If you have a landing page that you’re using to sell a product, then you should be aware of just how big a difference even the smallest change can make.
Tiny tweaks to your copy, your page layout and the product itself can all help your page convert more with fewer visitors, result in more profit for very little work.
It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that other tiny factors can also have a large impact on your success. Kathryn has shared before that images can improve traffic. But did you realize your typeface can too?
Why Font Matters
Unless you are a pro designer, you may not notice the font of a website when you first visit it. As a result, you might not think about it too much when choosing your own.
While you may not notice it consciously, though, fonts can register at some unconscious level, influencing your impression of that website.
Visit a site that uses a nice typeface and it will instantly feel more professional and well-designed. For instance, this is a classy font:
This is not:
You won’t be able to put your finger on it, but sites with a classy font will inspire trust far more than those that forget to consider font at all.
At the same time, your typeface can provide you with an additional form of communication by helping to set the tone of your page. An elegant typeface, for instance, will communicate class and quality, whereas a bold typeface will suggest breaking news and demand attention.
Mixing it Up
Furthermore, you can achieve a number of effects by mixing up your fonts and using a combination of different styles, sizes, and colors.
In particular, using a different color, font or size for your headers is an important way to make them stand out. This is particularly important when it comes to landing pages, where the biggest challenge is getting visitors to stay past the first few lines.
Studies have demonstrated that very few visitors online will read every word of a body of text, preferring instead to skim and absorb just the headers and the starts and ends of paragraphs.
A good landing page, then, should tell its entire story through the headers alone so that even the skim-readers are retained. That’s why it’s so important to use a font for your headers that stands out and draws attention to itself.
Similarly, you can use words in red, in bold, in italics or underlined in order to make specific words jump out at the reader. This emphasis makes them stand out in the minds of your readers, so they’re more likely to be remembered. And, while the reader skims, those words will stand out in a similar fashion to the headers and hopefully entice visitors to read those paragraphs in more depth.
Other Considerations
As well as considering how your fonts look and how they can be combined to maximum effect, it’s also important to consider some other factors.
For one, you need to make sure your fonts are legible and easy to read. This is particularly important today as many people are likely to be visiting your site on a mobile device.
While red font might be useful for drawing attention, it’s not particularly legible and so you aren’t likely to find whole landing pages written entirely in red writing.
You need to think too about the contrast your font will provide against the background, and you need to think about how it will look alongside other on-page elements (if it clashes, either the font or the graphical element need a rethink!).
It’s also necessary to think about how your font will look when in bold or italic if you intend to use it that way.
Whatever you decide, the most important thing is that you stop treating your typeface as an afterthought and start giving it the thorough consideration that it deserves. It could make all the difference to your landing page and your business success.
About the Author: Greg Fisher, the brains behind this article, started Berkeley Sourcing Group eight years ago after realizing the need for efficient processes and coordination between manufacturing firms located in the United States and factories in China. When he is not busy working, he enjoys reading books or playing a good game of chess with his friends.
