Why is Consistency Key When it Comes to Website Design?
The Importance of Website Design Consistency
Your website is your online salesperson - a well-designed website is crucial for any business, regardless of size or industry. In order to make great first impressions, it’s important to maintain consistent design elements throughout your site.
This means continuously using the same fonts, colours, and similar layouts on pages. Spending time to create a cohesive look for your website will allow you to improve user experience, SEO, and brand recognition also. Continue reading to learn how to maintain consistent website design and more benefits of consistency.
How to Maintain Consistent Website Design
Common elements - Keep your CTAs, input fields, headers, and sub-headers consistent throughout your website. Things do not have to be direct copies of each other, but similar enough layouts and designs can ensure your website has strong consistency throughout.
Colour Schemes - Define the colour palette for your business or website and stick to this throughout the website. Using different colours can help people differentiate elements of the page, while also being able to recognise the brand throughout.
Size and spacing - Keeping headings, subheadings, images, and other page elements the same sizing throughout your site can aid in website design cohesiveness, alongside looking more professional.
Headers - Maintaining consistency with the header and footer of your website will help to ‘frame’ your pages professionally. Headers and footers do not have to be boring, but framing your site is important to assist the user experience of the site.
The Benefits of Having Consistent Website Design
Brand Identity - Memorability Using the same range of fonts throughout your website, along with the same brand colours, and tone of voice throughout your website can help to create a sense of brand identity and memorability. Your prospects will appreciate the cohesiveness of the site and may be more willing to trust your company as an established business. Organised design on your website will mirror your business values.
Navigation - Navigation remaining consistent throughout the website encourages users to return time and time again, without fear of getting lost. Navigation becomes the roadmap of your website, branching off into different key information and areas. Presenting this clearly and consistently across your website will guarantee users can move from page to page with ease.
This does not, however, mean your navigation options have to be plain and uninteresting - you can still get creative with this, but layout and position are the key factors recommended to remain the same.
Leading on from navigation - Search Rankings - To improve SEO, you should ensure that your website is easy for search engines to crawl and index. The most important thing in this respect is consistent navigation bars across all pages of the site, as well as back-links from third-party websites that point toward yours - increasing your brand's authority in the industry.
Build trust with your business - Build trust with your prospects or visitors through a consistent and reliable website design. As mentioned, if your website is clear and organised, it can give a great first impression of how your business functions.
A well-designed website can arguably represent your attention and care to detail - depending on the purpose. If cohesive branding is implemented even in the smallest of areas/details, it can impress those who pay attention. Alternatively, if there were even the smallest of elements that don’t align with the brand guidelines, it’ll more than likely stick out like a sore thumb, and bring users' attention in the wrong way.
Device Consistency - Mobile traffic now accounts for over 50% of all web traffic, so it’s more important than ever that websites are designed to look good on a variety of devices. One benefit of having a cohesive website design is that it looks the same on various devices, whether it’s a mobile phone, tablet, or desktop computer. This gives your website a polished, professional look that will help to build trust with visitors. In addition, cohesive website design makes it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for, regardless of which device they’re using. This can help to increase conversion rates and encourage repeat visits. So, if you want your website to look its best on all devices, make sure to create a cohesive design.
Your website is your online salesperson, boost your bottom line with a consistent and cohesive website design that is easy to navigate through, trustworthy, and recognisable to your brand. If you’d like to learn more about website design and online marketing, check out our other blogs! |