One of the most important characteristics of any website or online material is it’s readability. In order for the content to be effective and to do its job, people must be able to easily read it. It sounds simple, but with the amount of distractions that are online and the difficulty that some people have with reading from a screen, it’s not uncommon for a site to suffer from poor readability.

If you want to learn more about making you website readable, this article will cover some of the most important factors.

Spacing and Alignment

If you want the text of your site to have an impact and to be noticed, make good use of spacing. Rather than using a lot of text in small areas, space it out and keep it uncluttered. The space around text will have a huge impact on the level of readability.

Use plenty of whitespace around text and columns to keep things from being crammed together. This makes it much easier on the eyes and readers will thank you for it.

Text Size

Because each visitor will have their own unique preferences, it is important to allow text to be re-sized by the user. By using CSS to set text sizes with ems or percentages, you will allow visitors to increase or decrease the size of the text in their browser.

Font size is also key for making important text stand out. However, use this technique sparingly as the less you use it the more impact it will have.

Font Choices

Unlike when you are working with print design, in web design there are a relatively small number of web-safe fonts. If you use other fonts your visitors may not be able to see it as you have it designed. There are ways around this through things like sIFR that allow you to replace fonts.

You can easily damage the readability of a site by using too many different fonts. No more than two or three fonts should be used on a page in oder to have some consistency.

Length of Lines of Text

As modern desktops and laptops are coming with higher-resolution displays, and widescreen monitors are very common, websites are often being designed with more width than they were just a few years ago.

Even on wider websites, text should not stretch the full width of the page. In general, about 600 to 700 pixels in width is the maximum that will still allow for good readability. However, very narrow columns can also cause readability issues.

Bold Text

Use bold text when you want to make something stand out, but be sure to use it sparingly as it will stand out more when compared to normal text.

Distractions

If you want the text of your website to be highly effective, make it the focal piece and minimize distractions. Putting too much on the site will cause a lessened impact for everything. Keep the text emphasized by using less elements in the design that could be a distraction.

Steven Snell is a web designer and blogger from New Jersey. He maintains a design blog called DesignM.ag. If you’d like to see more about text and fonts you can find collections at his blog of calligraphy style fonts and big, bold fonts.

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