Creating a thriving eCommerce store is very challenging. It requires a lot of planning, detailed analysis and incisive evaluation to create an online store that delivers profitable returns. Most importantly, it needs to be designed well and should offer a satisfying user experience to its visitors.
A poorly designed website can hurt your business badly. It is therefore important to strike a perfect balance between your website’s conversion goal and creating a design that sells.
So, what makes a good website design? There are certain essential elements that every online store must have in order to please today’s tech-savvy Internet consumers. These include simple navigation, simplified check-out process, high-quality product images, and many more.
One super-critical design element that improves, both, the visual and functional appeal of the eCommerce store, and which is often neglected by web designers, is typography.
What is typography?
Simply put:
“Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make the language it forms most appealing to transparent learning and recognition. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning).” (Source)
Does Typography Influence Consumers’ Perception?
There is an interesting study that indicates the typeface consumers see can have a great deal of influence on their opinions.
In this study, titled “Are you an optimist or pessimist?” a documentary film maker Errol Morris discovered that subjects were more likely to believe a statement when it was written in Baskerville than when it was written in Computer Modern, Georgia, Helvetica, Trebuchet, or Comic Sans.
This study clearly shows that having a well-optimized landing page or quality images of the product is not sufficient for generating sales; it’s also necessary to have the right type and size of the font.
Though solid typography won’t turn an inferior product into a popular one, it will definitely help you hold visitors’ attention and give you time to showcase what you’re selling.
Now that we know how important good typography is for creating balanced website layouts for your business, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of selecting the right typography for your website:
1. Font Size
Hard-to-read typefaces and tiny font sizes will turn off your visitors, increasing the bounce rate of your site. So, ensure you use a large font size for your website content to improve its efficacy. The font on call-to-action buttons should be bold and resolute for persuading visitors to take the desired action.
2. Line Length & Line Spacing
Font size matters, so does line length. Visitors will lose interest if lines are too long. The most recommended line length is 60 characters including the spaces. The optimal line spacing is between 120% and 145% of the font size.
3. Whitespace
To have visually stunning or enticing product pages, ensure they are clutter-free by making appropriate use of white space. Well-organized and decluttered text on your website will convert better than cluttered content.
4. Color
Colors of CTAs should attract visitor attention. HubSpot, an inbound software marketing platform, performed an experiment using green and red CTAs. Contrary to popular belief, red buttons outperformed green ones by 21%. However, this is a generalized result; what works for your store depends on the context and layout of your page.
5. Typeface
Pick the typeface that draws attention of your visitors. Choose one typeface for your body text and another for titles and headings. This establishes a clear hierarchy and contributes to the readability of the content.
Bonus: Other Technical Considerations
- Ensure your web typography works in mobile environment as well.
- Break up your content with subheadings, lists, and bullet-points.
- Use short paragraphs.
However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for typography. For selecting the right typography for your store, you should consider factors such as brand personality and your target audience. It’s also important to pay attention to the kind of message you want to convey to your visitors.
For example, if you have a children’s website where you’re selling games or children’s books, it’s better to pick serif typeface as this will give a sense of playfulness and fun.
Lostmy.name, an eCommerce store offering personalized magical books for children, for instance, uses Rooney web – a serif typeface with a warm and friendly feel.
On the other hand, if you have a website selling accessories for computers or laptops, sans serif fonts will give you that business-oriented theme which will inspire a sense of respect and authority amongst your visitors.
Twelvesouth, an eCommerce store offering accessories exclusively for Apple computers uses freight sans pro to promote readability.
Testing:
Do some A/B split testing to find what works for your eCommerce store. This is the best way to find whether all of your typographic decisions are having the effect you expected and whether your choices of fonts, colors and weights are doing all they can to maximize your eCommerce revenue.
Does typography play a role in Google ranking?
Typography directly is not a ranking factor inside the ranking algorithm, so choosing the right font has no direct effect on SEO.
However, having a good design (typographically) will help improve your visitors’ overall website experience and all web designers know Google ranks websites with good user experience higher than those who don’t offer quality UX. This proves, although indirectly, a good typeface can make a difference by improving your rank score. And a higher rank on SERPs means more visitors and more sales.
To Conclude
The power of typography cannot be underestimated. In fact, in the world of digital design, typography is one of the most important elements which can have a positive or negative effect on conversation rates and the revenue your site generates. Keeping it simple will cement your branding, attract new visitors and entice customers to keep revisiting your site; thereby increasing sales and profits for your business!
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This post was written by Michael Georgiou,a business professional and entrepreneurial guru with a proven success in creative strategy, online branding, project management, and communication projects in both the public and private sectors. He drives Imaginovation’s rapid business growth in marketing and sales due to a multifaceted and versatile communications experience with a reputation for providing innovative turn-key digital solutions, and a steadfast approach for managing teams to provide high quality web products and services in numerous industry verticals. A large portion of Michael’s experience is working with reputable clients in delivering a wide range of solutions for web design and application development projects, as well as managing the user interface and user experiences on a high level marketing perspective. Michael holds an international Master’s degree in Business Communications Marketing from Bond University in Australia, and a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations and Marketing from UNC Pembroke.
