email
An informal 2001 study by Ralph Wilson in his Doctor Ebiz
newsletter suggests that the 'killer-app' in HTML email
messages is the font choice. Wilson believed that most
clients of his e-commerce services use use email programs
that are HTML compatible. He surveyed which fonts and
font sizes were the most readable.
Wilson's initial email contained the same text in 12 point
Times New Roman and Arial, assuming that Times New Roman
as a serif font would be preferred over the sans-serif
Arial. He claims that 1,123 of 1,643 recipients preferred
12pt Arial to 12pt Times New Roman, contrary to conventional
wisdom that readers choose serif over sans serif.
In a further test responses to Times New Roman were compared
with those to the serif Georgia, an 'online' font created
by Microsoft for greater legibility. 52% of respondents
preferred Georgia, 33% chose Times New Roman and 15% supposedly
couldn't tell the difference.
One reason, according to Wilson, is that those users did
not have the Georgia font installed. As we've noted elsewhere,
that's grounds for caution in using HTML rather than plain
text email, along with uncertainty about how different
machines lay out a HTML message and recipient unhappiness
with fatter email files.
Perhaps sensing that he was onto a good promo opportunity,
Wilson then compared two sans serif fonts: 12pt Arial
and 12pt Verdana (this page is 'optimised' for Verdana).
53% of his respondents preferred Arial, 43% preferred
Arial and 4% couldn't tell. As font sizes became smaller
(10pt and 9pt) users shifted to Verdana but some thought
that they were simply too small to be read easily.
His conclusions, contraverted by some accessibility
studies but consistent with others, are that his readers
prefer sans serif fonts for body text, that there isn't
a sufficient user base among his market to justify using
Georgia and that 12pt Arial is the best option for his
HTML messages.
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