Readability... grey text... good idea?
I was doing a little online sleuthing this morning for a client in the technology consulting business, and I ran into—make that, stepped in—a pet peeve on four of seven websites. Grey text! Hundreds of pages needing a good soak in Grecian Formula.
Grey type is a design conceit, and a complete disconnect from best practices in usability/readability.
- We know that most visitors to most sites read only a small percentage of content.
- We know that visitors scan content to spot the pearls that make them want to stay and read more.
- We know that text content does all the heavy lifting in the persuasion-conversion funnel.
- We know that the ‘puter screen is not a reading-friendly medium.
We know so much now about site visitor-users and how they want to experience a website. Yet, with all this known, designers are still selling content as a fashion statement.
I can hear the conversation. “Gray is very corporate, very executive. And it goes so well with the burgundy in the header.”
Maybe it does, but that‘s no reason to inflict readers with a sea of grey single-spaced 10 pt Arial! Join the dots, people... Read Neilsen et al on Web readability. (And have someone read it to your designer. Harrumph!)
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