By Katherine Andes
Although there are no hard and fast rules with respect to font sizes for web pages and e-newsletters, in many cases most web pages can increase their font sizes.
Maybe I’m showing my baby-boomer age, but often I have to manually increase the size of fonts in web pages I open. And, that’s annoying.
Personally, I think designers tend to hate words, so they make fonts as small as possible.
Why even put words on a page unless they are meant to be read?
Remember, online reading speed is 25% slower than print because of the flicker of the screen. The irony is that computers have made us all ADHD — we have the attention span of a gnat. So we want to read faster, but we can’t!
Help your readers, especially your older disposable-income audience, along by making your fonts a little larger. It will also set you apart from most other web sites with their teeny tiny fonts.
SEO NOTE: I confess that as a search engine optimization (SEO) writer, I sometimes put words on a page targeted more for search engines to read rather than humans — like a list of cities served. Those listings, if located at an inconspicuous part of a page, can use a smaller font. The search bots don’t have an age problem. But the text should still be large enough to be readable for humans as well.
Easy Furniture Web Tip #86: Be different from other websites and use larger font sizes. Your readers will stick with your web pages longer.
Katherine Andes is a consultant who specializes in writing custom content for key web pages, including search engine optimization (SEO) — especially in the home improvement market. You can phone her at 559.589.0379 or email at Kathy@AndesAndAssociates.com.