How to Choose Fonts for your Website

The way your website is designed is very important to your business and part of this is the fonts that you use in the main text and the links. However there are a few things you need to consider when selecting fonts. The aim of this article is to give you some advice on the best fonts to select.

The first thing to consider when selecting your fonts is whether people can actually see them. This seems like an odd thing to say but there are only certain fonts that are installed on computers as standard. These are the browser safe fonts.

The problem with browser safe fonts is they are different for Windows and Mac with only a few overlaps. Basically to ensure you font is seen on all computers you have a choice from the below fonts:

Browser Safe Fonts

Arial (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
Arial Black
Comic Sans (Bold)
Courier New (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
Georgia (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
Impact
Symbol
Times New Roman (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
Verdana (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)

As you can see, this does not give you a very big selection to choose from. However for the main text on your website one of these should do as you want people to be able to read you text easily.

The problem is for your links, as with most people you might be thinking that these fonts are a little bit boring for your links. But how do you use something more interesting? Well basically you can use an image rather than a text link. This will allow you to use any font that you want and create the exact look that you desire.

However there is something you need to think about if you are going to use an image rather than text and that is the search engines. Basically the search engines can only read text links and so if you use images they will not be able to crawl your website. There is a way to get around this and that is to add a text link at the bottom of your page to a sitemap. Then in your site map you can have a text link to every page on your website.

The problem with this could be that you might feel the links at the bottom of your page ruin the look of your site. In our experience though you should do one or the other. If you want to appear in the search engines then it is really important to set up your website so that the search engines can get around it.

If you are going to use an interesting font for your links you need to also make sure your visitors can easily read them. The worst thing would be to select something that looks great but is difficult to read and so people lose interest.

One place where you can be very adventurous with your font and have no problems is in your logo. This is purely for show and branding and so you can pick a font that defines you and create an interesting logo.

As you can see the choice of font is not as easy as it originally seemed. We would normally recommend using a web safe font for your text and links. You can then add life to your website through images and set up. This will ensure your website is clear and easy to navigate.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

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