Preparing for page experience ranking

Choosing the right font for your website 

One of the important aspects in any website design is the choice of font. Much time is spent generating content, writing copy and sourcing images but perhaps too little time is spent choosing the font for your website. 

Why is font choice important ? 

The font choice can have a profound effect on how your content is perceived, and read, even to the extent of affecting the meaning of the message conveyed. Not only does a font convey information about your message, it also conveys information about your brand. 
 
Too many fonts and the website becomes busy and distracting, the wrong font can make text difficult to read and comprehend. It is not just about the size of a font, but the style. 
 
At a technical level, choosing the wrong font can have an impact on how quickly your website is loaded. Fonts are either downloaded as a file, use common system websafe fonts that are pre-installed by the operating system or utilize webfonts. and in the past, not all browsers supported all types of font types leading to differences in how websites were presented. 

Windows 10 Font list 

Windows 10 introduced the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and includes a wide variety of fonts which are available across its range of platforms. That is great .. but what if you are not using a Windows 10 device?  

IOS System Fonts 

As you would expect, Apple and Microsoft are not always compatible, and those fonts pre-installed on a device running iOS and macOS can be are listed on the apple development site

Websafe Vs Webfonts 

Websafe fonts, as mentioned above are those pre installed by your operating system, they reside on your computer and do not rely on file downloads, so if speed is paramount and you need to eek out every nanosecond of performance in a competitive market niche due to Google's Page Experience ranking algorithm roll out then a robust choice of websafe font is advisable, but for virtually every occasion, then a well chosen webfont  

FOUT, FOIT and FOFT 

This rather odd sounding acronyms all stand for ways in which browsers handle, or used to handle, custom fonts that were slow to download into the host browser.  
 
First there was a Flash of Unstylized Text (FOUT). This occurred when a fallback font was used to display text until the correct font had downloaded, causing the website to change appearance and layout shifts to occur (a definite black mark in today's "user experience" world). 
 
Then browsers stated to change how they handled custom fonts. They just made it invisible until the full font file was downloaded, hence Flash of Invisible Text (FOIT). At best render time increased and at worse the text content became permanently invisible.  
 
The final Flash of Faux Text (FOFT) would occur when the website code would make text affected by slow loading font files appear in a default bold text, and then be updated when the font file had loaded. 
 
FOUT, FOIT and FOFT are all frowned upon, even penalized due to poor user experience, and if you ever experience it on your website, you should really consider a redesign.  

The simple font solution ... 

When thinking about a font for your website, Google has again made it very simple to explore what is possible with their Google Fonts API
 
All the fonts listed (and there are over 1000 of them in addition to icons) are tried, tested and open source while ensuring that font file sizes are kept as small as possible for fast download and execution, using WOFF 2.0 compression standards where available.  

Fonts in your It'seeze website 

If you do not specify any fonts, we will incorporate five fonts into the website which best suit your style of design. These are accessed form the text menu in the top bar in the editing suite. 
 
Not only will you be guaranteed to have a readable, good looking website with a font that fits in with the overall style of the website design, but they will also load quickly and not get your website penalized for having a poor user experience.  

Web design, content generation and SEO from Itseeze Camberley 

If you need a new responsive website, advice on how to edit your Itseeze website, a cost effective means of monitoring the performance of your It'seeze website, tailored SEO packages, Google Map Pack optimization or Google Core Vital assistance please use the contact form below, call us on 01276 501285 or click on the "book an appointment" button to schedule an in person meeting or zoom call via our calendar management system. 
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The it'seeze customer support website provides a wealth of information and "how to" videos to help you maintain your website and utilize the features available to you. It can be accessed by clicking the logo below: 
It'seeze Camberley - website design for companies in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire including Camberley, Farnborough, Aldershot, Fleet, Farnham, Guildford, Woking, Bagshot, Sandhurst, and Wokingham. 
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