Do You Think The Font We Use Is Still Important Today?

I remember several years back i was always told to use fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma etc on any text based sites i built and i was wondering if this i still the case today or, are newer machines coming pre-packaged with more fonts than they used to do?

Obviously when deciding which font to use on our sites we need to take in to effect all kinds of additional stuff like how easy it is to read, what it will look like filling a text page and whether a surfer has the font installed on their machine.

So i was wondering if fonts are still as important as they used to be with sites or as the internet has grown, can we pretty much use any font we want for text based work these days?

Also, do you tend to stick with a specific font when writing text on your sites or do you just choose one that you like the look of?

Regards,

Lee

I only use text like that for search engines, and use new roman’s “basic” text only. I have to force myself to use text at all, normally only use text in the graphic design of the page "PhotoShop" then the type of text is determined on what can bee seen good/stand out, and fit in the spot I need it. Days of text like the old days are coming to an end. Like I said before they are really only good for spiders, maybe some translations too, but still they look really 1999.

i'm still cautious about fonts, since i don't know for sure that different os come bundled with the same fonts. so i stick with tahoma, verdana, etc. and css can give you tons of variations on the boldness of the font, which can help make a page more attractive.

maxpower - do you actually say these things only to be controversial so more people will post?

in reality, text is always much more effective for sales than putting text on graphics.

I do not know if its really more effective, beyond spiders and such. Would you rather have a text navigation system rather than a PhotoShop “psd”one? Or title of your site done in text, text like that can only be used when you are providing a huge amount of changing text, that is ok to do that but, really most people just look at a page for a few seconded before deciding what they are going to do next. I sure would not say that most viewers really read everything on a page “hell even in pages they have seen 1000 times before” we work in porn they want sex, and most people are very visual, I would not say a picture is worth 1000 words but it sure might be worth 500 :joker:

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Originally Posted by basschick

i'm still cautious about fonts, since i don't know for sure that different os come bundled with the same fonts. so i stick with tahoma, verdana, etc. and css can give you tons of variations on the boldness of the font, which can help make a page more attractive.

maxpower - do you actually say these things only to be controversial so more people will post?

in reality, text is always much more effective for sales than putting text on graphics.

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*sigh*

i know i'm wasting my time.

you're just guessing. i never guess when i can test it and find out for sure. we tested text vs graphic text on paysite tours, galleries, avs sites. every time, text made more sales.

perhaps some people view our sites with their graphics turned off till they decide if it sounds good. perhaps using text gives people on slower dsl have something to read while the page is loading. i don't know why but i know that tests using thousands and thousands of hits showed the same results time after time.

Really that’s really weird?? I see you do use it on your members site, but still I do not see why people would like that more? How much better would you say regular text does in % like 5% 20% ?? I would have still add about the same text in the graphics and all. Its just that I would thing text done in graphics looks better and more professional. I guess if you really think I should try an alternate version it would be kinda easy to alter the graphics to include text, but I would only test it on allot smaller amount of traffic first.

15% - definitely worth trying imo.

Ok thanks I guess I will try, I could make a site like that with a simple 1/3 page title rest text ECT in like one day, with the psd. file I can do allot. I am thinking about doing other things with my site too, when it is open really late next week or the week after “I hope”

How many fonts and which specific fonts come bundled these days still depends on what the OS and what the specific programs that are either bundled or bought for the machine have been able to license. It has nothing to do with internet growth.

For each site I play around with the fonts to see which looks best for that particular site. Sometimes for headlines and subheads the font will be different than the main body text sometimes not.

I'll refer you to my old standard example, http://www.suicidegirls.com
Lots of text, lots going on, lots of features. This is what a REAL adult site is, lots of quality and a very transparent members area, you know exactly what you are getting. Think JustUsBoys too. Why does this sell better? Because surfers KNOW the site has plenty going on before they sign up, and they know the owners of the site care very much about it's content and upkeep.

With a "glossy" tour that has the text inserted in the graphics, surfers get the impression that the sites design was ordered that way from a 3rd party and has little to do with the actual members area or content. They've most likely been burnt by this type of site before, where the designers abilities far outdid the owner's ability to provide a quality members area.

Too answer the original question - YES font still matters very much, and you should still go for the lowest-common-denomenator fonts that you mentioned. Have a look at the two examples I mentioned to see how they used very standard fonts to create really nice looking pages.

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Originally Posted by maxpower

Really that’s really weird?? I see you do use it on your members site, but still I do not see why people would like that more? How much better would you say regular text does in % like 5% 20% ?? I would have still add about the same text in the graphics and all. Its just that I would thing text done in graphics looks better and more professional. I guess if you really think I should try an alternate version it would be kinda easy to alter the graphics to include text, but I would only test it on allot smaller amount of traffic first.

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But man neither of your examples are a gay members sites, those are link list sites. They about have to have normal plane text.

i see suicide girls has changed their look! , i actually liked the site when i first viewed it. ( why can't people leave a good design alone? )
font i think plays an important role as does the graphics you choose to use , the font should be "readible" ( let the pictures be pretty ) and the graphics should be "sharp"
i use several styles depending on the theme of the model , but my "standard" is... not listed here :(

sincerely ~ ..."so many fonts , so little time"...

I'm not the biggest fan of JUB but I'm pretty sure they have a members area and have for a while. You will never touch their success, but you could learn a few things from them. SG is an adult members only site, a lot of good design practices carry over from one niche to the next. Not sure where you are getting the link list thing, except that JUB does maintain one as part of their huge multifacited network; In my opinion they match their competition in every area they don't beat it.

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Originally Posted by maxpower

But man neither of your examples are a gay members sites, those are link list sites. They about have to have normal plane text.

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Sean,

You'll probably never get it, but when Basschick or Longboardjim or Gaystoryman or countless other experienced regulars here say something about traffic and what works... they're speaking from experience, based on testing, trial and error, and years of experience.

Basschick in particular has been working in this field since you were in junior high school, and I know at least some of the other regulars here have been in the industry that long or longer. You don't hear them bullshitting about what they don't know, and that's one of the reasons people respect them.

You, on the other hand, are nearly always simply blowing out your ass when you speak.

A lot of what works in marketing -- ANY marketing, adult or otherwise -- is completely counterintuitive. That's why testing is crucial. While we can't generalize much from direct mail to Internet marketing, the one thing we *can* generalize between the two is often what you might guess will work best is dead wrong, and only experience shows what actually works.

Abraham Lincoln once said "It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." I think that perhaps you could do very well to listen to his advice.

is that your way of saying i'm old? keep in mind that you are pretty much the same age as i am ;)

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Originally Posted by boyfunk

Basschick in particular has been working in this field since you were in junior high school

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Nah you are just a spring chicken, now me on the other hand, I am an old rooster but still got my tail feathers.. :honest:

As to fonts, i'd still play it safe as everyone has stated, you just can't know for certain. Text is valuable for its importance to convey a sense of personality to a site that a picture just can't do. It is valuable for search engine optimization and it is a valuable marketing tool, that mere images just can't do on their own.

:coffee:

Haha. BassChick is a class act. Remember me from the old AVSFriendly. I think our last talk was about Mansites. Hehehe.

I remember a post BassChick made about a year ago. She made a remark as to why webmasters were submitting older men galleries to twink TGP's. Hehehe. That was me doing that. The reason I did that was simple. - TGP's jerk the surfer around so much that someone looking for older guys may goto a MenOver30 Tgp and get a link that shows a pic of a hot older guy and hit a twink tgp. If I got the only older man link there. Then I may get a sale. Surfers are afraid of the back button, remember.

So what does this have to do w/ text? EXPERIMENT!

Gay surfers read. I find Tahoma a very good font for text. Easy to read, looks nive. You want a serif font for the body. People may differ but serif works for me. And thinking outside the box, the most successful Ebay auctions are ones I use Tahoma. Arial get hards to read with a lot of text, and a little bold in Tahoma here and there seems to look nice, IMHO (which may not mean much).

Anyways, BassChick I wanna connect with you again soon babe. :)

abostonboy

hey, abostonboy - great to see you! you still hanging with penny and the gang? i sort of lost track when i started shooting content but i gotta go say hi.

btw, does bostonboyz accept paid listings?

let's talk soon :)

Basschick,

Bostonboyz is on life support. LOL. It actually makes decent money as the traffic is ok.

I am rewriting everything from scratch in PHP myself.

Let me know what you want. I will put something up for you for Free for a month.

And NO! I do not hang with Penny and gang. Lots of echoes over there.

I am just getting back in biz. Been playing poker 80+ a week and my back is killing me, even though I won a few tournies and did all right in the cash games.

:)

welcome back to the biz - it's good to see you around. you were always a person who made sense - we need a few like that to help the rest of us stay grounded ;)

i have a non nude paysite www.manofmuscle.com and i'm always looking for new places to post it. that's why i asked about paid spots. we have an affiliate program, new hosted galleries are going up this week and a second tour is coming early early june.

i've been BUSY - we're shooting two new muscle guys this week, one pro-am and the other an underwear model :)

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Originally Posted by abostonboy

Basschick,

Bostonboyz is on life support. LOL. It actually makes decent money as the traffic is ok.

I am rewriting everything from scratch in PHP myself.

Let me know what you want. I will put something up for you for Free for a month.

And NO! I do not hang with Penny and gang. Lots of echoes over there.

I am just getting back in biz. Been playing poker 80+ a week and my back is killing me, even though I won a few tournies and did all right in the cash games.

:)

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Originally Posted by basschick

is that your way of saying i'm old? keep in mind that you are pretty much the same age as i am ;)

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I've figured out that I (and you) are probably among the older folks in the biz... over at GFY there was a "how old are you" poll, and it was something like 18-24, 25-30, 30-40, and "already dead" and I've noticed that a LOT of the webmasters at the shows seem to be in their 20s or 30s. Needless to say, I fit into the "already dead" category :)

And my point wasn't that you're old, but that you've been working in this business a really long time... I was in a completely different field in 1996, and didn't really start start working in this field until 2003, so even though I'm ancient, I'm a bit of a babe in arms as far as traffic and marketing for adult.

Basschick,

I always made sense. Damn! I tried my best to make trouble. I know I got CompDoc fuming a few times. Hehehehe.

I have been around since 1999, so I guess I am an old timer. Hahahaha.