How Does Typography Affect eCommerce Conversions
When it comes to optimizing your eCommerce site, you need to take everything into consideration. Your web hosting provider needs to have a constant uptime. Your shopping cart has to be fluid and come with features to deal with cart abandonment. Your images need to load quickly for mobile users. The bottom line is that you need your eCommerce site to perform to convert traffic into sales. As an eCommerce site owner, you probably do everything you can to optimize for conversions but the one thing that you may have not being paying attention to is typography.
Typography and Readability
Typography is an artistic form of text. While it looks straightforward, it’s not as binary as you would think. There’s the typeface, font, size, line length and other aspects that affect how text appears to the user. The main reason these things are important is because of readability. As you may already know, people don’t read on the web. They scan. Your typography must take this into mind.
One of the best ways to learn about typography’s impact on readability is to simply run a test between various different types of fonts. Try using different fonts on your sales page and compare the numbers between the different fonts. If you run the test long enough, you’ll find that there is a statistical difference in conversion rates. You’ll find the biggest difference in fonts that are vastly different from each other.
Sometimes, the motive isn’t always for profit. You may want to promote a piece of content to build incoming links and get some press. In this scenario, you’ll need to use long form content and set up special tracking to see how far down the user has scrolled down your page. This is best case for typography having an impact on readability as it directly correlates to content consumption.
Credibility, Authority and Trust
With millions of websites out there, you need to do anything out there to stand out. You need to establish credibility, authority and trust. There are many things you can do to do this on an eCommerce site. This can be anything ranging from media mentions, BBB accreditation logos, hacker safe seals, to money back guarantees. Numerous tests have shown that using these tactics have shown to increase consumer confidence and thus, conversion rates.
But what if typography can do the same thing? In August 2012, Errol Morris wrote a two part series for the New York Times. The first piece simply asked a series of yes and no questions that participants answered. Participants thought it was just a piece asking for their opinion, but in reality it was actually an experiment to see how font can have an effect on how people perceived information.
(source: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth/)
The participants were given one of six fonts. When everything was said and done, it was found that certain fonts lead to a more disagreeable stance on the first piece. The font comic sans had the highest levels of disagreement while Baskerville had the highest level of agreement. This means that the font you use has an impact on credibility, authority and trust. And as a result, it should matter to eCommerce site owners what font they use to communicate with their audience.
Mood and Emotions
The font you use also helps you set the mood of your site and impact the emotions of your users. The best example of this is eCommerce sites that are selling unique products. For example, a site selling magic kits and accessories may benefit from using a font that has a sense of mystery and uniqueness. It plays into the theme of the website and sets the right tone for users.
This may not have a heavy impact on conversion rates but it’s important to note that it is a large part of the presentation that brands the site and business. The font will play a part in helping you distinguish yourself from other competitors. It is also a part of the brand experience which will be important if you really want customers to remember you.
Use of Colors
It’s been long accepted that colors have a big impact on conversions. We can already see this in the design industry. Using different colors and graphics have a big impact on conversions and how the website is perceived. In this case, it’s about using colors in typography appropriately to increase conversions. This aspect of typography isn’t explored as much because most websites tend to rely on black font and white spacing.
The perfect example of color impacting conversions is the color red. Many marketers have used the color red to induce a feeling of urgency on their promotions. Tests have shown that using this color on limited offers had lifted conversions, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Colors in typography can be used to induce more clicks and give attention to important elements on your eCommerce site.
For instance, a large graphical font in red can result in more clicks to your call to action links. Green graphical cues can be used to point attention to something important. This is logical because we associate the color green to traffic signs that tell us we can move forward. The important thing to take away is that you should use colors to aid your content and get users to take action. You should experiment with color in your typography to improve conversions and engagement.
In conclusion, typography is as significant as your web hosting reliability, site loading speed and shopping cart functionality when it comes to optimizing your eCommerce site for maximum profitability. While it can be another big project for you to tackle, you should be excited by the prospects of being able to improve your site’s conversions.
Originally posted 2017-04-27 10:35:57.