Good design drives user experience and usability

The colours and fonts used on your website are not just design choices. They also play an essential functional role that can greatly help or harm a person’s ability to read and interact with your website.

Tips:

1. A high contrast ratio between text and the background will make your website easier to read (black on white is better than light grey on white)
2. Make headings visually distinct from body text (use contrasting colour, larger font)
   • Minimize featured body text (colour, bold, underline, italics); they make reading harder
   • Hyperlinks should be visually distinct from body text (contrasting colour and/or underlined)
3. Ensure your website design allows users with assistive technology to resize text up to 200 percent without breaking the layout or hiding content
4. Avoid using images in place of words; search engines can’t read text within images.
5. If your website includes audio or video elements, provide clear controls to allow the user to turn it off and on, adjust the volume, replay, etc. Most users prefer not to audio automatically play when the page loads, especially if they are visiting your website at work or another place where the sound would bother others.