The document discusses the importance of consistency in website design. Consistent branding and layout across a website creates familiarity for visitors and reinforces the brand identity, making it easier for visitors to navigate. While some flexibility is allowed, like different layouts for product and article pages, key elements like the navigation menu, search, and newsletter sign-up should remain in the same position on all pages. Maintaining consistency lowers development costs and helps keep visitors on the site longer to increase things like ad revenue and lead conversion.

1. CONSISTENT
WEB DESIGN
They say that “familiarity
breeds contempt”, but
we are going to show
how consistency and
familiarity will lead to
your website enjoying
increased visitors, more
page views and more
sales.
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2. A REAL-WORLD
ANALOGY
Imagine if each store in a chain had different branding or different colorschemes, furnishings or floor layouts. This would not lend itself to
building brand identity or loyalty - and the same can be said about a
lack of consistency in your website's design.
Analogies between the
real world and websites
are rarely useful, but in
making the case for
consistency in website
design value can be
gained from comparing,
as an example, an
ecommerce website with
a “bricks and mortar”
chain of stores.
For the purposes of this article, the term “website design” refers to the branding and
layout of pages of your website.
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3. BRANDING
CONSISTENCY
Your website design
should emulate your
organization's existing
branding guidelines,
including your logo,
color-scheme, spacing
between elements on the
page, font styles and
size, icon style and size,
image styles and form
styles.
These should be consistent across your website - a lack of branding
consistency immediately portrays your organization as being
unprofessional. Consistent branding creates a unified feel, which not
only tells your visitors that they are still browsing your website, but also
re-enforces your brand identity by repeatedly exposing your visitors to
it.
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4. LAYOUT
CONSISTENCY
The layout of your
website includes the
positioning of your text
content, headings,
images, navigation
menus, search box,
newsletter sign-up box
and other elements. It is
important that some of
these elements be the
same on every page of
your website.
If your website's navigation menu is poorly designed to start with, then
consistency is not going to help. Your website should be organized in a
hierarchical structure that provides feedback to the user as to where
they are on your website by highlighting their position on your
navigation menu, using “breadcrumbs” and changing hyperlink styles or
colors for visited links.
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5. LAYOUT
CONSISTENCY
Since every website is different, website visitors have to familiarize
themselves with the layout and navigation structure of your website in
order to use it - and consistency in your website's navigation structure
means that they will have to do this only once.
If your website's
navigation already
allows your visitors to
quickly find the
information they want
then you should
maintain this ease-ofuse throughout your
website.
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6. LAYOUT
CONSISTENCY
Other elements of
your website's layout
that should be
consistent throughout
your website include
your search box and
newsletter sign-up
box.
There is, however, room to be a little more flexible in the layout of the
rest of your web pages. For example, it stands to reason that your
product pages will have a different layout to your article or “About Us”
pages, but be sure to be consistent with the branding of these different
layouts.
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7. EXCEPTIONS TO THE
RULE
Even in these cases, however, there is enough consistency that website
visitors know that they have not left the website in question and know
where they are in the overall website structure.
Websites with few pages
should usually be
consistent throughout.
But other websites are
so large, and cater to so
many interests, that it
makes sense to use
various layouts across
their website.
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8. OUR
CONCLUSION
Depending on your goals, you will increase ad revenue or convert more
visitors to leads. But it doesn't end there - a website with consistent
design elements will require less time for your website developer, and
subsequently save you money.
As we have seen,
websites designed
with consistent
branding and layout
will keep their visitors
for longer. The
business case for
consistency in your
website's design is
clear.
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