Traded high contrast for readable body text and it paid off

I was redesigning the instructions for our store's online ordering page and had a choice between a nice dark gray on white or straight up black on white. The dark gray looked cleaner and more modern, but I went with black on white for the body text after testing it with my phone at arm's length. My dad who's in his 60s came over and tried to place an order on his tablet, and he actually read through the whole thing without squinting or asking me to zoom in. That was a small win for me since I usually overthink the aesthetic stuff. Now I'm wondering if I should go back and check my other text choices too. Has anyone else had to choose between looking good and being easier to read?

2 comments

2 Comments

holly_flores7919d ago

Oh man, I did the same thing with my recipe blog and it made a huge difference.

robinmason19d ago

Had a buddy who runs a small car parts site, he went with some trendy light gray font cause it looked slick on his monitor. Spent weeks tweaking the spacing and all that. Then his uncle tried to buy a alternator on his phone while sitting in the driveway and just gave up, called him instead. My buddy checked his analytics and saw people were dropping off right when they hit the product descriptions. Swapped everything to black text that night and his conversion rate jumped 15% in a month. Sometimes what looks good on your fancy screen is just punishing everyone else.