Why Small Text Size Will Lose You Business

Conversion Optimisation Tip 8

The average text size on most websites is costing site owners money because it’s too small and hard to read.

Text size (font size, type size) is one of the most over looked aspects of increasing results from your online marketing efforts.

Yet it is obviously one of the easiest changes you can make (if you can live with your web designer’s screams of abuse.)

Unfortunately, most web text is around 12px or less, which is far too small to be effective.  The text has been made small in order to fit all the other elements onto the page.

However sacrificing text size for looks is short-sighted.

Text is What Sells

Your text is what your customers read. It’s what they interact with and it’s what persuades them to take action.

So making it easy for them to take action should be a priority.

As such, an ideal text size of between 16 and 20 pixels should be used. This is far more comfortable to read.

One of the key reasons for using an easy to read font size is that once we all turn 30 are eyes start to degenerate. This happens at different rates for everybody, but we’re all headed in the same direction.

We know from other research that the older people are the more money they have and the more willing they are to spend it.

We also know that they have no tolerance for things that either don’t work or are hard to use.

And small type falls into that category.

Make it Easy for Your Readers

If you want to sell to anyone in this aging 30+ demographic (and you probably do) then you need to embrace larger font size on your website.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen and legendary ad man David Ogilvy both carried out separate research into the effects of different fonts and generally found that the easier you make text to read, the more engagement and business you get.

And as my friend George Silverman keeps saying:

The company that makes the entire customer decision process easiest – every step of the way – WINS.

Companies That Have Gone Large

The move to larger font sizes has already started as forward thinking companies realise that readability is very important.

Apple, of course, has always been a leader in good design and its product pages show great use of type.

News sites such as Forbes are also leading the way.

And Fast Company uses beautifully elegant design and typography to create a gorgeous looking site.

Will You  Go Large in 2013?

Now, compare these type sizes with the tiny text product descriptions you see on most ecommerce sites. There’s obviously a lot of work to do.

Are you ready to be bold and embrace large type?