In the visually-driven world of the internet, an appealing website design is crucial for capturing and retaining visitors' attention.
When it comes to conveying information effectively, many website owners resort to incorporating text directly into images.
While this may seem convenient at first glance, there are several compelling reasons why it's best to avoid this practice altogether.
In this blog post, we'll explore why you should refrain from including text in images on your website and highlight alternative approaches for optimizing your site's user experience.
When discussing the concept of avoiding text in images on websites, it's essential to clarify what we mean by "text in an image." To avoid any confusion, let's distinguish between using text on top of an image and incorporating text within the image itself.
Text on Top of Images: Placing text on top of an image, such as featuring a headline on a banner image or utilizing text overlays, is a common practice. It can be an effective way to convey a message and create visual impact. While there are instances where this approach works well, there are also instances where it can be less effective. It's crucial to evaluate the context and purpose of using text over an image to ensure its effectiveness.
Text within Image File: The focus of this discussion revolves around the practice of including text as part of the image itself, often created using graphic design tools like Canva or Photoshop. This involves creating a graphic where the text is an integral component, or using a picture of text as the primary element. In this case, the image is not merely a backdrop; it becomes an image of text, distinct from using text elements directly on the web page.
By understanding the difference between these two approaches, we can delve into the reasons why incorporating text within images should be reconsidered for website design. It's crucial to recognize the limitations and potential drawbacks that arise when text is integrated into images rather than being presented as separate, dynamic text elements on the webpage.
Search engines play a vital role in driving organic traffic to your website. However, search engines rely on text to index and understand your site's content.
By embedding text within images, you're essentially hiding valuable information from search engine crawlers. This can significantly impact your website's search engine rankings, making it harder for users to find your content.
Separating text from images allows search engines to properly index your textual content, improving your website's visibility and discoverability.
Straight from Google, in their developer guidelines:
“Don't embed important text inside images: Avoid embedding text in images, especially important text elements like page headings and menu items, because not all users can access them (and page translation tools won't work on images). To ensure maximum accessibility of your content, keep text in HTML, provide alt text for images.” (Google)
Accessibility is a critical aspect of web design, ensuring that all users, regardless of their abilities, can access and navigate a website.
When text is incorporated into images, it becomes inaccessible to individuals using screen readers or other assistive technologies.
These tools rely on textual information to convert it into audio or braille output, enabling visually impaired individuals to perceive and interact with web content.
By using actual text elements on your website, you ensure that everyone can consume your content without barriers.
A website's design should be responsive, adapting seamlessly to different devices and screen sizes.
By placing text within images, you limit your ability to adjust font sizes dynamically based on screen resolution or device type.
Consequently, users may experience difficulties in reading the text, especially on smaller screens. Separating text from images allows for greater flexibility in adjusting font sizes, ensuring optimal readability across various devices and screen dimensions.
In an increasingly globalised world, catering to a diverse audience is crucial for the success of your website.
Including text within images can pose challenges when it comes to localisation and multilingual support. Translating text embedded in images becomes a cumbersome task, requiring manual editing of image files for each language.
By separating text and using text elements on your website, you can easily translate and localize content without the need to modify image files, saving time and effort while maintaining consistency.
Websites are dynamic entities that require regular updates, whether it's refreshing content, fixing errors, or improving the user experience.
When text is embedded in images, any textual modifications necessitate recreating and reuploading the updated images.
This approach can be time-consuming, especially for larger websites with numerous images. By separating text from images, you can make text updates independently, allowing for faster and more efficient website maintenance.
While it may be tempting to include text within images on your website, doing so can have significant drawbacks.
By separating text from images and using text elements instead, you enhance search engine visibility, improve accessibility, facilitate responsive design, support multilingual content, and streamline website maintenance.
These practices ensure that your website remains user-friendly, accessible, and adaptable to the ever-changing digital landscape. So, remember, keep text separate, and let the power of text elements on your website shine through!