6 Tips for More Readable Websites
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
If you want the text of your site to have an impact and to be noticed, make good use of spacing. Rather than using a lot of text in small areas, space it out and keep it uncluttered. The space around text will have a huge impact on the level of readability.
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.
Font Size
Some of your visitors may have a hard time reading small text, or even normal sized text. They may need to increase the font size in order to be able to easily read it. If you are styling your text by using ems or percentages instead of pixels to determine the font size, all of your visitors will be able to adjust the size of the text.
Font size is also key for making important text stand out. However, use this technique sparingly as the less you use it the more impact it will have.
Font Choices
Unlike when you are working with print design, in web design there are a relatively small number of web-safe fonts. If you use other fonts your visitors may not be able to see it as you have it designed. There are ways around this through things like sIFR that allow you to replace fonts.
One of the main causes of poor readability is choosing the wrong font or using too many different fonts. Generally you should stick with no more than 2-3 fonts on any website, otherwise it can impair readability.
Width of Text Lines
Modern websites are typically being design a good bit wider than they were just a few short years ago, due to the common widescreen monitors that so many interent users have.
Even on wider websites, text should not stretch the full width of the page. In general, about 600 to 700 pixels in width is the maximum that will still allow for good readability. However, very narrow columns can also cause readability issues.
Bold Text
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
Text can only have an impact when there aren’t other things distracting the visitors attention. Using less in your design will help to keep the focus on the text, and only use text that has a purpose.
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 headline fonts.