Not being consistent

If your website has inconsistencies it can give your visitor a poor experience, make browsing more difficult, and reflect negatively on you and your business. All of which can be bad for sales, or unhelpful for your audience and customers.

Your business may be varied in its services/products, or target audiences, but you should still aim for basic consistency throughout the website.

I’m referring mainly to: navigation; page layouts; styles; design.

A lot of this is dealt with of course already with sites built using a CMS, such as WordPress and a WordPress Theme. But beyond that, some sites still get added to and further developed in ways that can become confusing or off-putting for the visitor, due to inconsistencies.

In general, all you need is to make sure you have:

– Consistent navigation. No matter how many sections and areas you have, keep the menus – and navigation within pages – looking the same, and in the same place throughout. Visitors who get lost can just give up and leave.

– Consistent page layouts. Keep the elements of your pages laid out with a clear, consistent visual hierarchy. It’s fine to have a different layout on your home page or special pages where it makes sense, as long as the basic branding, structure, and navigation are still in place, to make it clear to the visitor that they’re still on the same website.

– Consistent styles and design. Fonts/typography, the way images are presented, colour schemes, the way your menus look and work, all graphic elements etc. should be kept of course on-brand, and done in the same way throughout.

Consistency in other ways is recommended too. For example, consistent updates to your blog – or beyond your website, consistency with your newsletter…

Inconsistency on your website can undermine trust in your brand by confusing, or putting doubt in your customers’ and prospects’ minds.