October 1st, 2007 by James Omdahl
Today’s tip is a fairly straightforward one, but one that could increase your conversions, so pay attention. The tip is:
Centering text is lame.
Ok, maybe not all the time (using centering for titles and stuff could look OK), but most of the time centering text on your page:
- Makes the text harder to read
- Looks less professional
- Could cause people to click out of your page in search of something more readable.
When I first stared making websites, I too was a fan of centering…I’m not sure why but it seemed natural to me to center the text on the page. Luckily the professor teaching my Webmaster certification course gave us the following rule:
You should almost never center the text on your website.
To make the point, here’s an example of centered text I ran into this morning:
Spelling and grammar issues aside, reading this text would be a lot easier if it were left justified. Here’s a Photoshop mock up of what the page would look like with the text to the left:
Looks more professional, doesn’t it? Making this small change could have a noticeable impact on conversion…so if you are guilty of centering text, take the time to make some changes this week. It could make a noticeable difference to your bottom line.
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