The first thing a designer learns is the need to be consistent in web design. And despite the fact that it is a core tenant of good design, consistency can be difficult to obtain. Whether that is due to the scale of the project or other stakeholders wanting to have their say, entropy is a law for a reason.
So, today In this post, we will take a look at some steps you can take to make sure your website has a consistent design. We will learn how can you ensure that your website stays visually consistent.
The Definition of Design Consistency
So, let’s start our topic of how can you ensure that your website stays visually consistent by defining what exactly design consistency is. Visual or design consistency means across your website:
- All the logos and images are displayed in the same way
- Your website text colors, styles, and fonts are used in the same way
- You have made sure that similar kinds of content are laid out in similar ways
- All headers and footers are the same.
All in all web design consistency is the act of keeping all of the repeating elements of your website the same throughout the entire site. This sums up everything from the placement of buttons and icons to the colors and fonts you use.
Benefits of Design Consistency? Why Do You Need It?
To put it briefly, the user experience improves when you use consistency in your design.
Consistent design is intuitive design. Having similar capacities, images, and animations all through your site will help with the user experience and learnability of your site. At the point when your design is reliable people can move past information, they had about your site to different pages. Try not to underrate the significance of this. Have you at any point been disappointed by a site? Odds are good that it was planned with unfortunate consistency.
On the off chance that a site is planned with consistency, the client will learn things about the site without acknowledging it. Imagine your site is the house you live in. You feel comfortable around the house without mulling over everything. Whenever a visitor approaches your home the format can be somewhat confounding for them. The occupation of an originator is to be all around as reliable as conceivable to try not to confound the visitor.
There are three major elements of design consistency that need to be focused on to avoid confusion for your guest.
1. Visual Consistency
Elements of your site that are seen the same way make up visual consistency. It helps the users with learning the site. Textual styles, buttons, photographs, and tones are only a couple of the numerous components of visual consistency. These components need to remain something very similar all through your site. Visual consistency is lost as soon one of these components doesn’t stay predictable all through your site.
2. Functional Consistency
Functional consistency comes down to things being unsurprising for the client. Having great useful consistency will immeasurably work on the ease of use of your site. The consistency that accompanies practical consistency will cause the client to feel more open to exploring your site.
An example of this would be where route buttons are found. Is it safe to say that they are situated in reliable puts all through the pages on your site? Assuming they are, you’re accomplishing functional consistency!
3. Internal Consistency
Internal consistency is the combination of both functional and visual consistency. As you keep on adding content to your site you really want to ensure the visual and useful components stay reliable with past pages. An illustration of awful inside consistency would refresh visual components on a page on your site without likewise refreshing past pages that contain equivalent older components.
If you achieve these three elements of design consistency it will result in a better site where the users will have a more enjoyable experience.
How Can you Ensure That Your Website Stays Visually Consistent?
So, hopefully, now you know more than enough about design consistency. So let’s see how you can make sure that you have web design consistency across your website.
- Create a style guide. Make it a rule that if anyone wants to edit anything on your page they need to follow the style guide. The style guide will be applied to the whole website.
- Never ever copy and paste anything directly into your site. Not from an email, a Word document, another web page, anywhere.
- If you do have to paste anything, make sure you strip hidden formats.
- If you’re on Windows you can use Notepad for this job. If you’re on Mac, use TextEdit
- Use styles consistently site-wide and always strip formats off before you paste.
- Pay attention to the spacing between rows of text, and between paragraphs, and keep it consistent.
In order to make sure your website has visual consistency, you might need to change a few of your habits and find new ways to do old tasks. But when you have a website that is clean and professional you will realize that hard work is worth it.
Make Sure Your Website is Visually Consistent
Nobody is perfect when it comes to design consistency, but it’s important to strive for it. Design your website with your user in mind. Know who your audience is and make sure your site expects their requirements. Combine this information with design consistency and you will have a site that has no undesirable astonishments and gives the client an extraordinary experience.