Just found this study by Alyson L Hill (Department of Psychology, Stephen F. Austin State University) about the readability of websites with various foreground/background color combinations, font types and word styles . The study is kind of old [about 10 years], but the results are surprising:
“Surprisingly, black on medium gray (x=15215.21) and black on dark gray (x=16088.70) had significantly faster RT’s[i.e. best readability] than black on white (x=17176.3; F (4,80)=3.37, p<.01). Plain word style (x=16052.53) was still significantly faster than italicized (x=17025.69; F (1,20)=5.22, p<.03), and unlike before, there was no significant difference between the two fonts.”
I am not sure if these results can still be used, but it is kind of interesting so see that webanalytics books and guides never really digg into font types, color combinations….
How cool would it be if one of the 200 webanalytics solutions could “analyze” the font size and foreground/background color?
I kind of never thought of this in a deeper sense, b/c this topic is kind of not included in any webanalytics guide.
