Of the many different website design considerations, text is one of the most important, yet also one of the most neglected. You can have the best logo, layout and graphics in the world, but if visitors to your website cannot easily read the information that you are giving them then they will not stay on your website for more than a few seconds.

Fortunately, getting the text part of your website design correct is not overly difficult. All you need to do is adhere to the guidelines laid out below...

- Do not display text in small font sizes; if it looks too small, visitors to your website will click the back button on their web browser straight away. You may have good eyesight but many people do not. Going with a font size of 11 or 12 is recommended for the main body of your written content, and you should make your sub-titles and heading at least a font size or two larger. Be consistent too, by ensuring that you use the same font sizes for your content, sub-titles and headings throughout every page of your website.

- Only use fonts that are available on all computers, such as verdana and arial. Whilst you may not consider these fonts to be the most visually appealing, they are the most practical ones. This is because they are the easiest to read on a computer screen; in fact, the verdana font was specifically created to be read on computer screens, rather than to be printed out. Another reason is that every computer definitely has these fonts stored on their hard-disk. If you choose a fancy font, then many computers will not have it stored, and so you will not be able to tell how your website will render on other people's screens.

- The color(s) you choose for your text should sharply contrast to the color(s) you use for your background. Black text on a white background is the easiest color scheme for people to read, but it is not necessary to use that color scheme if it does not suit the overall style of your website design. If the background color is light, then use black, or dark gray, text, and if the background color is dark, then make your text white. Using non black, dark gray or white text hardly ever comes across well, so be extremely cautious if you are absolutely intent on making your text a different color.

- Limit your written content to about 15 words per line. By doing this people will only have to move their eyes to read your website, and not their head. This number is based on research and studies that have been carried out which show that 15 words is as far most people's vision will stretch without them needing to move their head. Not every line has to be exactly 15 words, as some sentences will, obviously, have a greater or lesser amount of small words such as 'a', 'to', 'and', etc., so you just need to use 15 words per line as a rough average.