By Paul Parcellin, Staff Writer
February 18, 2014

Let us say that you have a landing page that has a winning headline that grabs an audience, and your page design perfectly enhances the impact of all of the text on the page. Yet somehow you do not see an appreciable increase in the number of conversions. Perhaps you need to look at other elements that may be holding your page back from performing as well as it could.

One of the less common elements that you may want to look at is typography. You may not be familiar with the elements of typography, but for anyone using text to communicate, a brief overview of a few typography principles may be the first step toward tapping into your site's true potential.

Typographical design has its roots in the 15th century with Johannes Gutenberg's invention of moveable type. Typography is the artistic side of print and electronic communication. Apart from type's basic functions, such as conveying thoughts and ideas in a clear, easily readable format, typography functions on an aesthetic level, as well. The kind of type you use can give your page personality and visual appeal.

Subliminal Message

The first thing that we take in when we log on to a page is all of the text as a whole. The selection of typefaces gives the audience seeing a landing page a subliminal message about the information on the page, and perhaps also about the firm whose page it is. As the visitor scans the landing or sales page, he looks at how information is formatted and presented. Based on the visual impression, he makes a judgment about whether or not the page will offer the information or solve the problem that brought him to your page in the first place.

The Basics

Here are some basic typography terms that can help you better understand the principles of type:

• Typeface - Typeface is not the same as font. Typeface refers to a group of characters, letters and numbers that share the same design. For example Baskerville, Times New Roman and Helvetica are typefaces, not fonts.
• Fonts - A specific style of typeface with a set width, size, and weight. For example, Georgia is a typeface; 9pt Georgia Bold is a font. People in the type design community consider a font to be the delivery mechanism and a typeface to be the creative work.
• Line Length - This refers to the distance occupied by text that is present between the right and left margins in one line.
• Leading - It is the space between baselines (the lines upon which letters "sit") and is expressed in points.
• Kerning - This term refers to the white space between individual characters or letters. Many fonts come with a default kerning value that is best suited to make the space between letters look natural.
• Tracking - Also known as letter spacing, it is used to adjust the space uniformly over a range of characters. Tracking can affect the character density of a text.

Make it Readable

One of the key factors in typography is readability, and it is crucial because it affects the experience visitors to your page will have. If text is squeezed together and hard to read the visitor will either leave out of frustration or struggle through the text and come away with a bad impression of your firm. Either way, the outcome will not help you to realize your goal of converting more visitors to your site.

Typography can help give your page its own identity, and make it easier to read and comprehend the information being presented. It can also increase the chances that visitors will convert, or it can confuse and frustrate those whom you hope to convert and cause them to leave. Worse still, poor use of typography may cause visitors to take away a message other than the one you had hoped to communicate.

Dan Warfel Design offers some pointers on creating easy to read pages, as does blogger Theo van der Zee, who writes about the Impact of Fonts and Readability on Conversion. Typography blogs that provide detailed information about text readability and design include, I Love Typography, Typographica, Typophile Blogs, Ministry of Type, Typography Daily and Type Directors Club.

Poorly formatted, hard to read text that is presented in an inappropriate typeface will give visitors the wrong impression of your business and might even cause regular customers to lose confidence in your company's ability to solve the customers' problems. It is also logical to assume that visitors to your site will doubt the reliability of the information that you provide based on the first impression a website can convey.

Putting it to the Test

So, which typefaces are less likely to inspire confidence in your audience, and which will deliver the message and image that you want to project? A typeface readability study conducted by Errol Morris was aimed at determining just that. Morris's study indicated that subjects found some factual information more credible when certain typefaces were used. Other typefaces tended to make the reader doubt the veracity of the information being presented. It was not an exhaustive study of typefaces - Morris tested only six: Baskerville, Computer Modern, Georgia, Helvetica, Comic Sans and Trebuchet.

In the study, some 45,000 New York Times online readers were presented with factual statements that were set in any one of the randomly assigned typefaces. Morris picked a passage from David Deutsch's second book, "The Beginning of Infinity" - a passage about "unprecedented safety" - and embedded it in the quiz for The Times, "Are You an Optimist or a Pessimist?" But are we more inclined to believe information if we read it in Georgia, the typeface of The New York Times online, rather than in Helvetica?

As you might guess, readers were most likely to believe texts written in Georgia, followed by Helvetica. Information set in Comic Sans was the least believed of the group.

Student Essays

One student, Phil Renaud, claims that his papers are being better received since he switched typefaces. Of the 52 essays he submitted, eleven were set in Times New Roman, 18 in Trebuchet MS, and the remaining 23 in Georgia. The Times New Roman papers earned an average grade of A-, but the Trebuchet papers could only muster a B-. And the Georgia essays? A solid A.

His explanation is that New Times Roman is the norm for academic work, and Georgia is enough like it to pass muster, but sufficiently different that it gives the paper grader a visual break from the norm, which might explain why papers written in Georgia were more favorably received than the others. However, papers in Trebuchet earned the lowest grades, perhaps because that typeface is more difficult to read than the other two, the student speculates.

It is possible, he concludes, that when a professor sees a sans serif typeface, such as Trebuchet, it registers subconsciously as something less serious than papers written in a typeface more befitting academia, such as Times New Roman, which is a serif typeface. Typically, academic papers are written in serif text and Web pages are written in san serif typefaces, such as Verdana and Arial.

Big Enough to Read

Font size plays a crucial role in page readability, and page designers ought to think carefully about making text large enough for the audience to read. Pages that are crammed with text and use small fonts to get as many words on the page as possible are possibly reducing the page's effectiveness and therefore its capacity to convert visitors. While visitors can use the "control +" and "control -" keys to reduce or enlarge a Web page, many may not be aware of this. Generally speaking, the optimal font size for your Web page may be 10 point, but for a page aimed at older visitors, 12 point may offer better readability.

In other words, it is worth thinking about what point size best serves your target audience, and choose the size that is the most comfortable fit for them.

In Contrast

In addition to font size and type style, you should also consider the contrast between the typeface and the page displaying your text. A high contrast between the type and the background makes the type stand out and the text easier to read. The easiest to read text-background combination tends to be black type on a white page. That is not to say that you cannot use other color combinations, but you should use care to select colors that make your text as reader friendly as possible.

Your Message

Overall, the typeface you choose, the amount of text-background contrast you use and the font size of your text will help you convey a clear message to those who visit your website. You can communicate an image of professionalism and stability all by the typeface that you choose. Your typeface will help to characterize the kind of business that you run, and your audience will feel confident that the information that you provide is correct, and that your company is upstanding and reliable. All of this information can be conveyed in the subtle messages that your typeface delivers, and a positive image is the first step in increasing conversions.

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