According to research, you have only 10-12 seconds to draw your visitor’s attention before they leave your store. So, you have to give your best shot in those minutes.
Online shopping is time-saving and fun. But, it’s not something you would consider a leisure-time activity. Today’s online buyers are well-informed and smart. They not only want to save time while shopping online but also want to make their buying experience worthwhile.
If your customers can’t find what they want on your website without digging through pages, they’ll move to your competitor’s website without even giving it a second thought.
It is essential to keep this factor in mind before you start creating an e-commerce store for your business. Luckily, several basic yet incredibly effective site design factors can help you build a store that showcases your products and offers the best user experience.
One of the easiest ways to impress your website visitors and help them convert is to use the right e-commerce fonts for your online store. Every font has a unique meaning and conveys a strong message to your prospects.
This post will show you how the right e-commerce font strategy can help improve the user experience for your online store.
Why Does Your Website Font Matter?
Since online sellers cannot offer a tactile buying experience just like physical stores, they need to work hard to draw their customer’s attention.
They strive to minimize friction at every buying stage to ensure their buyers get the best user experience.
Just like the content on your website, your ecommerce fonts also matter as they convey a message to your customers.
However, choosing the right fonts for your online store isn’t as easy as it may sound. There are more than 200k+ unique fonts out there, and selecting the one that best caters to your needs can be a little challenging for online store owners.
Apart from that, fonts trigger an emotional response too. For instance, some font types make us reminisce about the historical time, while others remind us of formal government policies and bureaucracy.
All in all, choosing the wrong font style for your e-commerce store may reduce your business's leads and sales.
Website Font - Key Attributes
Many factors impact the look and feel of the font type.
Font types that belong to the sans-serif font family work great for informal writing. Arial, which is arguably the most popular among the sans serif fonts, is a lighter and more modern choice. Meanwhile, serif fonts like Times New Roman are commonly used for formal writing due to their decorative flourishes in the end of each character.
The type of font you should use for your online business depends on the type of products you sell on your website. Also, you should keep your target audience in mind before you choose any font (or combination of fonts) for your e-store.
Things To Consider Before Choosing The Best Font Type For Your eCommerce Brand
While choosing the right font type for your business is not rocket science, your selection can greatly impact your website visits, leads, and sales.
Here are a few things you should keep in mind before you choose any specific font for your online store.
User Experience
Your customers are the most valuable asset for your brand. This is why UX tops the list of must-have website essentials.
The fonts on your store must be aesthetically appealing and should help your website visitors find relevant information without much difficulty.
Make sure you closely work with your web designer and carefully choose the color, size, and type of fonts that perfectly align with other elements on your webpage.
While decorative typefaces look appealing at first glance, they’re not suitable for extended reading. Keep in mind that selecting the wrong font for your store will make the text ‘hard to read’, and your customers will immediately lose interest.
Readability
You’re working hard to create unique and optimized headers and subheadings for your store. But what if the text written on your website is hard to read?
Text that is not readable is a big turn-off for your potential customers and will also slow down the intake of information.
How To Choose The Best Font For Your eCommerce Website?
“You got that, right?”
Brand Strategy
Online font styles are an integral element of your website design. Similar to all other elements on your web page, including images, content, videos, and CTAs, the font on your website should be coherent with your brand messaging, tone, and overall brand strategy.
Do Not Use Too Many Fonts
It’s fine if you use a combination of two fonts on your e-commerce store. However, experimenting with different font types is not recommended. Doing so will make your page look unorganized and cluttered.
Make sure you do not overuse effects either. Excessive use of ‘Bold’, ‘Italics’, and ‘underlines’ will confuse readers. You should stick to the minimalist approach.
Please choose two fonts (one for your headlines, while the other one for your body text) that perfectly blend.
Don’t forget to test a few combos first before you settle for one pair.
Use Fonts To Help Your Customers Convert
The purpose of using the right fonts on your website is to help your customers convert. Fonts convey the hierarchy of information to buyers, helping them quickly monitor category pages to assess which information is most significant to them.
Cross-Device Compatibility
We all know how important it is for present-day online businesses to have a mobile-responsive web design.
But have you ever wondered how your fonts look on different devices? Remember, your font should be compatible with both desktop and mobile devices.
For this, you must test your fonts on multiple devices to see how they will look.
Use Font Combinations
Creating an impactful font combination can be challenging, but it will help you convey your brand message better across different channels.
Here are a few tips you should consider while pairing two font types.
Make sure both fonts you’re using in your font strategy are in line with your brand tone and niche.
Think about your target audience and potential customers before you create a font strategy for your e-commerce store. You can either choose a modern, minimalistic, formal, or progressive style based on your needs.
Keep your brand tone in mind before you create an e-commerce font strategy for your business.
Do not stick to a single style only. Experiment with different font styles for each category
Both fonts must be readable and aesthetically appealing to your target audience.
Both fonts included in your pair must be compatible with different devices
Size, Type Style, And Weight
You would be surprised to see how changing the size of the same font can give the eye an array of anchors throughout your content.
Categories, such as testimonials, call-to-action (CTAs), and main headings, look more prominent when you set them in a larger size.
When you opt for the responsive web design, it excludes almost everything except for the text. This is why it is crucial to pay attention to the fonts you’re using for your website.
Apart from that, you can also try blending hand scripts with monospaced fonts.
Web-Friendly Fonts
A few years back, only a few font types were compatible with different browsers. Luckily, this isn’t the case anymore.
Because of the latest technological advancements, present-day browsers support thousands of fonts. Make sure you choose font types that are supported by different browsers, especially if you’re converting a print font to web format, just ensure it is visible and displays accurately on different browsers.
Check out the best fonts for emails.
Follow the Proper Font Hierarchy
Font hierarchy is key to a successful e-commerce font strategy. Instead of using the same font type and size for all categories listed on your page, make sure you follow the proper font hierarchy to make your text appear more versatile and appealing to the eye.
Color And Contrast
Color and contrast are other important factors that significantly impact the readability of your text.
Choose text and background colors carefully that can seamlessly blend with the overall look and feel of your site.
Also, the colors you choose for your online store must harmonize with your branding.
Create A Standard Web Style Guide
We suggest you create a standard web style guide for your online store that all of your employees can use to maintain consistency.
Your Font Should Be In Line With Your Business Niche
The font you choose for your online store should match your business niche. For instance, if you have a cosmetics shop or boutique, you can choose cursive and contemporary fonts.
But you must not use cursive fonts if you sell tech stuff online. In that case, stick to basic fonts that are more visible.
Similarly, you should use bright and bold colors if your business niche is related to kid’s stuff, food, or travel.
Keeps Videos And Images In Mind
As mentioned above, your fonts should be coherent with other design elements available on your website. The live chat window on your store, search box, videos, images, and other elements should blend well with your overall web design and branding.
Test, Test, And Test!
This is one of the most crucial yet often neglected aspects. Once you have implemented the font strategy for your e-commerce store, the next step is to measure results and collect feedback from your website visitors.
User testing is the most critical aspect of strategy implementation. Good typography breathes new life into your words, and you should make every possible effort to get this step right.
10 Best Fonts For E-commerce Stores
1. Averta Standard
Averta Standard is a clean yet extremely versatile font that many prominent brands have used on their websites to increase conversions.
If you’re looking for an impactful font for your e-commerce store, this font is the safest bet.
2. Playfair Display
Playfair Display is another user-friendly font that is suitable for both modern and traditional e-commerce stores.
With well-rounded edges and aesthetically appealing curves, this font can be used to craft titles, subheadings,call-to-action (CTAs), and more.
Tip to consider: Do not use this font for body text, as it is less readable at smaller sizes.
3. Raleway
Ultra-light and elegant, Raleway font is designed to craft appealing titles, sub-titles, and headlines. This font type is specifically beneficial for food and beverage websites.
4. Lora
Lora is yet another click-friendly and elegant font type that is optimized for a screen appearance. A well-balanced modern Serif is perfectly blended with traditional calligraphy to create a look that will bring your brand story to life.
5. Open Sans
For small-sized texts, there’s no font more suitable than Open Sans font. Whether you run a food store online or own a clothing store, you can use Open Sans to increase your content's visibility and conversions.
6. Cormorant
Cormorant belongs to an open-source serif font family. This font is designed to maintain a perfect balance of small and large-sized texts available on your website.
7. Roboto
Roboto can be a perfect font for stores dealing with tech products. This font type can help your long descriptions look prominent and reader-friendly.
8. Merriweather
Merriweather is a perfect font for online stores that deal with luxurious and high-ticket items, such as watches, bespoke clothing, etc.
This font is popular because of its better readability and condensed letterform.
9. Lato
Introduced back in 2010, Lato is a perfect font type for contemporary e-commerce stores. This font belongs to a sans serif font family and is designed to deliver the maximum user experience.
10. Cabin
While Cabin looks similar to Open Sans font and Lato, it has a unique personality that adds warmth and stability to your web content. The good thing about this font type is that it can seamlessly blend with multiple font types, including Averta, Sabon, Arvo, Roboto, Josefin Slab, and Arial for the best results.
