What Is Website Consistency?

Date First Published: 12th October 2022

Topic: Web Design & Development

Subtopic: Web Design

Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty Level: 3/10

Learn more about what website consistency is in this article.

In web design, consistency is the practice of ensuring that the design of webpages stays the same throughout the whole website. For example, parts of the main website design, such as the footer, favicon, navigation bar, logo, background, content boxes, fonts, colours, labels, fonts, headings, buttons, and other elements should be identical and repeated on each page. The whitespace around the main content of a website should also be equal in size on each page. However, some websites may intentionally break consistency to draw visitor's attention to certain elements, such as a subscribe button or an important piece of text.

Types Of Consistency

• Visual consistency - This is based on ensuring that elements or objects of a website remain consistent on each page. For example, when writing articles, the size and font of all of the headings, subheadings, and fonts should be identical on each page.
• Functional consistency - This is based on ensuring that the website functionality and behaviour is consistent on each page rather than the visual elements. For example, if a website had its logo in the top left corner and clicking on it returned the user to the homepage, that should also perform the same function on every other page.

Importance Of Consistency

Consistency is important for the following reasons:

• It makes a website more memorable and has a sense of identity. Ensuring that the design remains consistent on each page can help create a theme and identity of the website. Lots of different colours, favicons, fonts, and layouts can make a website less memorable as the site doesn't seem to have a chosen design.
• It makes a website look more professional. If the design of a website was consistent and organised, users will trust it more. An inconsistent design that looks messy will make a website look less than professional and it could lead to users getting wary of the business.
• It helps with navigation. It is very important the navigation of a page remains consistent on each page, such as the top navigation bar. If the navigation changes on certain pages, it is likely that users will get lost or confused.
• It can help communicate information. When placing information on a page by text, consistency is very important. If text is located at random places on the page and uses lots of different font sizes on different pages, users may get confused.
• It can help users get used to what different elements of a website perform. If the functionality of different elements was inconsistent (e.g. clicking on the logo in the top left corner took users to a different page when viewing other pages of a website), it could take users to places they were not expecting and would make a website look untrustworthy.