Imagine opening a dental clinic's website. There is a price list, but the text is tiny and light gray. You squint, give up after three seconds, hit the back button and move on to the next clinic. The clinic never finds out.
The font, meaning the look of the letters, is one of the least noticed and most influential parts of your website. A customer does not say "this text is bad". They just feel "this place is not for me" and leave. In this article I explain how your website font choice affects your business and what you can check on your own site.
Why do customers leave when text is hard to read?
People do not read websites, they scan them. They want to find what they came for quickly: the phone number, opening hours, the price or the "book an appointment" button. If the text is hard to read, that scanning becomes tiring.
These are the situations that lose the most visitors:
- Small letters, especially on a phone screen
- Faded text on a light gray or colored background
- Handwriting-style or overly decorative fonts
- Cramped lines and long, unbroken paragraphs
All of these can look "stylish" at first glance. But for someone who has to read, they are tiring, and people avoid what tires them.
How do you pick a font that suits your brand?
Every font has a personality. When you see one, it feels serious, friendly, modern or traditional. A law firm and a children's play center should not give the same feeling.
The right font choice starts from what your customers want to feel when they see you:
- Law, health, finance: Calm, plain fonts that inspire trust.
- Hotels, restaurants, beauty: A little warmer and more elegant, but still easy to read.
- Workshops, tradespeople, local shops: Clear, bold and direct.
The test is not your own taste but what your customer will feel. Using a fancy font in a logo or a single headline is fine. The problem is using it for long texts.
Why does text size on a phone matter so much?
Most visitors now arrive on a phone. Text that reads comfortably on a computer can look small and cramped on a phone.
It is easy to check: open your site on your own phone and read it at a natural arm's length. Can you read it without zooming? If you have to zoom, your customer does too, and most people will not bother.
As a general guide, body text of roughly 16 pixels or more on a phone is considered comfortable, about what you would find in a printed book. Your designer sets this, and your job is to check the result.
How many fonts are enough?
The rule is simple: two fonts at most. Usually one for headings and one for body text. More than two makes a site look scattered and careless.
Often a single font in different weights is enough: bold for headings, normal for text. You can check this yourself: click through your pages and count how many different letter styles you see.
Do accented letters display correctly?
This one is often missed. Some stylish fonts are designed for one language and do not support the special letters of another. The result: letters like ä, ö, ü and ß, or å, ä and ö, are swapped for substitutes from a different font or show up as empty boxes. A letter that arrives in a different font in the middle of a word makes the page look amateur immediately.
It is easy to test. On your site, look for words with special letters in both capitals and lower case, in headings and in the menu too. If one letter looks different from the others, the font does not fully support your language.
The same applies to the other language versions of your site. Turkish needs ğ, ş, ı, İ, ç, ö and ü. German needs ä, ö, ü and ß. Swedish needs å, ä and ö. If your visitors speak more than one language, ask for all of them to be tested.
Five things you can check on your own website
Next time you have a moment, open your site on both a computer and a phone and go through this table:
| Check | Good sign | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Body text size | Comfortable without zooming | You have to squint |
| Contrast with background | Dark text, light background, clear difference | Faded gray, colored background |
| Number of fonts | Two at most | A different look on every page |
| Special letters | All in the same font | Some letters differ or show boxes |
| Long paragraphs | Short paragraphs with space | Dense wall of text |
Also show it to a friend or an older relative. If someone with weaker eyesight than yours can read it, you are probably in good shape.
What should you ask your designer for?
When building or redesigning a site you can tell the designer:
- "Make the body text comfortable to read on a phone."
- "Keep a clear difference between text and background, no faded colors."
- "Let's use two fonts at most."
- "Choose a font that supports every special letter of my languages, and test them together."
- "Explain to me why these fonts suit my brand."
That last point matters. A good designer can explain their choice. If the answer is only "it looked nice", ask a few more questions.
Frequently asked questions
Does my website have to use the same font as my logo?
Not necessarily. A logo is often a special lettering that is hard to read in long texts. For the site you choose a readable font that feels close to your logo.
Will changing the font slow my site down?
A well-chosen and properly set up font does not noticeably slow your site. Checking that is the designer's responsibility.
Will large text make my site look amateur?
No. Clear, comfortably sized text is one of the things that separate professional sites. The issue is proportion, not size.
Should I do anything extra for older customers?
If your audience is older, slightly larger text and stronger contrast help a lot, and they make reading easier for everyone.
Easy-to-read text is one of the things on your site that wins customers. If you are thinking about a new site or want to review how readable your current one is, you can write to me through the website design page.