The importance of a website being easy to read is as crucial as the website itself. Reading on the web can be hard work for anyone, not just the elderly, but to many people that landed on a website with poor visibility.
Eye strain runs rampant in the online crowd. Many studies have shown that a website with poor reading performance drops its attractiveness dramatically.
Making your web pages more readable is a important thing to do if you want your website to be well accepted by your audience. You not only expand your market potential by making your pages more accessible to more people, but many of the techniques that improve usability, make your pages more search engine friendly as well.
Improving your viewer's reading experience on your website is easy if you keep a few things in mind. Improving readability is step one to opening the door of your business to a growing segment of the population.
Below is several guidelines to make your website look better to others.
Use Contrast Colors
Text is easiest to read when the font text color and the background color are in high contrast. Low contrast irritates the reader and causes eye fatigue. Viewers with impaired vision may not be able to read low contrast text at all.
Usually text are in black colors, delivered on a white background. These two colors have high contrast that they create an environment where the two elements are clearly differentiate. Colors play an important role in design. Different types of website can have different way of coloring. And using contrast colors can increase the effectiveness of both your design and readability on the web.
You can play with colors to see what color match which color in contrast. The more contrast a color combination is, the better it is for visibility.
Use Clean Paragraph
The next step for making your page friendlier to the eyes is by making it easier for the eyes to scan. Large blocks of dense text intimidate the reader and cause "information overload." Here are a few ways to break up blocks of text:
- Use bullets and subheadings. They help get the readers attention. Colored bullets are an easy way to add color and visual interest, while subheadings should be brief and convey a summary of the section.
- Keep paragraphs short. Breaking a long paragraph into several smaller sections invites the viewer in to read. A little white space between the paragraphs gives the site a clean look.
- Bolding and highlighting text. This can help impatient visitors to be able to glance at your page and hit the important points in your article. Different styling for your important text can attract they wandering eyes better.
- Use columns to control text width. This is used to avoid running your text all the way across the page. The shorter width makes the text easier to read.
Avoid Busy Backgrounds
On the internet where pictures can create attractiveness, pictures can also create a dull place where things are hidden from sight. And having a text hidden from your sight because of a catchy background can be a problem for both readability and the effectiveness of your web design.
A busy background can make your text impossible to read. Text should be placed where the background can enhance the visibility of the text above it.
Less Clutter for the Better
Websites should have a clean interface to attract visitors. Many websites look cluttered with things that don't belong in the page crowding the space inside a web page.
The more extraneous items you cram on a web page, the more you confuse and distract the visitor. Websites take on an unprofessional look when it has too many items delivered on a single page. From a search engine perspective, too many ideas can dilute the relevancy of your main content. A clean and minimalist design that has less clutter can make a website look more appealing and professional.
Does it really need to be there? Is it still functional? Can I do without it? Ask yourself these question before putting any additional complementary elements on your website.
Using Clean Font Style
There are a few principles that a clean font is better than any other type of font and styles.
- Plain text is easier to read than italicized text.
- Mixed case is easier to read THAN ALL UPPER CASE.
- A Sans-Serif font is easier to read than a Serif font that has little variation marks at the end of the letters.
- Use appropriate font size because nothing contributes to eyestrain faster than a tiny font.
Links Looking Like Links
People browse the internet by jumping to one place to another using links. Links are important since they are the ones connect one website to another in the World Wide Web.
Usually, links on the internet is blue. This gives the information to people that the text can be clicked and it will forward them to a different location (other web page or other position on the same page). If you just can't bring yourself to color your links blue, you can differentiate the link to a different contrast color, or at least underline them.