Issues with font colours, styles and sizes

More than just a subjective opinion about styles and colours, this is about the overall visitor experience, the readability of your site’s content and navigation/links – and the effectiveness of your website when it comes to converting people into customers.

Font colours that clash with the background colour they’re on (for instance, red on green, or blue on yellow…) cause strain on the eyes when reading. No matter how brilliant your words are, this can easily drive the reader away.

I’ve seen many websites with either the clashing colours problem, or the too-similar colours problem. If the font colour and its background colour are too similar, the text can be almost invisible on certain screens – and remember, people use different brightness and colour settings on their devices. A sharp, complementary contrast is best.

Some font styles can make your content hard to read. Fancy fonts in your header area or branding can be fine, but the main page text should be a standard font, or at least easy to read without struggling. And be careful with letter and line spacing, so that the text isn’t too cramped. Nice and spacious is best for easy reading.

Size matters too. With ‘responsive’ site design/layout that adjusts to suit different screen sizes, the font size still doesn’t adapt on some websites – so you should check your pages on different devices, or an online screen size checker. A common issue is that the font appears too small on smartphones, forcing the reader to zoom in and scroll left and right, which is far from ideal.

As well as ensuring it’s easy and comfortable to read the main body of your pages, be sure it’s also easy to read your navigation buttons/links. For obvious reasons, a visitor needs to be able to navigate your site with ease.

Any of the above can repel your visitors, but it’s an issue that some website owners haven’t considered. If your site suffers from text not being clear or easy to read, it’s very highly recommended to change things.

When your navigation and content is clear and comfortable to read, it can go a long way to keeping your visitors on your site, responding to your calls to action, and going ahead with transactions.