Website Marketing Directory — Search Engine Optimisation — Melbourne, Sydney, Australia

Ron Erdos

Did you know that a large part of society finds it a strain to read anything less than 14 point font? This doesn’t mean that you should publish your website in huge 14 point font, though. The standard 10 or 12 point font is fine.

However, you should implement a few measures (or have your webmaster read this article) to ensure that middle-aged and senior citizens can increase the size of the text on your website.

Here’s how you do that. Have a look at the code of your website (or have your webmaster do it). Make sure you have used what’s called “relative font sizes” in the code.

Relative font sizes are a way of specifying how large a font should be in relative terms (such as percentages) rather than in fixed terms (such as pixels or centimetres).

The benefit of relative font sizes is that Internet Explorer users (who still account for over half of all internet users) will be able to increase the size of the text if it is too small for them to read.

This is not just an accessibility issue – it’s a sales and marketing issue. After all, if your customers can’t read your sales copy, how are they expected to buy from you?

Using fixed font sizes (such as pixels or centimetres) will prevent over 50% of internet users (ie; Internet Explorer users) from being able to resize your text to a level that is comfortable for them.

In all fairness, Internet Explorer 7 has a zoom feature which allows the user to zoom in on the entire webpage. This zoom feature does make text bigger, even if you’re using fixed font sizes.

However, the problem with the Internet Explorer zoom feature is twofold:

1. Visitors to your site have to scroll horizontally (a web design no-no)
2. Images become blurry and blocky if you zoom in on them. In short, the zoom tool is not a good look for your site.

Remember to use relative font sizes (such as percentages or em units) when specifying font sizes for your website. Put it this way - users are going to zoom in whether you like it or not. You may as well let them do it the elegant way (with the text size feature) rather than using the zoom tool (which messes your pictures and scroll bars up).

What do you think about this issue? Post your opinions in the Enedia Marketing Forum.