VolaVolaTypography is the single biggest differentiator between websites that look professional and those that do not. You can spend lakhs on a beautiful design and ruin it with bad font choices. Here are the typography mistakes we see most often on Indian startup websites, and how to fix them without a designer.
A common belief is that more variety equals more personality. The opposite is true. Most professional websites use two fonts at most: one for headings and one for body text. More than two fonts creates visual noise and signals a lack of design discipline to visitors who may not be able to articulate why something looks off.
Fix: Pick one heading font and one body font. If you want variety, use different weights and sizes of the same family rather than different typefaces.
Not all system fonts are bad. But using them without intention often produces a generic look. Many Indian startup websites default to whatever came with their WordPress theme without considering whether it matches their brand positioning.
Good free alternatives: Plus Jakarta Sans, Inter, DM Sans (modern, clean), Fraunces or Playfair Display (premium, editorial), Space Grotesk (tech-forward)
Line height (the space between lines of text) has a massive impact on readability. Too tight and text feels cramped. Too loose and it disconnects. Body text should typically be at 1.6-1.8x the font size. Heading text can be tighter at 1.1-1.3x. Most default theme settings are too tight for body text on Indian websites.
Gray text on white background feels modern. Light gray text on white background fails WCAG contrast minimums and is genuinely difficult to read, especially on mobile in sunlight, which is how a significant portion of Indian mobile users browse. Always check contrast with a tool before finalizing text colors.
Body text that looks fine at 16px on desktop becomes difficult to read at that size on a 5-inch phone screen. The minimum comfortable body text size for mobile is 16px. Headings often need to reduce significantly to avoid overflow on small screens. Many Indian websites have hero text that is 72px on desktop and pushes off the screen on mobile.
Centering short headings or labels is fine. Centering paragraphs makes them significantly harder to read. The eye has no consistent anchor point to return to at the start of each line. Left-aligned body text is almost always the right choice for readability.
When every element looks the same size and weight, visitors cannot quickly scan to find what matters. Good typography guides the eye: large and bold for primary messages, medium for section headings, regular weight for body, small for metadata. Without hierarchy, visitors have to work to understand your page, and most will not bother.
We will show you exactly what is hurting your credibility and what to fix first.
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