Three myths about font loading

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. A few things about font loading that get repeated more often than they get checked.

Real-world numbers from actual visitors matter more than a score produced on a fast laptop. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

“It only matters for big sites”

Custom fonts commonly block the first paint. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one.

“Our platform handles it”

A sensible fallback prevents invisible text. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

What this looks like day to day

Performance work is mostly subtraction, which makes it unpopular and effective. 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 any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.