Before you invest in font loading

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. Before you spend anything on font loading, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Speed is a feature people notice only in its absence, and then they leave rather than complain. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• Custom fonts commonly block the first paint
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

Where it usually goes wrong

Self-hosting removes a third-party round trip. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

A sensible fallback prevents invisible text. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

What this looks like day to day

Real-world numbers from actual visitors matter more than a score produced on a fast laptop. Three things worth confirming about font loading before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• A sensible fallback prevents invisible text — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.