Consistency is a golden-rule in design. To provide a quality experience to your users it is essential that you are consistent in both design and content of your websites. Consistency is the biggest factor that separates a negative experience from a positive one.
Consistency
1. Logical coherence and accordance.
2. A harmonious uniformity or agreement among things or parts.
Think of it like this: You’re at home in your kitchen and you’ve just prepared a meal. You open your cutlery drawer to collect a knife and fork and you begin to enjoy your meal. It didn’t take you hours to find your cutlery because you instinctively knew exactly where it would be. The cutlery was in the same place as it was last week, and the week before that, and the week before that. You managed to quickly complete this task, almost subconsciously, because it was a consistent design experience.
The same instinctive user-experience should be apparent on your website too. It’s important to remember though, just because you know where your content is, doesn’t necessarily mean everyone else knows. A consistent website is familiar for users and therefore easily navigable. Users should be able to find the information that they’re searching for effortlessly.
Where should you be consistent?
Elements
Web elements are the building blocks essentials for a website. Patterns including, header, footer, sidebar, and navigation bar. Web elements are the core framework of your website and they should be kept in the same place to ensure a consistent user experience. Usability of your website should be logical and this can be accomplished with consistency.
Design
The visual design of your website should be consistent. Users become familiar with the small details of your site. They’ll associate a specific color as your “link color”, they’ll come to recognize the typeface of your body copy, etc.
Therefore, being consistent with the small details will not only contribute to a great-looking design, but it’ll also provide a more familiar experience for users.
The picture above illustrates this point perfectly. Using three different typefaces in one part of your site is not only confusing to the user, it’s incorrect design practice. There’s nothing wrong with experimentation but keep it coherent with the rest of the design.
Read the full article at: digitalcommunications
