No Consistency

When a visitor comes into your site, you have about 5 seconds of time, during which they need to be able to figure out the purpose of your site and how to use it. If they click a link to another page, and have to figure that out all over again, you'll annoy them and they'll leave!

Consistency applies to the navigation, layout, colors, text formatting, and to the way you present information. Your site needs to have a "standard", by which you do things, so that your site visitors only have to figure out your way of doing things ONCE.

Use of a template for your site can really simplify the process of creating a consistent site, if the template includes everything necessary. A good site template will include navigation links, header or logo, copyright information, disclaimer, a layout that is logical for the entire site, and any other elements that you choose to include on every page (some people put contact info, and resource links on every page). It should also include predictable spaces for other items that may change from page to page, but for which space should be provided, such as ads, commentary, specific resource links, etc.

Beyond the template though, each page should have certain similarities in the content. The layout of the content should be easy to figure out and predictable from page to page. Text formatting should be consistent - Your page title and attention getters should be similar from one page to the next. If you use images for impact, they should be of a similar type and quality, to give your site a professional feel.

The content quality should also have some consistency - by that, I mean, if you provide highly detailed information on one page, then each topic needs to have the same level of detail. This draws in users to view more than one page - if they like what is on one page, they will expect the same quality on the next page they view, and since you never know which page they will enter into your site through, content quality is important for all of the pages.

It will also help if your site has consistent SEO - Search Engine Optimization should be performed to the same level on each page. There are times when it makes sense to go another step on one or two key pages, but other than that, you'll want to make sure that when you do SEO, you work your way through your site and optimize until the entire site is finished. Some SEO can be built into the template, but most must be done page by page.

There are situations where consistency takes on a different meaning. When you have a doorway page that leads to multiple site areas, and when each of those site areas has a visual difference, then your doorway page will be different than the interior pages. But the interior pages should be easy to figure out, and consistent within each section.

Sometimes your home page is quite different than the interior pages. It is wise to maintain enough consistency in appearance that the visitor has no doubt that they are at least still on the same site! The page layout may be different, but the feel, the quality, and the colors should have some relation to each other.

Inconsistent site design will scream "poor quality" to every visitor who enters your site, so making sure that the site has a predictable and uniform feel is very important. It is one of the elements which separates functional sites from dysfunctional ones.

Written by Laura Wheeler