The internet only became fully commercialized in 1995, but online advertising had already been brought to life in the early stages of the dot-com boom.

It is now almost expected for a company, even a small one, to have a website to show where they are at the very least. And with the numbers of towns, cities; companies opening and closing down all the time, there is going to be a LOT of competition.

Search Engine Optimization

The science of putting yourself where people are looking on Google. For multinational corporations that will mean the top three results on a keyword that has thousands or more searches a day. For smaller companies, the first page of something specific and relevant to their area of expertise will do nicely.

Most companies will want searches connecting from keywords in the “Chunky Middle” and “Long Tail” for two simple reasons. First, those sections will become more and more specific as the user gets a better idea of what they want, and smaller companies normally provide one thorough service instead of several split across different areas of trade. And second, there is a lot less competition involved.

The Tools You’ll Need…

• A keyword analyser, Google AdWords being a free, and user-friendly example
• Accurate page titles, and URL’s that match them to make your site easy to track and show the user exactly what they’re getting

…And What You’ll Do With Them

On your keyword analyser you should search for keywords that feature in your page titles or your websites name, or things that match those or what you do closely. Remember, your looking for specific and relevant. Most analysers will show you how many searches a keywords receives over a period of time, and how tough the competition for it is. And the same for several similar keywords that the analyser picks out.

Ideally, you want the keywords you choose to be low competition for relatively high search rates. More usually, choose the ones closest matching that have the best number of searches for low, or if you’re growing lots then medium competition. Bring out a selection you think work best and then liberally sprinkle over page titles, page URLs and meta description. Don’t try to use any keyword that looks promising, even if it is completely different to what you are offering. This is called “cloaking” and when discovered, which it will be if you want search engines to find you, it incurs harsh penalties.

It is pretty simple to do at it’s heart, but to do right, this needs time and consideration. Keep in mind to build sites for users, not for search engines. Search engines get the business by delivering users to sites that fulfill their needs, so they will rank you up for a high performance, trustworthy site.

You can also pay Google for an advertised slot, and this will most likely increase click’s into your site, but organic (read: earned) results are much more trusted, as demonstrated below.

If You Have A Lead, Keep It

The post SEO – Selling What You Sell appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

To customise your WordPress login area, typically on this URL your-domain.com/wp-login.php, you need to add the following in your theme’s function.php file.

Change the login Logo

The default image is the WordPress logo. You can change that image simply modifying the file path. You can add you image and adjust width and height if necessary.

function custom_login_logo() {
    echo '<style type="text/css">
    h1 a { 
        background: url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/img/logo.png) 50% 0% no-repeat !important;
        width:243px !important; 
        height:83px !important; 
        margin:0 auto !important; 
    }
    </style>';
}
add_action('login_head', 'custom_login_logo');

Change the login URL of the login logo

Normally when you click on the login logo, by default it goes to WordPress.org. The following will change it to your own homepage.

function change_wp_login_url(){ 
	return get_bloginfo('url');
}
add_filter('login_headerurl', 'change_wp_login_url');

Change the Title of the login logo

If you want to change the title attribute of the image you just replaced use the following code.

function change_wp_login_title(){ 
	return get_option('blogname'); 
}
add_filter('login_headertitle', 'change_wp_login_title');

The post Customize Login Page appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

The most prominent brands in the world are defined by their colors. Think of McDonald’s golden arches, the name Jet Blue, and UPS’ slogan, “What can Brown do for you?” These companies, and many others, strategically use colors in their logo, website, and product to appeal to customers. As a B2B marketer, it’s important to think about how you utilize colors and what the colors you choose say about your business.

Research has found that different colors provoke very different reactions in people. Integrating your brand colors in your logo, landing pages, product, and more will help you achieve the highest impact. Find out how each color can help you connect with your consumers.

The post True Colors: What Your Brand Colors Say About Your Business appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

There are tons of mistakes that online retailers make every day, all of them avoidable with a little careful planning. And even if you’re already committing some of these mistakes, most of them are easy enough to fix. Avoiding them will greatly improve the experience of your customers.

Below are 15 of the most common mistakes that e-commerce sites make, as well as advice on how to avoid or fix them. Take the advice under consideration before embarking on a new e-commerce project or when thinking over your current ecommerce site, and make efforts to follow the recommendations outlined here.

1. A lack of detailed product information

When you’re shopping in a brick-and-mortar store, you have the advantage of being able to pick up an item, feel it, look at it from every angle, and read any information on the packaging or labels. Shopping online removes that interaction. Ecommerce sites need to do the best they can to improve upon the in-store shopping experience.

How often have we gone to an online store and found their descriptions to be completely lacking? And if a customer is left wondering about the specifics of a product, they’re more likely to go look for the information elsewhere. And unless your site’s price is significantly lower than your competitors’, they’ll likely just buy from the other site.

What to do about it

Provide as much product information as you can. Sizes, materials, weight, dimensions, and any other pertinent information depending on what the product is. For example, in an online clothing store, you might include the fabric type, sizes and colors available, a size chart (usually linked from multiple products), the weight or thickness of the item, the cut and fit of the item, care instructions, and comments about the brand or designer. Using descriptive words rather than simply technical terms can have a greater impact on the consumer.

Examples

2. Hiding Contact Information

Consumers want to know that they’re dealing with a real company when they hand over their credit card information. They want to know that if they have a problem they’ll be able to talk to a real person and get the help they need. If your site doesn’t provide any contact information, or hides it so the consumer can’t find it easily, they’re less likely to trust your site, and therefore less likely to do business with you.

What to do about it

Put your contact information in an easy-to-find place on every page of your website. The most obvious places to put your contact information are either in your header, the top of your sidebar, or in your footer. Provide multiple means of contact if possible. A contact form, email address, phone number, and mailing address all add to the level of customer trust. Remember, too, that the more expensive or technical the product you’re selling, the more likely a consumer is going to want more contact information.

Examples

3. A Long or Confusing Checkout Process

This is one of the most damaging mistakes an ecommerce site can make. You have to make it as easy as possible for your customers to hand over their credit card information and complete their order. The more steps you put between them placing an item in their cart and actually paying for it, the more opportunities you give them to leave your site without completing their purchase.

The ideal checkout process includes a single page for consumers to check their order and enter their billing and shipping information, and a confirmation page before they submit their order. Anything more than that is only an obstacle to completing the checkout process.

What to do about it

Follow the ideal model as closely as you can. If you have to include other pages, try to make them as quick and easy to fill out as possible. Combine pages if you can, and use two-column layouts for certain sections (like putting billing and shipping information next to each other) to make pages appear shorter.

Examples

4. Requiring an Account to Order

This ties in directly to the previous item. If you require a customer to sign up for an account before they can place an order, it’s another obstacle you’ve placed in their path. Which is more important to you: getting the order or capturing customer information? Remember that the second option may mean losing some customers.

What to do about it

There’s an easy fix for this. Instead of requiring a customer to sign up for an account before they order, offer them the option at the end of their ordering process. Give them the option to save their account information to make placing future orders easier or to track the status of their current order. Many customers will opt to save their information, and you won’t be driving away customers before they’ve completed their order.

Examples

5. An Inadequate Site Search Engine

If a customer knows exactly what they’re looking for, many will opt to use a search engine instead of sifting through categories and filters. You need to make sure that the search feature on your site works well, and preferably has filters for letting customers refine their results.

How often have you searched for a product on a large ecommerce site and been returned with hundreds of applicable results? While the variety of options can be nice, if half of those results are nothing like what you’re looking for, it’s more an inconvenience than anything else. Including a way for customers to filter their search results by category or feature eliminates this problem.

What to do about it

Make sure the ecommerce software you’re using has a good built-in search engine, or look for plugins to extend its functionality. Ideally, an ecommerce search engine should let users search by keyword and then refine results based on the categories your site includes. Let users sort their search results based on standard criteria (most popular, highest or lowest price, newest item, etc.) as well as eliminating items that don’t fit within a certain category.

Examples

6. Poor Customer Service Options

This is similar to the hiding contact information bit above. You need to make it easy for customers to get in touch with you if they have a problem or question. Make it clear what the best way to contact you is if they have a technical question, a sales question, or they want to return an item. Offering a help request form for customers to fill out can instill more confidence than just an email address.

What to do about it

Use a ticketing system for customer service inquiries, especially if you don’t have a phone number available. Make sure that you post a FAQ that covers common questions customers might have, like what your return policy is or what to do if they need to order parts or replacement items.

Examples

7. Tiny Product Images

Since consumers can’t physically handle the products you’re selling before placing an order on your website, you need to do as much as you can to recreate and improve upon that experience. Tiny product images don’t effectively do this.

What to do about it

Either provide large images right on the product page or allow users to click on an image to zoom in. You want users to be able to view the image as large as is practical on an average monitor. This means an image that enlarges to 1024×768 pixels is a good size to aim for.

Examples

8. Only One Product Image

Unless your product is delivered digitally (and even sometimes if it is), you’ll want to provide multiple images from different angles. An image in each color, of the front, back, and sides, and even detailed shots of specific features can all go a long way toward making a consumer more likely to buy from you.

What to do about it

This one’s simple: include more images. Four or five images of each product are ideal, offering enough views to allow a consumer to feel comfortable that they know exactly what they’re getting.

Examples

9. A Poor Shopping Cart Design

Your shopping cart is an incredibly important part of your ecommerce website. It needs to allow users to add multiple products, to revise the quantities or other options about those products, and it needs to remain transparent at the same time. Not exactly the easiest thing to do, right?

What to do about it

Make sure your cart lets a user add an item and then return to the last page they were on. Even better: allow them to add an item to their cart without ever leaving the page they’re on (by using a mini cart). Let your customers edit the quantities of items in their cart or remove an item from their cart. And let them preview what shipping charges will be before they start the checkout process.

Examples

10. Lack of Payment Options

There are plenty of sites out there that only allow users to pay with Visa or MasterCard, or to only pay with a PayPal account. There’s no reason for this anymore. What about the person who has an AmEx and doesn’t have or want a PayPal account? What about the person who doesn’t have a credit card and wants to pay straight from their bank account? You need to provide as many payment solutions as is practical to optimize the number of orders you get.

What to do about it

Use a payment service that lets customers pay with each major credit card, and preferably also with an electronic check. Adding a PayPal checkout option increases the choices your customers have, making them more likely to purchase from you. Considering different consumers have different preferences when it comes to making online payments, catering to as many as you can means you’ve expanded your customer base.

Examples

11. Not Including Related Products

You’ve probably noticed when you go to a brick and mortar store that they group similar products together, or otherwise make it easy for you to find products that are related to you. They’ll put a battery display in the electronics section, or include cell phone cases near the cell phones. The same can be done on your website, and can increase add-on sales for you business.

What to do about it

Use an ecommerce platform that lets you include related products on product description pages. A platform that will let you manually choose related products can also give you a big advantage, since you may see relations that a software program doesn’t (such as coordinating clothing pieces to create an outfit).

Examples

12. Confusing Navigation

There’s nothing worse than trying to find a product on a site with confusing navigation. Or even worse, an online store that doesn’t use categories or otherwise separate their merchandise to make it easier to find a specific type of product. The same goes for sites that have categories with no products in them or with only one or two items. Why even bother with a category?

What to do about it

Think through your categories and navigation elements carefully before you start putting products in your catalog. Make sure that every category has at least a few products in it, or else group smaller categories together (or include them in larger, similar categories). Make it easy for customers to look through different categories, get to their shopping cart, and otherwise move around your site.

Examples

13. Not Including Shipping Rates

There’s no good reason not to include accurate shipping rates on your site. I’ve abandoned purchases on numerous occasions because it said something like “We’ll email you with an accurate shipping quote for approval before processing your order.” When shopping online, I want to be able to complete my order all at one time, without having to wait around for an email to decide whether the shipping charges are too high. Include your rates on your site, no matter what.

What to do about it

Most major shipping companies and the USPS offer shipping calculators on their website, and there are plugins or widgets available for most major shopping cart systems to figure shipping charges on your site. Use one. If you can’t use one for some reason, then use a flat shipping rate that’s high enough to cover whatever it is you need to ship. For particularly heavy or large items, you can always include a freight surcharge in the price (just be sure to indicate that’s where the additional cost is going).

Examples

14. Not Including Store Policies

Before a customer buys from you, they’ll likely want to know what your shipping policies, return policies, and other store rules are. And there’s no reason not to post this information in a FAQ or somewhere else on your site. Making your store policies clear upfront can save a lot of headaches later on from customers who are unhappy with an order they’ve placed.

What to do about it

Use an FAQ or store policies section on your site to spell out exactly what your rules are for different kinds of customer interaction. It’s something that can save you tons of problems down the road.

Examples

15. Not Putting Focus on the Products

The goal of an ecommerce site is to sell products (or, at least, that’s what the goal should be). If your site puts more focus on bells and whistles or the design itself, it’s not achieving that primary goal. Make sure your site displays your products first, and everything else second.

What to do about it

Think about how products are displayed in brick and mortar stores. While an in-store or window display may show a lot more than just the products for sale, they all contribute to showcasing the products in their most flattering light. Do the same with your website. Make sure that every design element present is doing something to showcase your products in their best possible light.

Examples

The post 15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

Voltier Digital & Plastick Media have put together a great infographic, with some interesting stats:

• 1000 people post to Tumblr every 60 seconds
• 2000 people check in to Foursquare every 60 seconds
• Social media accounts for 24% of all time spent online
• 250 million photos are uploaded to FB every day

Who doesn’t share content on social media?

Also interesting to note is the statistics for people who do not share content on social media.

• A look at Twitter stats shows that only 47% of Twitter accounts are active and half of the registered Twitter users follow 2 or lesser number of people.
• 11 % of Facebook accounts are inactive.

Social media and brands:

The infographic presents some great trends for social media used by brands for promotions:

• It has been noticed that 70% of adults who use social media also shop online.
• 53% of active networkers follow a brand on social media.
• 60% of those who use digital methods to research about the products they intend to buy, learned about it on social media sites.

For more statistics, here is the infographic:

The post ‘The Sharing Avalanche’ of Social Media appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

The group has expanded from its traditional markets (railways, shipbuilding, defence, semiconductor manufacture and HT testing) , to include manufacturers of Earthing Products and High Powered Laser products, large Power transmission and Distribution OEMs and Regional Electricity Companies.

Objective

• Redesign their ‘IST Power’ logo to stand-out more.
• Redesign the website with a fresh professional look and feel.
• Pages to be easily updated via a content management system.
• Build a blog to post all their latest news articles and case studies.
• Optimise the website for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Result

Launch Website

Information

URL: http://www.istpower.com
Our Services: Web Design, Content Management System, Search Engine Optimisation
Technologies Used: Wordpress, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery

The post IST Power appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

Squire Energy also provide a full range of other services including professional consultancy (focussing on gas related projects), isolations and diversions of existing gas supplies, gas metering and general help and advice to developers and building services consultants.

Objective

• Redesign the website with a fresh professional look and feel.
• Pages to be easily updated via a content management system.
• Build a blog to post all their latest news articles and case studies.
• Optimise the website for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Result

Launch Website

Information

URL: http://www.squireenergy.co.uk
Our Services: Web Design, Content Management System, Search Engine Optimisation
Technologies Used: Wordpress, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery

The post Squire Energy appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

They were early to recognize the importance of Biomass to the government’s (country’s) commitment to carbon reduction and as an essential component of fuel security going forward into the 21st century.

The company is now a market leader with clearly defined goals of becoming the sector’s premier supplier. Taking their lead from Scandinavia and Austria they have developed a clear understanding of the benefits and limitations of Biomass heating and have sourced, from the best appliances available, those appropriate for use in the UK market.

Objective

• Design the website with a fresh professional look and feel.
• Pages to be easily updated via a content management system.
• Build a blog to post all their latest news articles and case studies.
• Optimise the website for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Result

Launch Website

Information

URL: http://www.naturespowerbiomass.com
Our Services: Web Design, Content Management System, Search Engine Optimisation
Technologies Used: Wordpress, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery

The post Nature’s Power Biomass appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

Whether you are looking for construction or demolition equipment, gardening & landscaping machinery or power tools, carpet cleaners & floor sanders for trade and DIY use, they have the right equipment for you and guarantee competitive prices across the entire hire fleet.

Objective

• Redesign the website with a fresh professional look and feel.
• Pages to be easily updated via a content management system.
• Build a blog to post all their latest news articles.
• Build a product catelog that lists all the tools available to hire.
• Optimise the website for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Result

Launch Website

Information

URL: http://www.tvtoolhire.co.uk
Our Services: Web Design, Content Management System, Search Engine Optimisation
Technologies Used: Wordpress, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery

The post Thames Valley Hire Services appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

Facebook application development will help your company engage your Facebook fans! Alchemy Internet can help to transform your Facebook page to make it more individual and more engaging for your customers.

The target market potential on Facebook is huge, and this is why it is so important to get your page right. We have a team of innovative designers and developers that have an in depth knowledge of how best to create your company a bespoke Facebook page.

Take a look at some of the Facebook application development services that we offer:

Branded Facebook Pages

Your branded, custom designed Facebook page will create a unique look and feel, giving your target market a more involved brand experience. This will help your company engage more with a wider target audience and encourage them to spend more time on your profile.

Custom Built PageTab’s and App’s

If you need a specialist function on your Facebook page, a custom built ‘Page Tab’ or ‘App’ could be the answer for you. Our developers will take your brief and endeavour to complete a functioning app that will work for you and your company.

Website Integration

Allows integration between your Facebook page and your company website, this will give your company website to have features that Facebook has, such as wall comments fed directly to your site. This can help your company look transparent and engaging, and could also aid Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Facebook Store

It’s no secret that Facebook has become a standard feature of today’s social culture, if you have a Facebook store you will have the ability to recreate a social shopping experience whilst combining the convenience of online shopping.

Social Maps

A social map works in a similar way to Google maps, and allows you to advertise your location on both your company website and Facebook page. This would help your customers find your physical location easily if they needed too, and would also be ideal for Facebook check-ins, so Facebook users can share their location with their Facebook friends.

Consultancy

We can help to develop the best look, feel and functionality of your company Facebook page but we can also offer you advice and tips on how best to use it for marketing.

For more information on all of Alchemy Internets Facebook development services, contact us using the contact form on the page or call +44 (0)1784 223100 to speak to one of our web experts.

The post Facebook Application and PageTab Development appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

The five tools are: social bookmarking, f-commerce, digital couponing, mobile photo sharing, and gamification. The infographic lists the benefits of each tool along with an example of a brand that is doing it right. Here’s a quick rundown of the tools, the benefits they provide and the company she uses as examples.

Social bookmarking – Sally points to Pinterest’s bookmarking feature, which allows users to create a catalog of online finds and share them with friends. The benefit to brands is that it enables them to gain more exposure and traffic, and showcase their personality (and products as well).

The brand that gets it right in this case is Etsy, due to the fact the site has automated the pinning process by populating the descriptions field with the item name and price. Clicking the pinned image takes users to the respective product on the Etsy website.

F-commerce – Brands using Facebook for commerce create purchasing opportunities by offering exclusive items and discounts to fans.

Sally suggests that Oscar de la Renta is a brand that understands this dynamic and we happen to agree. The brand’s use of Facebook as a channel to provide exclusive offers such as its direct from the runway Esprit d’Oscar fragrance is proof positive that the social network has the what it takes to help brands increase customer loyalty and advocacy. Oscar’s focus on creating a small group of highly engaged ambassadors and converting them into customers is what makes them a brand worth emulating.

Digital coupons – Gone are the days of waiting on newspaper coupons to get great deals. Instead, coupon codes offered online are the order of the day. Sally cites Autotrader as the brand to watch based on its use of discounts with promo codes to incentive customers to purchase products at a reduced rate.

Mobile photo sharing – Brands can use mobile devices to instantly share “behind the scenes” photos that fans and followers can Like, retweet and comment on.

Which brand gets this right? Starbucks says Sally, which uses Instagram to to share coffees found from around the world. The brand also encourages customers to use the app to share images of their favorite coffee drinks.

Gamification – People love to play, so brands can take advantage of that predisposition to turn real-world situations into games where people can compete with others for rewards.

Nike’s Tag game app, which merges running with social gaming and allows users to play a game of tag with other players, is the one Sally picks as the example.

In our opinion, Sally is the one who “gets it right.” Even though her focus is on brand-building, her insights about these five tools provide good advice that brands should consider when seeking to monetize social media and play the social commerce game.

With that said, here’s the infographic.

The post Five Digital Tools to Boost Your Brand in Social Commerce appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

Yet mobile advertising dollars spent around the world do not begin to compete with traditional platforms or Internet ads.

As the Internet spreads throughout the developing world, it’s arriving on phones before traditional computers. Some 70% of Internet users in Egypt, 59% in India, 57% in South Africa, 50% in Ghana and 44% in Indonesia get online via mobile phones alone.

This Jana infographic poses a question for advertisers — how will relevant content be delivered via mobile device?

One idea: in Brazil, 74% of mobile users said they would like to receive advertisements in their devices in exchange for voice minutes.

Do you have an answer to Jana’s question? Take a look at the infographic below and share your suggestions for the future of global advertising in the comments.

The post Why Mobile Ads in Emerging Markets are the Future appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

MMG MagDev are part of the Magnets group with facilities in Asia, North America and Europe, they offer an extensive choice of Ferrite cores manufactured in Manganese Zinc, Nickel Zinc Iron Powder, Amorphous and a range of Permanent Magnets including Sintered Ferrite, Alnicoand Neodymium. They are also able to undertake kitting and assembly work to their customers exact requirements.

Objective

• Redesign the website with a fresh professional look and feel.
• Implement an eCommerce solution.
• Integrate a secure payment gateway.
• Integrate with their accounts package.
• Optimise the website for search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing).

Result

Magnets Online

Information

URL: http://www.magdev.co.uk
Our Services: Content Management System
Technologies Used: ASP.Net, XHTML, CSS

The post MMG MagDev Ltd appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

As CultureLabel looked to expand its own mobile strategy, the company compiled stats to reinforce the need to grow its m-commerce channel. According to its findings displayed in the online art retailer’s infographic, 5.9 billion out of the 7 billion people (87%) worldwide already have mobile phones. Smartphone sales are up 63.1% from 2010, and a whopping 488.5 million devices were sold in 2011.

Meanwhile, one in seven searches are made with a mobile device. More people are accessing social networking sites this way too. In fact, Facebook mobile users have quadrupled in two years from 50 million in 2009 to 200 million in 2011.

The infographic also points out that mobile commerce is expected to experience significant growth by 2015 from the six previous years — jumping 99-fold from $1 billion in sales in 2009 to more than $100 billion

Do you think mobile commerce will every surpass e-commerce? Do you think these channels will ever surpass in-store shopping sales? Let us know in the comments.

The post Why Mobile Commerce Is on the Rise appeared first on Alchemy Internet.

What Is Your Goal?

The first thing you have to do in order to choose a typeface is form a strong impression in your mind about how you want your audience to react to the text. This is your goal, and it will guide the process. You might provide this impression, or it might be dictated to you by your client, or it may be determined by your audience. Whatever the case, your choice of typeface needs to strike a good combination of both legibility and readability, while remaining appropriate for the audience and the message. Each of these characteristics requires some degree of independent consideration. As you may already know from experience, it’s easy to go about this the wrong way and get overwhelmed. This problem can be compounded as a design evolves.

Perhaps the hardest part of breaking down the typeface selection process is understanding which parts are moresubjective and which parts are more objective. After reading and digesting your client’s text, it is easier to start with the objective aspects of typeface selection because they — by default — make subjective decisions for us. There are no fixed positions on the spectrum from subjective to objective. However, we know that legibility is more easily quantifiable than a mood. Let’s start with the two most objective attributes — legibility and readability.

Legibility

It may seem at first glance that legibility and readability are the same thing, but they are not. Legibility refers to the design of the typeface, as in the width of the strokes, whether or not it has serifs, the presence of novel type design elements etc. It is easy to tell one letterform from another in a legible typeface. For instance, decorative typefaces have low legibility because they are primarily meant to be seen at a glance, rather than read at length. Conversely, typefaces designed for novels or newspapers have very high legibility. You need to design a specific, overall legibility based on the function of the text.

Consider this example where the left block of text is set in Tobin Tax, a decorative serif typeface. Compare it to the same text set in Sabon, a classic and highly-legible serif typeface. Where does your typeface choice fall between these two extremes?

Quick tips for great legibility:

• Choose typefaces with conventional letterforms.Letterforms composed of unique shapes, artistic deformations, excessive ornamentation or other novel design elements cause the reader to have to process what they are looking at first, instead of just taking in the message. Novelty always comes at the cost of immediate comprehension.
• Choose typefaces with generous spacing.Tight tracking causes the eye to fill in visual gaps between the various shapes that make up different letterforms, thus slowing down the time it takes to both recognize letterforms and word and sentence structures. Generous spacing allows the eyes to proceed as fast as the cognitive skills of the reader will permit.
• Choose typefaces with a tall x-height.A “short” x-height decreases legibility of certain letters. The apertures, or openings, of similar lowercase letters like “c” and “e” are distinguished with greater ease if the x-height is generous.Please notice: The x-height shouldn’t be “high”. The font size, weight and width must just be chosen according to the x-height of the font. Sure, at first glance one typeface with a larger x-height might look more legible than another, but the the latter is just set too small (or too bold or too condended). In addition, a large x-height only helps a few letters like e, s, a (with double-storey shape). Other characters (with descenders, diacritical marks) suffer from a larger x-height. (Thanks to Ralf Herrmann for clarification!)

Readability

How your typeface is set, combined with the basic legibility of the typeface, yields a certain level of readability. Readability is the dynamic interaction of the type style, size, tracking, leading, color and other properties all combined into one overall impression. They add up to a certain typographic style which has a quantifiable degree of readability. For instance, you could use a style that has an intentionally low readability that is part of the message. Or you could focus on designing a high readability because your message is complicated, and you don’t want your type style to hinder the audiences’ understanding in any way. In most cases, communication comes before style, so resolve readability first.

Let’s take our previous example of Sabon and alter the readability. On the left, we have taken the text and decreased the font size, altered the tracking and leading, lightened the color, and set the block to full justification. It’s now a mess with unattractive text rivers. On the right, we’ve left the unaltered for an obvious comparison. Changing several independent factors, as you can see, can add up to quite a difference.

Quick tips for great readability:

• Choose typefaces that were designed for the purpose you are using them for (display fonts for headlines, body copy typefaces for body copy, etc.).Choosing a font designed for display purposes, like headlines or posters, means that it will not function very well as a body text typeface where larger quantities of text will be read. Conversely, a typeface designed for extended reading loses its impact in relation to how large it is blown up.
• Align text to “right ragged” for comfortable word spacing online to avoid “rivers”.“Force-justified” text, or hyphenless justification, always creates ugly rivers and awkward spacing which causes the reader to lose the natural flow of the text as the eye has to make various leaps and jumps to complete words and sentences. Currently, there is no proper native support for hyphenation in CSS, but you could use Hyphenator.js for a proper client-side hyphenation online.
• Make sure your line height is greater than the point size of your typeface for multi-line texts.It’s difficult for the eye to track across a line of text and stay “on track” if the lines above and below it are too close to it. Our eyes are easily confused especially when wrapping from the end of one line of text to another. How many times have you read the same line of text twice on generously-spaced lines of text? Probably once — of course if the content is easy to understand as well. Don’t make your readers work harder than they have to.

With the two most subjective factors out of the way, let’s move on to appropriateness.

Aspects of Appropriateness

Some typefaces are more suitable for a design task than others. Appropriateness is something you can learn by both experience with a typeface, and by other attributes of the typeface, including its history and original purpose. Here are four attributes of a typeface you can consider.

Design Intent

It’s very helpful to consider the design intent of the typeface. Many popular typefaces have detailed write-ups and reviews, so it’s really inexcusable to not know at least something about your choice. If a typeface was designed for signage, like Cooper Black, it probably isn’t going to work well set as the body copy of a book. That might be an obvious example, but don’t miss the subtleties in your own choices. Again, it only takes a few seconds to look something up, or flip open a decent typography book to get some basic facts, and you’ll be wiser for it.

Aesthetics

Your typeface should conform to the aesthetics expected by the audience for which the design is intended. For instance, if you are designing a piece for a bank, setting their logo or the text for an ad campaign in Souvenir might be a little too light hearted and free-spirited — not qualities one would want to associate with people who manage your money. However, the stately and stable-minded Bembo might be a better choice for this situation. The more you match the gist of the typeface to the gist of your topic, the easier success will come.

In this example, we’ve created two combinations of typefaces. The first one, Lithos and Souvenir, create an aesthetic more suited to a children’s museum than a bank. The second combination is composed of Clarendon and Bembo, which fits the topic like a well-tailored banker’s suit.

Quick tip for judging aesthetics:

• Look at a typeface and write down several words the typeface “says” to you about itself, and then compare that to what your design objective for the typeface is. Do they correlate? Be convinced, after this analysis, that you have the right typeface choice. If you are not sure, it would be best to not proceed.

Mood

As you read through these factors, you’ll realize that they overlap a little. Mood, for instance is a dynamic synthesis of what you get when you consider the aesthetics of a typeface together with the readability you’ve designed into your piece, along with, of course, the perceived meaning of the text itself. For instance, with one typeface and one text you can evoke a mood of excitement or panic. The typeface itself first evokes a strong reaction, but the readability of the design and the text itself can take communication to another level.

On the example below, notice how the implied meaning of the phrase “kick back and relax” is dramatically changed by altering the typeface and readability. Mood is very powerful, and it’s a good idea to have a second set of eyes reviewing your work to make sure you don’t send the wrong message. This demonstrates that matching the basic personality of the typeface, and its readability, to the intended emotional response of the message is a sure-fire recipe for success.

Quick tip for pinpointing mood:

• Think of the exact opposite of the mood you want to create and look at your work on a given design thus far. If you can’t come up with an opposite mood, it might mean you have not created a strong impression of the right mood. Remember, the opposite of neutral is neutral.

Personal Choice

Many times, a typeface just strikes you for some reason as appropriate. Your right brain knows it but your left brain can’t understand why. If you can make it work based on that alone, go for it. You would of course do well to get informed about the typefaces in your arsenal, especially if you keep using them over and over. You may discover that your use of a typeface has nothing to do with its original intent, but it can still look great.

For instance, you might like OCR-A on the cover an album design, though OCR-A was designed specifically for optical scanners so that computers can recognize the words through software. So what if computers are supposed to read it? If it fits the design intent of your project and you can pull it off, do it. Just do it well or choose another typeface.

Quick tip about personal choice

• Trust your gut but make sure you can quantify, in typographic terms, aspects of your choice so that you can defend your design decisions armed with intelligent answers. You may also find that a defense of  even your most subjective choice goes a long way if it’s clear you did think it out and have a reasonable rationale.
• Come up with your type selection quality scale.You might want to consider creating your personal checklist with type selection details which you can then consider and apply in your typographic choices. This would help quantify your decisions and make them comparable.

A Few Technical Considerations

Don’t overlook the obvious. For instance, if your design job is going to include work using a lot of numbers, you’ll want to make sure you choose a typeface that has the kinds of numbers you want to use. Some typefaces use Old Style, or lowercase numbers. Other typefaces use Lining, or uppercase numbers.

You might be persuaded that large spreadsheets of numbers for technical work are easier to read with lining style numbers because they don’t use the lowercase descenders and are more even on the eye when used in large quantities. But if your design features a lot of up-and-close with over-sized numbers, the Old Style numbers might be infinitely more pleasant. Again, the mood you want to convey plays a role in this choice: Old Style numbers look… old. That could be good in the right context but not so good in the wrong one.

To add to this list, you might consider if a typeface has a full set of ligatures and if it contains true small cap characters. Missing ligatures can look unattractive at large sizes. Fake small caps usually look odd because stroke widths aren’t compensated for. In short, it’s best to choose a typeface that is as complete as possible. And if you choose a free typeface, you’ll find that it is often these critical “extras” that are missing. Make sure that the free typefaces have exactly the features you need for your design and that they are licenced for the work you are doing.

Tips for Choosing a Typeface

Let’s pull it all together with some pragmatic ways to get your typeface choice made. You might want to try these tips, which many designers use to their advantage in one way or another. Be the beneficiary of their wisdom and experience.

1. Plan Your Hierarchy

First, make sure you have a good grasp of the content and typographic hierarchy your design job will dictate. You may realize, after a thorough analysis, you need five fonts (not typefaces) to cover your various heading, sub-headings and call-outs. Can your typeface provide enough variation with bolds, italics and small caps? Or do you need two typefaces to create more distinction in the hierarchy? Three? Use a mind-mapping tool or make a traditional outline to see as much as you can before you start choosing typefaces. Consider this example of a bad and a good hierarchy using the same text. Notice the role white space plays in the hierarchy, too. Use as many levels as you need as long as there is distinction and clear purpose in your choices.

2. Consider What Others Have Done Already

You’ll find that the designers before you have already figured out ways to use the typefaces you are considering, so you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Look around, and carefully consider what others have done already. The site Fonts In Use, for example, features typographic choices made by professional designers in various industries. And don’t dismiss familiarity when you come across it in other designers’ work. Often times “boring” and “familiar” are your best friends when it comes to choosing type. There are good reasons some typefaces get used a lot for certain purposes — they just work, and work really well.

3. Experiment The Easy Way

Here are some tips to help you experiment quickly and thoughtfully with your typeface choices:

• Set up style sheets whether you are designing for the Web or print, which speeds up the flow of ideas because they are easy to swap out. You could also use Web Font Specimen for this purpose.
• Play with the hierarchy by changing the size of different elements to create and release tension.
• Judge the results and change something, but only change one thing at a time.
• Get a second or third opinion. You might have missed the obvious.

4. Avoid Anachronisms

For instance, if you don’t know the particular history of typeface, you could end up using it in a way that makes you look a little silly. What if you picked Trajan to illustrate the title graphics of an article about ancient Greece? That would be an unintended anachronism since Greece pre-dates Rome, and Trajan was a Roman emperor. The typeface Trajan is taken from “Trajan’s Column”, which is a monument to a military victory around the year 100 A.D. Just having to answer “Trajan” to the question “What font did you set the cover of this book about Ancient Greece in?” will make you squirm just a little. It pays to double check. And sometimes it pays to be neutral by choosing something safe for an academic topic, like Arno.

5. Avoid Trite Correlations

If you apply this rule rigorously, you are unequivocally guaranteed to retire from your design career as Typographer Emeritus. Let’s just examine this principle by example and let the lessons teach themselves:

• Don’t use Papyrus just because your topic is “ancient” in some way, especially if it’s about Ancient Egypt. (Better yet, don’t use Papyrus at all)
• Don’t use Comic Sans just because your topic is humorous. (Better yet, don’t use Comic Sans at all)
• Don’t use Lithos just because your topic is about Greek restaurants.
• Don’t use Futura just because your topic deals with “the future”.

Does this leave room for typefaces with built-in “effects”? Yes, indeed. Just don’t do something so blatantly obvious it took you less than one second to think of it. The tell tale sign you are making a trite correlation is that you have a collection of decorative fonts you frequently peruse in your font manager while pining away for a topic to shoehorn them into. If you have not avoided these kinds of trite correlations in the past, it’s OK. Don’t live in the past, but don’t do it again.

6. Consider An Extended Type Familty

If your project is ongoing and diverse, it would be wise to consider investing in a quality extended type family upfront. Why not kill all the birds you can find with one stone? When you choose an extended type family, you get the benefits of having had the type designer do more use-case scenarios than you will likely ever be faced with. Extended type families usually have serif and sans serif versions, along with multiple weights, full sets of special characters and ligatures etc., which ensure that you’ll be able to find the right solution for just about every typographic challenge you could imagine. An extended type family will also give you a very uniform, orderly mood and aesthetic, which may or may not be what you want.

7. Stick With The Classic Combinations

When you are stuck, go with the tried and true, especially if your deadline is tight. If you choose a neutral serif and sans serif combination, you might lose a little “edge”, but at least the integrity of your design and message won’t suffer. When is the last time you called on Caslon or Univers and regretted it? Face it: you’ll never get ITC Avant Garde Gothic and Trebuchet MS to cooperate. Instead, consult well respected typography-related resources. See what professional designers agree on. It’s likely you already have some of the classics you’ll find referenced. Perhaps those same fonts are complete and are of high quality, which makes choosing them in a pinch that much easier. You will fail them before they fail you.

8. Use a Limited Palette

You’ll find many opinions on this, but it’s also not a bad idea to consider a limited palette of typefaces you like best from lists of the most popular type of all time. They are the most popular for a reason. Some designers have gone a whole career using less than twenty typefaces most of the time. For instance, you could use the FontShop’s 100 Best Typefaces as a reference. To that list, you should try to add a few newer, and not just classic, typefaces. While you are at it, consider adding one or two unique but highly-versatile modern typefaces from independent foundries, and not just the larger established ones that might be more familiar.

In this example, we’ve combined Bembo with various fonts from Haptic Pro, a typeface family originally designed 2008 by Henning Hartmut Skibbe. Something old and something new, and you can go a long way with a style all your own:

Final Tip: Break The Rules

Break the rules but only after you can name some of them. Knowing the basics described in this article will help you make intelligent choices about what rules to break and how to break them. You might have to go through ninety-nine bad ideas to get to that one great idea, but the process is fun. Remember: knowledge of type gives you the power to express yourself more creatively with it. To “push the envelope”, as the cliché goes, you first need to know what and where the edges are.

The post How to Choose a Typeface? appeared first on Alchemy Internet.