Nov 7, 2022

Google Mobile Font: A Design Element to Consider

Web fonts are much less flashy or prominent than visual design elements like images. But, they’re still critical for helping viewers understand your website copy and content. Pictures can speak a thousand words for themselves, but informative website text is necessary to ensure a visitor’s complete understanding. So are Google Fonts’ popular font types the best for Mobile Devices?

Stanford discovered that, to 75% of consumers, a website’s credibility is based on design. Websites need images to attract visitors’ eyes. However, another crucial part of ensuring high Average Time on Page and Click-Through Rates involves text.

Fonts are more than just an extension of a business website’s aesthetic. It’s also responsible for helping viewers understand textual information. After all, if a font is easy for anyone to read, they can read your website to the end.

Accessibility is vital, so if a font is too hard for readers to make sense of, they won’t have much incentive to stay on your pages for long. As a result, Web Designers and Developers should carefully consider the exact font they’ll use for their websites. Part of accomplishing this includes understanding why Google Fonts aren’t advisable for Mobile-Friendly Websites.

What are Google Fonts?

Google has an extensive catalog of high-quality open-source fonts, with a catalog that’s well-maintained, free, and safe for use. Thus, Web Designers and Developers have a large selection for adding fonts to their sites. Contributors can even upload their fonts to Google via submissions on GitHub.

Designers and developers can use Google Fonts’ CSS API to add fonts directly to their websites. You can check out the licenses for specific usage and redistribution details. Google Fonts’ licenses tend to have SIL Open Font, Ubuntu Font, and Apache Licenses.

However, Designers and Developers can’t use Product or Google Sans fonts as Google solely owns the fonts. Google’s repository offers its users many fonts to choose from, but those two typeface families are only available for Google’s use.

So, if you’re worried about licensing restrictions, there’s no need to worry. People can select from 1,052 different Google Font families for commercial use, including on:

Logos;
Print;
Websites;
Applications;
eBooks;
Shopfronts;
Retail Products; and
Jewelry.

Additionally, you can find fonts that support other languages. Just search on the main page and select your desired writing system with the language filter. But, website visitors may have a less-than-stellar User Experience due to your usage of Google Fonts.

Why Google Fonts Aren’t Advisable on Mobile

With all of Google Fonts’ extensive perks, one would think it’s a perfect new addition to your website projects, Mobile Apps, and Brochure Graphic Designs. After all, fonts don’t just add to the aesthetic; they can also affect your site’s Bounce and Conversion Rates.

Design is responsible for 94% of first impressions, especially on websites. This doesn’t just extend to the attractiveness of your website’s design.

There are plenty of paid and free fonts Website Designers, and Developers can use to add to the overall UX. As a result, your website can attract and retain visitor attention and boost your Conversion Rates. However, selecting a font that fits the intended design aesthetic is critical while staying coherent enough for viewers to understand.

Thus, Web Designers and Developers should choose a font that’s readable and visible to visitors. However, despite its extensive selection, Google Fonts isn’t always the best option for Website Designers and Developers. There are two primary reasons why Google Fonts aren’t the best choice for Mobile Website Design:

Slower Loading Speed

You might think the best Google Fonts for Mobile Website Design can significantly benefit your projects. But, using its fonts can result in slower loading times, which is terrible news for Mobile-Friendliness and Page Speed. This reason is valid for WordPress Websites as well.

However, to ensure that website visitors with poor Internet connections can have a good User Experience, it’s recommended to use a few system fonts. Two specific fonts should work just fine for a website, and they’ll be easy for visitors’ eyes to digest.

GDPR-Noncompliance

The right fonts work to ensure that your website is understandable to visitors. However, did you know that Google Fonts also have privacy concerns? The fonts may cause your site to become noncompliant with General Data Protection Regulation laws. Thus, avoiding problems with GDPR or other international privacy laws is critical.

To ensure visitors can experience your website on mobile as it was meant to be, you should disable Google Fonts.

Disabling Google Fonts on WordPress Sites

Disabling the third-party fonts means that your Mobile Website will use the fonts that are part of the website visitor’s system. Not only will this speed up the loading time and ensure GDPR compliance, but they’ll look great and work well even if the visitor has a slow Internet connection.

Thus, disabling Google Fonts can result in any site visitor landing on your pages without issue. This can lower Bounce Rates, which, in turn, can boost Conversion Rates. But, doing so may not be the best option for every business site. It’s important to consider where your visitors are coming from and the quality of their Internet connections during the Web Design Process.

Using the ‘Disable and Remove Google Fonts’ Plugin

You can improve your website’s frontend performance with the Disable and Remove Google Fonts Plugin. The plugin will ensure that the fonts loaded by themes and plugins won’t slow down the mobile website. Fortunately, this particular WordPress plugin will work with all themes, with a complete list of compatible ones on its description page.

Additionally, the Disable and Remove Google Fonts Plugin will remove the fonts from these plugins:

Beaver Builder
Divi
Elementor
MailPoet
Revolution Slider

To get started, you should have installed and activated the plugin. Once that’s done, the plugin automatically disables Google Fonts on the plugins and themes. So, in addition to improving the User Interface immediately, there are no edits or modifications needed!

So, you’ll notice that WordPress uses default system fonts rather than the Google Fonts used before you added the plugin. Make sure to give the site a once-over to ensure that the new fonts fit your overall design aesthetic! Also, you can change the fonts on your WordPress theme as needed.

Disabling Google Fonts Manually

Manually disabling Google Fonts is a viable option for skilled Website Developers. Manual disabling works, especially if you’re confident adding custom codes or don’t wish to use a plugin. One particular perk of this method is that you can disable individual font requests instead of disabling them all at once. Thus, you can opt to keep certain fonts intact.

So, you search your website’s source for the code: fonts.google.com, where you’ll see these lines or something similar:

In this instance, the ID is google-fonts-css, and you can add the code to the theme’s functions.php file:

function remove_google_fonts_stylesheet() {

wp_dequeue_style( ‘google-fonts-roboto’ );

}

add_action( ‘wp_enqueue_scripts’, ‘remove_google_fonts_stylesheet’, 999 );

Lastly, you must remove the -css from the code’s ID for it to work correctly.

Final Thoughts

Google Fonts is inadvisable for some website owners, especially those who want to ensure the sites are Mobile-Friendly. After all, typography is critical for ensuring your site visitors have a great experience with your website. For one, readable and attractive fonts ensure that you add to your website’s aesthetic or business’ branding.

Also, if your fonts are readable, people can easily read through your site. People with dyslexia, for instance, have a hard time perceiving and understanding particular fonts. Thus, you lower Bounce Rates while increasing your Conversion Rates.

As a result, many websites use Google Fonts, which offers a fantastic selection of fonts. But they’re not the best option, mainly because it slows down your site. UX is critical to ensuring visitors spend a lot of time on your pages.

Privacy is also a considerable concern, and Google Fonts are noncompliant with GDPR laws. So if you need typography assistance, consider consulting a Web Developer from the Philippines.

About Adam Tan

Adam is a charming geek who loves his family's Siberian Husky, enjoys the occasional night out with friends and, most of all, lives and breathes new trends and updates about the web and its technicalities. If you want to stay updated with changes or new trends on the web or learn about the technicalities that are involved, he's your guy. He's capable of writing cheesy stuff as well, but he'd rather stick with the manly stuff.

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