Here is something I check for when I do my web usability and design analysis, and for many of you, it’s a good thing. Nothing says cut and paste site design better than seeing a website with for or five font types. Making your site appear consistently throughout is an important factor. It shows professionalism, and additionally enhances the usability of a website. So this little poll is a wake up call for those of you that answered four or more.

This is also a great topic where you can use the big, top 100 type sites out there to use as an example for your own.

Here is the poll: How many different font types does your website use?

Archive of Web Usability and Design Polls

Sep 172008
 

My dad was a quality control manager for his whole career in the frozen food industry. I guess a little of that rubbed off on me because, it is how I often see myself reviewing sites. I have heard of all sorts of stories about how food has been handled, good and bad. Mostly though, those in charge understand the value of quality, and will spend thousands, to millions of dollars to achieve it. With food, it can mean life or death to the customer, and to the company producing it, it could mean good press or the press that can destroy a business. A bad website won’t kill a visitor, but it could certainly influence how a visitor thinks about your company.

Do a Quality Control Check

After examining the site BusinessLights.com, I found a site that was built to sell, and had obviously spent some extensive time and money properly optimizing their site for search engines. They sell light bulbs, a lot of light bulbs. Something they may have skipped though, was a simple quality control check. Something my basic analysis would have easily picked up on. Fortunately for them though it’s an easy fix.

If you look at their footer on the home page, you will noticed the font style does not match the rest of the site.

footerfont

Consistency in font type is an easy fix, and can make a huge difference in giving your site that professional appearance. Looking at another page, I even found an inconsistency in font type within the footer itself. If you look at the footer in their Light Bulb Product Index you can see the font displaying the phone information on the right does not match the address information on the left.

It’s the little differences like this that give visitors clues about the trustworthyness of a site. Would you buy a bag of frozen corn if the bag didn’t look like it was sealed properly? The same visual indicators effect websites the same way.