Fonts may not seem like a big deal, but they can have a surprisingly large effect on website speed. Since they are loaded across much of your site, heavy font files or too many font variations can slow things down more than you might expect.
The good news is that font optimization is often a quick win. Once you understand the basics, it is not especially difficult, and it can reduce unnecessary page weight without changing the overall look of your website.
Use the Right Font Format
One of the easiest improvements is using the right font file type.
Many people start with TTF because it is a common format, but it is usually not the best choice for website performance. For the web, WOFF2 is generally the best option because it offers much smaller file sizes. WOFF is also useful as a fallback. TTF can still be kept as a last fallback if needed, but it should not be your main format.
This way, modern browsers load the smallest version first, while older browsers still have something they can use.
To remedy the situation you can turn your massive TTF fonts into the lightweight and web-friendly font types WOFF and WOFF2. All you have to do is convert them using a free font converter. You can just search for them on the web. Here are two:
Converting a font from TTF to WOFF will reduce the font size immensely; converting it to WOFF2 will make it even smaller.
Here’s a screenshot from the popular Poppins font that has been converted from TTF to WOFF and WOFF2.
A font file that starts out at almost 160 KB can often be reduced dramatically just by converting it into more web-friendly formats.
But you might be wondering, why did we convert it to WOFF and WOFF2 if WOFF2 is the smallest and should be used all the time?
Why Use More Than One Format?
A fair question is: if WOFF2 is the smallest, why not just use that and forget the rest?
Well, this is because not all browsers support the WOFF2 format yet.
The reason is browser support. WOFF2 is very well supported today, but fallbacks are still a sensible idea in some cases. By loading WOFF2 first and then WOFF as a backup, you get the best balance between performance and compatibility.
For most websites, WOFF2 and WOFF are enough.
But wait! There’s more…
Reduce the Font Size Even Further
There is another way to make fonts smaller: remove the characters you do not actually need.
Many fonts include large character sets, multiple languages, symbols, and extra glyphs. That is useful in some cases, but many websites only need a small part of that full set. If your site only uses English, for example, there is usually no need to load a font file packed with extra character ranges you will never use.
This process is called subsetting. It means creating a smaller version of the font that only includes the characters your site actually needs.
Now, there’s an easy way to do that and then a not-so-easy way.
Let’s start with the harder one first.
To remove unnecessary characters from a font, you need to get a font editor called FontForge. You open your font inside FontForge and then remove every character you do not need. This can be time-consuming if you’re unfamiliar with the program but will guarantee that your font will have exactly the characters you need on your site.
Now to the easy way…
Let us introduce the Webfont Generator of FontSquirrel. All you have to do is upload your fonts, change some settings, and download the font with the unnecessary characters removed. Fast and effective!
Here are the settings we changed:
Be sure to set it on the expert settings.
Font Formats: WOFF2, WOFF, TTF (to optimize all of them).
Subsetting: Custom Subsetting… (choose the languages you use on your site)
Language: English
Agreement: Yes,…
Here’s the final result:
We went from a 160kb TTF file to a 23kb TTF and an 11kb WOFF2!
And this is it for the optimization part.
Now that you have the correct file type and size, what else should you know?
Do Not Load Too Many Font Weights
Another common mistake is using too many font weights.
Font weights are the different thicknesses of a typeface, such as 300, 400, 600, or 700. The important thing to understand is that each weight is often a separate file. So if you use one font in three different weights, you may be loading three font files instead of one.
That adds up quickly.
For most websites, you do not need a large range of weights. In many cases, one regular weight and one bold weight are enough. Sometimes even that is more than necessary.
As a practical rule, try to keep the total number of font files low. For many websites, two or three files in total is already enough for a clean and consistent design.
Get More Out of Fewer Files
Before adding more weights, ask whether you really need them.
Often, you can create enough contrast with font size, spacing, and normal bold styling in CSS instead of loading another font file. That gives you more flexibility without adding extra weight to the page.
For example, if your body text uses a regular weight, your headings may not need a separate font file if standard bold styling already gives you enough emphasis.
This is one of the simplest ways to keep typography looking good without making the site heavier than it needs to be.
Pro tip: Every extra font weight can mean another file your visitors have to download. Fewer font files usually means a faster site.
Keep Things Simple
Font optimization is not just about file size. It is also about making sensible design choices.
Using fewer fonts and fewer weights usually helps performance, but it also often improves consistency across the website. Too many font variations can make a design feel busy and unfocused. A simpler font setup is usually easier to manage and easier for visitors to read.
That is why font optimization is one of those technical tasks that also supports better user experience.
In Conclusion
Optimizing fonts is one of the easier ways to improve website speed without changing much visually.
The main steps are straightforward: use web-friendly formats like WOFF2, keep WOFF as a fallback, remove unnecessary characters where possible, and avoid loading more font weights than you really need.
Each change may seem small on its own, but together they can make your site lighter and faster. And for an online store, that is exactly the kind of improvement worth making.