It was me who pushed for this particular body font. We’re using the same font family as we use on our new web site for headings etc. (Work Sans) but this is a poor font for large amounts of body text, and common sans serif fonts like Helvetica don’t pair especially comfortably with Work Sans, so I proposed that we should use a serif text. Bitter, the family we use, is designed for use on screens and the web and has a good balance between its width and its x-height, and nicely differentiated letter forms.
However, we know that the bold version of the Bitter font doesn’t render particularly well in some browsers on Windows, in particular Firefox. This is something we are looking into. However, the regular weight (which this text, for example, is using) seems to render absolutely fine for me on Windows in every browser I’ve tried.
I am also open to other suggestions for attractive, readable serif fonts that are available for use via Google Fonts, pair nicely with Work Sans, have a variety of styles available, and which render acceptably on Windows.