mindgraffiti

I use Cascading Style Sheets to control text. CSS is a way to standardize how the text is presented, and keep it looking the same whether 5 pages are built or 50 pages exist. It ensures that the size, color, leading, kerning, font families, and other measurements/details remain consistent, whether it is text on the ‘About Us’ page or the ‘For Sale’ page. I know that whenever I see a link on the page, it’s going to be the same color and have the same rollover as every other link on all the other pages. It also helps set the level of importance for each block of  information.

The only time a client really throws a monkey wrench in my beautifully formatted text happens when they ask, “Can you make it bigger and color it red?” Red? Why red? That color doesn’t go with your current theme. Why bigger? It already stands out to announce your Very Important News. If you make it any larger, the text will look like it’s screaming at you…just like those awful local car dealership ads on TV. Ever notice that the volume suddenly jumps six notches too loud? It’s going to make the visitor angry or annoyed, just like the car ads.

Edit: The challenge comes when I have to educate a client that red text is not going to present a professional, consistent look with their web site’s selected color scheme. If that piece of information is more important to announce than the rest, I suggest an animated banner ad or a different color that will flow with their current color palette. Or, if they prefer to keep it straight text, I change the announcement into a heading instead of a plain paragraph.

Visitors don’t read everything. They skim. I set up the text so that it’s easy to skim. The important news stands out and they can skip past the details. That way, when they are ready for the details they know where to look.

Giving your visitors more control = happier visitors to your site. Happy visitors tell their friends and come back to read more on another day. When the text sizes are changed and suddenly have every color under the rainbow, it confuses your visitors and now they will skip all the important announcements. Why? Because when everything is important, nothing is.

Edit: I still set up the text to make it easy to skim, but now I add print style sheets to the sites. From talking to the users who visit some of our text-heavy web sites, I discovered they do skim and skip past a lot of information. When they are ready for the details, they print the web site for further reading.