When planning for your Singapore website design project, your primary goal should be to choose a website design that influences how a potential customer perceives the brand. The choice of style, colour, and different elements work together to create a good first impression.
Bad design or lack of it can turn away potential customers.
However, website design does more than just create the first impression – it influences your content marketing strategy in Singapore. The two need to work in tandem to propel your business to the next level of success.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the practice of publishing content online that does not directly market your company’s product or brand to the target audience.
Instead, the content is geared towards generating interest by providing helpful and relevant information.
To get a clear understanding of what we are talking about, take a look at the Home Depot website.
There is a dedicated section for DIY ideas and projects. In this section, you will find tutorials and guides that are meant to help homeowners, who are the primary target audience, how to do simple repairs to their properties instead of hiring a professional contractor.
The content is well organized to help the website visitors find the information they are looking for quickly.
Although the guides on the website are not straightforward advertisements, the website visitors who read them are more likely to go ahead and purchase supplies from the site instead of going to a competitor. This is because the information on the website resonates with what they are looking for online.
How Your Singapore Website Design Impact Content Marketing
Although the tutorials and guides published on Home Depot are meant to increase the site’s visibility and organic traffic, its website design has a direct impact on how the website visitors interact with the content.
Here are four ways that your website design influences your content marketing strategy.
Number 1: Accessibility
Accessibility is one of the primary factors that you need to consider when designing a content-heavy website in Singapore. The content you publish should be not only easy to read but also easy to find. In one of our recent articles, we discussed the importance of optimising your website navigation.
Proper navigation will make it possible for the target audience to find the information they are looking for on the website without going through other pages that contain content that is irrelevant to them.
If they are unable to find the data within the first 5 seconds, they are most likely going to give up and move to another website instead.
Straightforward website navigation that is correctly optimized with drop-down menu options is one of the guaranteed and surest ways of making sure that your website visitors find information easily and quickly.
Number 2: Appearance
The first thing that you need to note about appearance is that potential customers make judgments about the trustworthiness and quality of your content based on how the site looks. Unknown to most people is that even if the content is top-notch and in line with their needs, a poor website design will turn them off.
If your Singapore business website design is no visually appealing or looks outdated, potential customers will not hesitate to look for an alternative site that offers the same services, products, or information. The point is that your brand needs to have a crispy clear design that illustrates your professionalism.
Give potential customers who are ready to convert a reason to go ahead and make a purchase by investing in a responsive and user-friendly Singapore website design.
Number 3: Readability
Apart from making sure that your website design looks impressive, you need to make sure that your content is not only readable but also visually appealing. One of the mistakes that you need to avoid completely is using too many fonts in your quest to make your content stand out from the crowd.
Multiple fonts in the same piece of content will overwhelm your audience and make your site look unprofessional. Try as much as possible to use one font in all the titles and another font in the content body.
Choosing and using the right colours is also essential for helping prospects read and understand your content. You might have the most accurate and comprehensive information about a topic, but if the font colour is similar or the same as the background, most of your website visitors will not bother to read it.
Concisely, your body copy must be large enough for the visitors to read without straining and clean. Some of these details might look minor but have a major impact on your overall website design as well as the performance of your content marketing strategy.
Number 4: Comprehension
Our brains are wired to interpret visuals faster and better than blocks of text. Our eyes are naturally drawn to visuals whether both online or offline. Increase the ability of your website visitors to understand the content by using visuals such as photos and graphics.
Below is an example of online content that provides instructions on how to prepare simple meals.
The people who watch the videos learn precisely what they need to do to prepare a meal or snack. The video makes it easier for them to understand and also the tutor can describe the steps better. Instructions that would have been discussed in a 500 words guide are presented in a 3-minute or less video, and the latter generates more results.
It does not matter the industry your business operates in, visual content such as videos and photos will help potential customers to understand your content and what you offer faster.
From a web design point of view, the site layout should accommodate the visual content and more importantly, make it possible for the visitors to watch the videos and scroll the pictures seamlessly.
Superior Website Typography Design Tips to Increase Content Readability
The success of a content marketing strategy depends on the quality of the website design and the readability of the content.
What is Content Readability?
Content readability is a metric that measures the complexity of sentence structure and words on websites.
The contrast of the text, legibility, and size of the text directly impact readability. Two of the primary reasons why you should work on your website content readability are;
- It makes it possible for website visitors to scan content on mobile devices and desktops.
- Influences the overall accessibility of the website. It makes your website usable to a large target audience, including those with either situational limitations or disabilities.
Now that you know what website readability means, let’s look at superior website design tips to enhance your website content readability.
- Avoid Using Jargons and Write Short Sentences
Yes, Google and other search engines rank long-form content higher than short-form content. However, most website visitors scan through an article or website page. They don’t read every sentence, so it’s essential to make sure that you use words that are easy to understand.
Otherwise, if the audience cannot understand the content, they won’t convert. On the same point, long sentences negatively affect readability, especially for users who use mobile devices to browse the web.
With most people browsing the internet via smartphones and other mobile devices, nurture a habit of writing short sentences when creating blog posts and website pages. Break down long sentences using commas and semicolons, watch your website visitors engage more with your content, and take the desired action.
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Use the Right Typography
The legibility and readability of any website are primarily dependent on the typography. What is typography? Simply put, it’s the combination of fonts, their spacing, and sizes. Strive to achieve a consistent theme with your website page fonts to avoid confusing or misleading potential customers and regular website visitors.
All the heading tags should have a relative size. Heading 1 (H1) should have the largest font size, then scale down to Heading 6 (H6).
Based on research, the minimum font size that website visitors can read without straining is 16px. Note that base sizes across different fonts. Experiment with different fonts and take note of the engagement levels to know which font best suits your website.
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Organising Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.)
Heading tags play an essential role in showing website visitors the essential information on different pages. Using these tags correctly will also make it easier for screen readers to read back the content to prospects with visual impairments.
In addition, heading tags help Google bots understand an article’s structure when crawling your website. You stand a chance to win a featured snippet by using them alongside bulletin lists in blog posts.
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Break Up Text Using Images
Blocks of text are challenging to read and intimidating, especially when used to explain a new concept to website visitors. Few customers will read a lengthy product review if you only use text. The human brain is wired to process visuals and videos more efficiently than text.
Therefore, consider using images to break up the text. The images will give website visitors a visual break and keep them glued to the website page. The more time they spend on the page, the more chances you will get to convince them to convert.
More importantly, visuals help prospects understand the content more efficiently. For instance, if you sell a food product online, you can include an infographic in an article that describes the ingredients and the health benefits instead of using only text.
Insert image
Ensure that the photos or other visuals are relevant to the surrounding text. If there is a disconnect between the two, the readers will struggle to understand the context of the article.
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Take Advantage of Whitespace
Like photos, white space gives website readers a visual break. Despite the substantial positive impact on user experience, most website designers don’t use it when creating pages. Most people refer to whitespace as the black spaces on a website page. While this is true, whitespace also refers to the space between letterforms and text.
Below are expert tips on how to increase whitespace on a website page.
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- Break up content to make it more scannable and readable by using bulletin points
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- After every four lines, create a new paragraph or add a line of spacing between the paragraphs.
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- Define data displayed in a table by using table headers
Let’s shift gears and look at invaluable typography tips for designing quality websites.
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Measure
Measure refers to the length of a line of text. Short and long lines can be distracting and tiring to some website visitors. Ideally, a long measure tampers with the rhythm as readers struggle to see the next line of text.
The best way of keeping the measure low is by limiting the number of texts in each line. For optimum page readability, ensure the measure ranges between 40 and 80 characters, including spaces. However, lines with 65 characters are ideal for single-column pages.
How to calculate typography measure?
Use Robert Bringhurst’s formula to calculate the typography measure of your website. It entails multiplying the type size by 30. For instance, if the type size is 20px, the measure is 600px or 130 characters per line of text.
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Leading
Leading refers to the spacing between the lines of type in a website copy. This metric significantly impacts readability as properly spaced lines are easier to read and follow. Also, the right leading enhances the appearance of the text.
Typographic colour, tone, and density of composition can also be altered by leading. Some of the factors that influence website typography leading are;
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- Typeface
- Type size
- Weight
- Word spacing
- Case
- Measure
The longer the measure of a website copy, the more leading is required to achieve the desired readability threshold. The rule of thumb is that the leading should be at least 2 to 5pt larger than the primary type size, but this depends on the typeface.
For example, a 15pt or 16pt leading is ideal for website pages whose copy whose type is set at 12pt.
Practice makes perfect – experiment with different type and checks how the text appears on multiple devices to know which is the perfect typography leading for your website.
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Vertical Rhythm
The foundation of any website page typographic rhythm is the baseline grid. It makes it easy for website visitors to follow the flow of text, which positively impacts the overall content readability.
Concisely, maintaining a continuous rhythm in the page vertical space ensures that the text is on a consistent grid. As a result, balance and proportion are maintained throughout the website despite the measure, leading, and type size.
The line spacing and spacing between the elements should be equal to the baseline grid to achieve and maintain a vertical rhythm in CSS. For instance, if you decide to use a baseline grid of 20px, there should be 20px between each baseline. Also, the line spacing should be 20px. Consequently, the spacing between the paragraphs on the website page should be 20px.
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Hanging Quotes
Simply put, hanging quotes refer to the margin of the website page’s body of text. If not correctly set, quotation marks that flush the text will interfere with the left margin, thereby interrupting the reader’s rhythm.
The goal of creating hanging quotes is to make sure the left alignment is balanced and intact to achieve the highest readability score possible.
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Emphasis
Emphasis refers to changing the font of certain words or phrases to show they are more important than the surrounding text. Most website designers use italics to emphasize words, but it’s safe to use caps, change type size, font colour, underline, bold, or a different typeface.
You should use the same form of emphasis on a website page for consistency purposes. Otherwise, bolding some sections and then using Italics or Caps will make the website page look clumsy and unprofessional.
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Widows and Orphans
Widow refers to the single word or single line found at the end of a paragraph. On the other hand, an orphan is a short line or a word placed at the end or beginning of a column and is separated from other text lines in the paragraph.
The two should be used sparingly as they ruin website content readability by interrupting the reader’s eye movement. The best ways to avoid them are by adjusting the word spacing, letter spacing, type size, leading, or adding line breaks manually.
When working with CSS, you cannot afford typographic orphans and widows. Use the above tips to remove them before the page goes live. You can also save time by using the jQWidon’t plugin. This plugin eliminates them by inserting non-breaking spacing between the last two words. It’s also effective in eliminating typographic widows when a reader resizes the browser window.
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Clean Rags
When right or left aligning an unjustified block of webpage content, it’s essential to make sure that the rag is balanced. There shouldn’t be any weird shapes or “holes” on either side. A lousy text rag distracts the reader, thereby affecting the text’s overall readability.
On the other hand, a good rag has a desirable unevenness that doesn’t have too short or long text lines. Unfortunately, you cannot control this effect in CSS. You have to adjust the text manually.
Hyphenation can help you create clean rags, but CSS doesn’t support this at the time of writing. No need to worry, though; there are advanced servers and client-side solutions and freemium online generators that you can use for auto hyphenation.
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Scale
A scale is vital when designing website pages as it creates a typographic hierarchy that enhances readability and creates cohesiveness and harmony within the page text.
Design a Content-Friendly Website for Your Singapore Business
Your website content’s effectiveness in grasping the visitors’ attention and converting them into customers is hugely dependent on typography and readability. Use the above information to design or edit the pages accordingly. Consult widely before using a particular font to avoid any inconveniences down the road.
MediaOne Marketing is best known for offering exceptional website design and development services to companies in a different worlds. We adhere to the recommended website design and typography practices to consistently offer top-notch services to our customers.
Call us today for more details about our website design, digital marketing, and SEO services. We look forward to being at your service.
Website design has a direct impact on your content marketing strategy in Singapore. Step your game and position your business for success by using our Singapore website design services. Our team is well trained to create a custom design for your brand.
Frequently Asked Questions About Website Typography
The right typography will help you get maximum results from content marketing by increasing readability. It will also improve the appearance and user experience that visitors get when they land on your website.
Below are frequently asked questions about website typography.
Which are the three most common types of typography?
The three common types of typography in most typefaces are Small Caps, Oblique, and Italic. Small caps are used in main headings and subheadings to create variety in a single typeface. Oblique and Italic are used interchangeably, but there are glaring differences.
Is Montserrat a good font?
Hundreds if not thousands of websites use Montserrat font for short pieces of content. When in lowercase, this font has a large x-height that adds character to text than other fonts such as Helvetica and Arial. Concisely, Montserrat is ideal for sections of the site that you want to win the readers’ trust.
Which are the most common fonts used on websites?
Sans serif fonts are the most popular and commonly used fonts on websites. However, there are hundreds of fonts today, and the one used is mainly dependent on the purpose of the website and the developer’s personal preferences.
