Of the many different website design considerations, text is one of the most important, yet it is also one of the most neglected. You can have the best layout and graphics possible, but if visitors to your website cannot easily read the information that you are giving them then they will not stay on your site for very long.

The good news is that getting the text part of your website design right is not overly difficult. All you need to do is follow these guidelines…

- Only use fonts that are available on all computers, such as verdana and arial. Whilst you might not consider these to be the most visually appealing fonts, they are the most practical ones. One reason for this is that they are the easiest fonts to read on a computer screen; in fact, the verdana font was specifically created to be read on computer screens, rather than to be printed out. Another reason is that every computer definitely has these fonts stored on them. If you choose a random, fancy font, then many computers will not have it stored, and so you will not be able to tell how your website will render on other people’s computers.

- Do not use small font sizes as visitors to your website will not even try to read it. You may have good eyesight but many people do not. Going with a font size of 11 or 12 is recommended for the main body of your written content, with sub-titles and headings being a font size or two larger.

- Limit the width of your paragraphs to roughly 15 words per line. This is necessary so that people only have to move their eyes to read your content, and not their whole head. This number is based on research and studies that have been carried out which show that 15 words is as far most people’s vision will stretch. Not every line has to be precisely 15 words, as some sentences will, obviously, have a greater or lesser amount of small words such as ‘to’, ‘and’, ‘a’, etc., so you just need to use that number as a rough guide.

- The color(s) you choose for your text should sharply contrast to the color(s) you choose for your background. A white background with black text is the easiest color scheme for people to read, but it is not necessary to limit yourself to that if it does not suit the overall style of your website design. If the background color is light, then use black, or dark gray, text, and if the background color is dark, then make your text white. Using non black, dark gray or white text hardly ever comes across well, so be extremely cautious if you are absolutely intent on using a different color for your text.
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This article was written by a website design expert who has more than 10 years experience in the industry. He is currently doing website design in Chappaqua, Westchester and White Plains and can be contacted at http://kinneymedia.com

Tags: Internet, Web Design, website design, websites

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