Best Fonts For Website Design: Enhance Readability And User Experience

Building a website is all about making the right choices—from crafting compelling headlines to designing the perfect layout. 

One element that often goes overlooked? Good web fonts. 

Choosing the right font is just as important as selecting the right images or color palette. This single font choice sets the tone for your entire site, shaping how visitors perceive your brand and interact with your site.

Whether you’re designing an eCommerce site or a content-rich blog, choosing the right fonts makes all the difference. Read on to discover the top fonts for web design that perfectly balance style, readability, and performance.

Why choosing the right font matters for web design

Researchers at the University of Central Florida made an interesting finding: The right font boosted reading speed by 35% without diminishing reading comprehension (UCF Today, 2022).

While the study also found that the best font varies from person to person, meaning there’s no “perfect” solution, the underlying discovery is valuable: Font choice matters.

The right font can do much more than make text easier to digest. It can also:

• Establish your unique brand identity and personality
• Psychologically influence how users feel and act
• Impact website loading times and performance

This wide range of effects underscores the importance of strategically choosing the best website fonts. But what factors impact this choice? What makes for good web fonts?

Key characteristics of good web fonts

Scrolling through endless lists of web fonts can be overwhelming. With hundreds to choose from, how can you find the perfect match for your brand? Consider these tips:

1. Start with readability – Some script fonts, such as French Script or certain handwritten styles, can be difficult to read, especially for individuals with dyslexia or non-native English speakers.
2. Aim for versatility – While a font may look stunning on a title page, how does it perform when scaled down to body text for a 500-word blog post? You don’t need to use a single font for everything, but selecting a handful of versatile fonts creates a consistent and cohesive browsing experience.
3. Prioritize responsiveness – Obscure fonts may not display properly across devices or load efficiently, which could detract from the user experience. Choose web-safe fonts that load quickly and minimize visual errors to ensure a seamless presentation.

Pro Tip: Once you’ve chosen your fonts, you’ll need the right platform to bring your vision to life. Name.com offers website builder solutions that make it simple to design and launch a professional-looking site without any coding experience. With customizable templates and integrated font options, your website will look polished and perform seamlessly.

Top fonts for web design in 2024

With these principles for choosing a font in mind, consider some recommended fonts for websites in 2024 and beyond.

Sans-serif fonts for clean, modern designs

Serifs are the additional strokes added to letters and symbols in a font family. Sans-serif fonts eliminate these attachments, offering a simpler and more skimmable look. Top fonts for web usage include:

• Arial
• Helvetica
• Open Sans
• Calibri 
• Gotham 

These fonts are ideal for modern, minimalist web design and UX design, making them a popular choice for corporate websites, portfolios, and informational pages.

Serif fonts for classic and elegant websites

Whereas sans-serif fonts prioritize simplicity, serif fonts lean into the sophistication of those additional strokes and flourishes. Common examples include:

• Times New Roman
• Georgia
• Merriweather
• PT Serif

Not only are these fonts generally optimized for web pages, but they also add elements of elegance—ideal for longer articles, educational platforms, or news sites.

Display fonts for unique branding

While the body of your content should prioritize readability, your headings, titles, and logos need to stand out and leave a lasting impression. This is where display fonts come into play, with bold designs that work best for short, punchy, and powerful content.

Recommended display fonts for websites include: 

• Lobster
• Oswald
• Playfair Display

Some of these display fonts work well with all capital letters, particularly Oswald’s sans-serif design. On the other hand, serif-heavy fonts like Lobster offer a visually striking option for single-word brands or titles. 

Pro Tip: For businesses looking to create a cohesive brand presence, consider pairing bold fonts with a memorable domain name. Use Name.com’s domain name search tool to find the perfect domain, and explore their extensive TLD list for creative extensions that reflect your unique style.

Recommended fonts for different website types

Every website has unique needs when it comes to fonts. Here’s a breakdown of the top fonts for web design based on the type of site you’re building.

Best fonts for blogs

Among the three pillars of font choice—readability, versatility, and responsiveness—blog readers naturally prioritize readability. Consider a few font options that align with those expectations:

• PT Sans – For blogs seeking a clean, approachable design that’s easy on the eyes, PT Sans offers a modern sans-serif style, making it ideal for content that emphasizes directness and accessibility.
• Lora – With a slightly cursive touch that combines readability with elegance, Lora is a great serif font choice for blogs focusing on storytelling and creative content.
• Charter – The go-to option for some of the world’s most popular blogs like Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan, the subtle serifs of this font add an air of authority to your writing.

With the right font, you can make reading an enjoyable experience that helps your audience focus on the content rather than the typeface.

Best fonts for eCommerce websites

Here are some of the best website fonts in the eCommerce space that can help boost conversions by improving readability, enhancing user experience, and creating a polished, professional look for your brand:

• Roboto – Readily associated with digital products and with a font file that’s already downloaded into most browsers, Roboto is among the most readable, reliable options for eCommerce sites.
• Montserrat – Clean, modern, and sophisticated, Monsterrat speaks to professionalism—whether used as a bolded headline, a caption, or simply for the body of your website’s text.
• Nunito Semibold – Contrasting the pointy edges of most sans-serif fonts, Nunito stands out with a uniquely rounded typeface. Its semibold variation features soft, well-spaced characters that gently invite readers to become buyers.

E-commerce websites that use social media could also benefit from a link-in-bio solution.

Best fonts for corporate or business websites

For more traditional business settings, first impressions matter. In the digital world, fonts are a major factor in delivering that strong first impression to your audience.

Top font options for a business website include:

• Source Sans Pro – A sans-serif font designed for user interfaces, Source Sans Pro is easily fitted into constrained spaces without sacrificing readability.
• Tisa Sans Pro – Another sans-serif font that stands out with its small flourishes. It adds a dash of daring flair for cutting-edge corporations.
• Forum – A serif font with an almost architectural feel, Forum is an excellent choice for titles and headlines with its well-balanced sizing and subtle sophistication.

Conveying trust and authority is essential for corporate settings, meaning even your display fonts should lean toward more straightforward, classic designs. 

With Name.com’s professional email solutions, such as Google Workspace and Titan Email, you can enhance this polished image even further. These tools let you extend your branding—complete with your chosen fonts—beyond your website, creating a cohesive and professional presence across all digital touchpoints.

How to implement fonts on your website

From a technical standpoint, you will also need to implement your chosen fonts to perform well across different browsers and devices. There are two primary ways to do so: 

1. Google Fonts – This tool is a popular free resource that allows you to easily integrate hundreds of fonts into your website. Simply select the fonts you want to use and follow the site’s instructions to ensure your chosen fonts load correctly for all visitors.
2. Custom fonts – These are unique typefaces not typically installed on user devices by default. Custom fonts can give you a competitive edge by helping your brand stand out, but they often require coding expertise to implement without causing long loading times. 

Alternatively, if you’d rather get your website up and running without any messy coding, consider Name.com’s best-in-class suite of tools. For example, the Wix website builder lets you choose from hundreds of templates (yes, fonts included!) to match your business needs.

Best practices for font pairing in web design

Take a look at any magazine cover or online advertisement, and you’ll often see several fonts paired together for maximum impact. These variations in size, spacing, and style make for a captivating visual design that draws in readers.

With a bit of creativity and thoughtful website design, you can achieve similar results. Follow these guidelines to get started:

• Compliment and contrast – Pair fonts that maintain a similar overall theme while maintaining variety in boldness and spacing for a consistent, professional tone. Or opt for more striking contrasts by mixing artistic serifs with simpler sans-serifs.
• Incorporate other design elements – Ensure your fonts match well with your website’s overall theme. For example, pair a bold, all-caps header with a lighter body to create single columns of text, then incorporate relevant photos in the background.

Whether you use three fonts or one, your goal is to maximize the impact of each header, subheader, and body text. 

Common mistakes to avoid when choosing web fonts

Selecting the right fonts can be challenging, especially with so many options. While this variety has certain advantages, it’s good to be mindful of a few common pitfalls: 

• Using too many fonts – Mixing more than three fonts tends to create a chaotic look, disrupting the flow and harmony of your website. Try to limit yourself to a few well-chosen fonts for a balanced, consistent layout. 
• Choosing fonts that aren’t web-safe – If you’ve ever scrolled through a website and noticed that certain characters suddenly turn into strings of incomprehensible jabber, that’s likely from a poorly implemented custom font. Ensure your fonts are properly embedded and encoded with fallback options.
• Opting for overly decorative fonts – Intricately designed fonts can be hard to read past the headline. Reserve such display fonts for headers and logos, and stick to simpler options for the bulk of your body text.

Remember the key characteristics of good web fonts: readability, versatility, and responsiveness. These qualities will help you choose your fonts wisely and avoid common mistakes.

Final thoughts on top fonts for web design

Your choice of font says a lot about your business. By prioritizing readability and user experience, this seemingly simple choice can be a powerful force for your business’s success.

But fonts are just one part of the equation. Factors like your website’s domain name and email address are equally important in making a memorable first impression in the digital world.

That’s why Name.com offers a suite of tools to help you build your professional digital presence. From buying the perfect domain to building a website and setting up custom email solutions, Name.com provides everything you need to stand out online.

 

Sources: 

UCF Today. Study Shows Personalized Fonts Speed Up Reading, Maintain Comprehension. https://www.ucf.edu/news/study-shows-personalized-fonts-speed-up-reading-maintain-comprehension/