Consistency In Web Design

The human mind continuously searches for patterns in everything that it sees everyday, striving to find the unified picture all together. If the mind can't find pattern in what it is looking for, it has a high tendency to look elsewhere.

When doing web design, it is important to design the website in a way that makes it easier, not harder for the mind to see the pattern. It must be clear to a visitor he is still at the same site. Take for example Brisbane Graphic Design, they are quite known for being on top of their game when it comes to quality work.

If objects with equivalent functions are assembled together, its function will be easily understood and remembered. When designing an interface, it is important that all similar tools utilized for navigation and accessing information must stay consistent. The webpage font, style, colour, layout, mouse over effects must also remain consistent. When the user clicks a link, he must recognize the connecting page is similar to the previous one, failing to do so can make the user confused and will prompt him to visit other sites.

If there are sound or animation utilized in navigation, the sound and animated effect should stay the same in all pages. For example, if an animation is turned on by clicking a flash button, it should be done the same way in the rest of the webpages.

One method of guaranteeing consistency is to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). By defining standard style properties in another document, it is possible to attain the same look and feel to all your webpages that use the same style sheet. A style sheet, for example, can be used to make the text on every page 12 pt Verdana, all headings (h1) orange.. etc . If the style of the site needs to be changed for any reason, only one document must be updated. Without style sheets, doing manual adjustments on every page is tedious and often result in mistakes and inconsistency.

A different way to promote site consistency is to use templates. A website template is a document that defines the structure of muliple pages in your site. For example, if the header and footer are standard across all pages in your site, they could be attached to the body of your document via an automated process, saving you time and typing errors. Many web editing software programs such as Dreamweaver provide templating function. Server-side technologies can also do the same job effortlessly.

Consistency is very important in website design since it makes the reader do less thinking. Time is money. Your reader wants to find the information he needs quickly. Inconsistency design only decelerates their surfing speed and make them lose interest in your site easily. If you can't handle the job, don't worry since Icreate Solutions will do the job for you.