Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [101]
On a website, small text is difficult to read and can create a negative experience for the visitor, because it may imply distrust. Although website visitors can easily use a few keystrokes to increase the size of the text, the majority of users are unaware or unwilling to use these readily available functions. Instead, they leave your site or complain about its presentation.
For example, newspapers for years have had reader surveys asking for feedback of how to make the newspaper better. For decades, readers have always asked for the same thing as the number-one request: a larger font size. However, a larger font size means more pages for the newspaper, which means more cost and less profits, so the text size has never changed.
Easy reading of online content is intrinsically tied to the size of the text and readability of the font. To purposefully use small content in order to accommodate graphics elements is at cross-purposes with the credibility and readability of the site and will cause a problem with your visitors. Even though your visitors could use their browser to increase text size, I’ve observed that many do not know how, and will simply complain and leave.
Text in Motion
I am still amazed to find scrolling text on websites. Scrolling text is used on nearly every cable news and sports channel. Just from my own observation, either you can listen to the news reader or you can read the scrolling headlines. You cannot do both at the same time and take in information by hearing while reading something different. Although multitaskers seem to love this over-stimulated input, it is hardly an exercise in efficiency. One has to do one or the other in order to fully grasp a single message.
With websites, it is an even more difficult proposition. On television, there is only one other competing factor: the news reader. In a website, the competing information is the rest of the page. If the scrolling content pulls the reader’s attention from the page, then the rest of the page makes up the competing elements, and the reader is distracted from your own content, resulting in less retention.
Text Contrast
Using low-contrast text on a background color is one of the main obstacles to communicating information online. This affects the primary content areas, as well as navigation, subnavigation, headings, calls to action, and other critical areas. On a digital screen, while people’s eyes are moving rapidly to ingest bits of information at a high rate of speed, low-contrast text combinations are usually overlooked.
By nature, our eyes are drawn to areas of high contrast. This is why white space plays an important role in design. White spaces help define contrast by allowing our eyes to easily flow from one content area to another.
If you want some content to be ignored, place it in a low-contrast presentation such as blue on black, yellow on white, red on yellow, or gray on green; all of these are combinations that are killers to a reader’s attention. There are many gifted artists who are able to make some of these color combinations work, but unfortunately, some are simply trying to apply a print design to the digital world, and it does not translate well. Digital colors have much more intensity, and the colors compete much more than a print advertisement.
The best contrasting color combination for reading online is simply black text on a white background. It’s not sexy, but your visitors will read it.
Even more, your accessibility will be enhanced. Much of the past and current accessibility guidelines (see www.w3c.org) deal with presenting a suitable color contrast for users. Color combinations must provide enough contrast for someone with low vision or color blindness. As with any accessibility developments, including this emphasis in your designs will make the site more readable and of sufficient contrast for everybody, as well as ensure that your message