very common in web design. Modern technologies sIFR make it possible to still use other types of fonts if you choose.
You can easily damage the readability of a site by using too many different fonts. No more than two or three fonts should be used on a page in oder to have some consistency.
Length of Lines of Text
Even though a high percentage of internet users are using widescreen displays with high resolution, lines of text that are too wide can have negative impacts on readability.
Keep in mind when designing that very wide or long lines of text can be difficult to read, as can very short or narrow lines of text. Most content areas are not wider than 600-700 pixels, because anything can larger can get rather difficult to read.
Font Weight
Use bold text when you want to make something stand out, but be sure to use it sparingly as it will stand out more when compared to normal text.
Distractions
If you want the text of your website to be highly effective, make it the focal piece and minimize distractions. Putting too much on the site will cause a lessened impact for everything. Keep the text emphasized by using less elements in the design that could be a distraction.
About the Author Steven Snell is a web designer and blogger from New Jersey. He maintains a design blog called DesignM.ag. If you'd like to see more about text and fonts you can find collections at his blog of calligraphy fonts and fonts for bold headlines.
|
 |
Please Rate: |
|
Rating: |
 Processing ... |
(Average: Not rated) |
| Views: | 33 | |
|
| More Articles from Web Design | | |
| Top Articles in Web Design | | |
|
