The choice of content font may seem like one of the more mundane aspects of creating a successful Shopify store.
Often overlooked, typography in general and fonts in particular have a major influence on visitors’ impressions, perceptions, expectations, navigation, accessibility and overall experience.
Fonts have evocative power that shape emotion, identity and memories. Various studies have confirmed the connection between font and user experience including one by the University of Wichita that showed font type could significantly amplify brand recognition.
They are more than just a random aesthetic choice and can affect a store’s conversion and bounce rates.
Top Fonts to Elevate Your Shopify Store in 2024
We take a look at the best Shopify fonts and explain why each can provide an important advantage for stores that use it and mention the fonts they are best paired with.
1. Montserrat
Named after a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Montserrat font’s soft edges evoke stability and memorability in a contemporary minimalist style. It’s a straightforward geometric sans-serif font but one with a strong character that reinforces virtually any Shopify store’s design theme.
As at December 2023, Montserrat is ranked fifth by number of views among the over 1,500 open source fonts tracked by Google Font.
Despite its versatility though, not many Shopify stores use Montserrat throughout their site. Instead, it is most popular in menus, buttons, call-to-action and header text. It is often paired with the Roboto font family or Helvetica.
2. Poppins
Released in 2014, Poppins is a sans-serif font that ranks 8th among Google Font’s most served. This success is not accidental – Poppins was created with user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) in mind.
It does not stand out as a memorable or unique font but it does sit well in roles where functionality is preferred over bells and whistles.
Round and friendly, Poppins can be used for everything from headers and footers, to body and captions. This makes it the best option for designers that want to use a single font on the entire website. Nevertheless, it may be combined with Inconsolata, Gotham, Gravitas, Lora or Playfair Display fonts.
3. Lato
Developed by a Polish designer, ‘lato’ means ‘summer’ in Polish. True to its name, the font is intended to be clean, legible, soft and easy on the eyes. Released in 2015, Lato quickly shot to fame and by 2018, was the third most served font in Google Fonts, a position it holds as at December 2023. It is versatile and can be applied to headings, subheadings and body text.
Lato is usually paired with Roboto (Regular, Slab or Condensed), Georgia, Ubuntu or Proxima Nova.
4. Open Sans
A sans serif typeface commissioned by Google and released in 2011, Open Sans has a distinct characteristic that balances appealing aesthetics with an official feel.
Inspired by Droid Sans (considered its predecessor), it is popular in technology and gadget stores. Open Sans is the second most served open source font in Google Fonts.
Part of its allure is the power to ensure readability even where font sizes used are unusually small. That way, one can squeeze important information into product pages, product descriptions and product manuals.
This makes Open Sans especially suitable for stores where a store anticipates that the overwhelming majority of visitors will be accessing the site using a mobile device.
Open Sans is often paired with Montserrat, Lato, Helvetica, Source Sans 3, Georgia or Bitter fonts.
5. Roboto (also Roboto Regular)
Commissioned by Google and rolled out in 2011, Roboto is a simple versatile web-specific sans-serif font designed to improve readability and maximize the visitor experience and by appropriately balancing the spaces between letters. This has led to its heavy usage for large bodies of text and mobile-first platforms.
While it is a relatively recent font, Roboto is by far the most served open source font in Google Fonts. It is the default system font on a raft of Google products and services such as Android OS, YouTube, Google Images, Google Maps and Google Play.
In fact, in some circles, it is considered so overused that it does not add much to a website’s brand identity.
Still, its popularity among some of the largest ecommerce stores does allude to its continued ability to boost familiarity, navigability and content readability.
Roboto has spurred a number of font variations with the most popular being Roboto Condensed, Roboto Mono, Roboto Slab, Roboto Flex and Roboto Serif.
Roboto is regularly paired with Montserrat, Nunito or Lora fonts.
6. Futura
Futura is one of the older sans-serif fonts on this list with a history going back to 1920s Germany. Despite its decades of use and the availability of far more options than there were in its early days, Futura remains widely sought after.
Futura is however not free – this licensing barrier has seen the emergence of several closely resembling open source fonts, the most popular being Nunito which is ranked 20th on Google Font’s views ranking.
Futura’s precise proportions and geometric design makes it visually appealing and timelessly modern-looking. It has good readability on both small and large font sizes, a flexibility that would be well-suited for mobile-first online stores.
Futura is usually paired with Opens Sans, Lato, Garamond or Trade Gothic fonts.
7. Helvetica
In use since the 1950s, Helvetica remains a modern yet simplistic sans-serif font that primarily emphasizes a theme as opposed to making a statement of its own.
This makes it ideal for stores that want to balance their otherwise bold risky choices in store design by adopting a font that is unlikely to ruffle feathers. Such risky design decisions may include unusual color contrasts or layouts.
Over the years, many of the largest organizations have used Helvetica for everything from their marketing materials to logos. It is why a sizable proportion of graphic designers opt for Helvetica for their first projects. Widely recognizable, it gives store visitors a sense of familiarity allowing them to focus on the content.
Graphic designers will often pair Helvetica with Arial or Crimson fonts.
8. Lora
Non-curvy fonts are what most Shopify stores will lean toward. They are considered more professional and formal. There will be times where curvy fonts will be the better bet such as luxury and fashion ecommerce stores. Where that happens, Lora, a serif font, could be just the right one. It ranks 18th by number of views according to Google Fonts analytics.
Lora’s mild appearance featuring gently-brushed curves provides a good mix of readability and visual appeal. It has a striking similarity to popular fonts such as Times New Roman and Georgia. Nevertheless, Lora is rarely used on its own. Most times, it's limited to titles and headings. Lora is typically paired with Lato, Roboto, Nunito and Merriweather for body text.
9. Playfair Display
Playfair Display is a distinctive and elegant serif font that is ideal for crafting sophisticated titles and headings. It draws inspiration from classic 18th century typefaces found in old books and documents.
Playfair Display is often used on invitation and event cards online or offline so would probably do well on online stores inclined toward the event and high-end luxury industry.
It is ranked 19th on Google Fonts views ranking. Playfair Display is best combined with Poppins, Playfair and Playfair Display SC fonts.
10. Source Sans 3
Designed for Adobe Systems as its first open source font, Source Sans 3 (previously known as Source Sans Pro) is a sans-serif font that works well for user interfaces. It has a modern and clean appearance that provides good readability across diverse print and digital media.
Source Sans Pro is best paired with Open Sans or Source Serif Pro fonts.
Wrapping Up
Fonts are at the heart of all digital text but their ubiquity ironically almost renders them invisible as a store design consideration. Yet, fonts craft emotions, dictate actions and sear in memories.
With some of the world’s largest corporations paying great attention to the fonts they use, it’s clear that this should be up there with the most important decisions for a Shopify store.
The fonts covered here can provide important design leverage and eventually become the difference between lasting engagement and fleeting visits.
To determine the best suited font(s) for your store, the most important factors to take into consideration are the store’s brand, mission, vision, theme, mood, intent, target market and performance requirements.
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