There are thousands of web fonts to choose from and new fonts are posted every day. Choosing a font for your website can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are four tips to help pick the right font for you.

1. Figure out your style

Take this as an opportunity to show off your personality and how you want people to feel when coming to your website. Make a list of key words that describe you, your industry, your business, and your product or service. Then expand that list adding adjectives that express who you are, what you do, and how you deliver to your customers.

This process may take a few days. Sleep on it, add to it, change it. Brainstorming is an easy, inexpensive, and fluid way to get your thoughts out of your head and onto paper. It will help as you compare and work to match fonts to your style. It will also give you a language base to use when you write the copy for your website.

2. Use web font libraries

There are many places to find fonts. If you want your font to work on all browsers and operating systems, focus on using a web font library like https://fonts.google.com/.These fonts are free use, can be downloaded, and will work on most browsers with no issues.

There are many sites with fonts for purchase that work great for printed literature and presentations. Even when these fonts are loaded into a website, some browsers may not recognize the font. The result is the website displaying in the browsers default font and all your style is lost.

3. How to narrow your search with thousands to choose from in the library

There are a few ways to narrow your search quickly.
First, filter the font type or category. You can filter out the handwriting fonts because you likely will not want your whole website in cursive. That leaves you with Serif and Sans Serif. The difference between these two fonts are the tails on the letters and becomes about preference.

A serif font has a curl or tail on some letters and is often used in heavy text like books. The idea was that it is visually easier to read from letter and word to word over long periods of time with the letter curl.

A sans serif font has no curl or tail on letters. Traditionally, sans serif fonts were reserved for titles. Now, they are also used for online text, websites, and everyday use.

Second, look for fonts with multiple styles or that are variable. This will give you an easy way to create different header styles using the same font and improve the likelihood that your font will display on all browsers.

Lastly, pick fonts that appeal to your eye. Then compare them to your brainstorming list. Do the fonts you like fit the style you want to convey? If yes, then add that font to your short list.

4. Take your short list of fonts and try them out in your mock-up

Once you have a short list of three to five fonts you really like. Use the preview in the font’s page with a line of copy from your website. This may narrow down your choices right away.

Otherwise, write the font name down, and download the font. Then either supply the fonts to your UX/UI designer or go to your website style sheet and change the font name, and upload the font file, if required. Then test drive your website with each font and pick the one that you believe is the best fit for you and your product or service.

There are no wrong answers. There are many options so have fun picking your font. It is part of introducing yourself and telling your story. So have fun with it!