Just Jolly Resources
Post Performance: Optimizing Your Text
Optimize text on your post to improve the visitor experience. Font types, effects, and formatting can impact your post's performance, so we recommend following our guidelines to ensure you can display important information without compromising on function.
Tip: Having meaningful text above the fold also ensures that visitors have content to read while the rest of the page loads.
Different types of fonts
There are a few font types that you can use across your post. Depending on the type and download requirements, they vary in how they affect your post's loading speed and performance. The three font types are:
System fonts: These are common fonts that most likely already exist on your device systems. As they are included in most systems, they do not need to be downloaded to appear on your devices, and therefore do not impact your post's performance.
Custom fonts: Custom fonts are fonts that you can add from any third party to use on your post. These fonts are a personal way to enrich your post experience, but they require to be pasted in the code format in the HTML field to appear in your visitor's browser. Therefore, these fonts can impact your post's performance.
To sum it up:
System fonts ultimately load faster than custom fonts, as they already exist in the system. This therefore saves bandwidth by reducing the number of requests needed to load your post.
Since system fonts have less of an impact on your post's speed, we recommend using them in place of custom fonts where possible.
Number of fonts
When using fonts across your post, it's important to keep in mind that having multiple different fonts and font types can impact the loading time and overall performance.
While system fonts do not require download or plug in, custom fonts need to be downloaded and plugged in from the server in order to be displayed on your page. Different custom fonts may also have different download speeds, which can further affect your post's loading time.
We recommend keeping the number of fonts (both system and custom) on your page at 3 and below, as this helps to keep your post running smoothly. Consistency in fonts (and colors) also helps to reinforce your content, and keep your post's look consistent.
Font formatting and animation
Different font weights, such as bold, underline, or italics, may also impact your post's loading time. Try to keep the number of font weights on a page at 3 or below by using them for specific purposes (i.e., highlighting an area of text on your page).
Additionally, animated text can have an impact on your text's readability and SEO. This is because animated text cannot be read by search engines. We recommend using regular text for meaningful content on your post, and avoiding overuse of reveal animations above the fold.
Images of text
Avoid images that contain text where possible. Image text may appear blurry while the image is loading, and cannot be translated or crawled by search engines. Ensure that you're using standard text where possible across your post to maintain your post performance and SEO ranking.
Tip: As an alternative, we recommend adding alt text to your images. This allows search engines and screen readers to "read" the description of the image.