Number 10 in a series

Hobgoblins

It is often misquoted that "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". The correct quotation is "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". There's a significant difference in meaning there. Consistency is not always foolish, and your web site is one of the places where it is far from foolish - in fact, in a web site, consistency is to be admired.

You've probably noticed that magazines and newspapers always "look the same" - the lead story is always in the same place, the arrangement of columns is the same, the typefaces used are always the same, and certain items, like the weather or the table of contents or the editorials, are always in the same place. That's because a familiar arrangement makes the publication more immediately recognizable and the reader more comfortable with the publication.

The same is true with a web site. If the visitor always knows where to find the various pieces of a page, and they always look the same, he can comfortably focus on the content - and the point of a web page is its content, remember? This is why features of web design programs like page templates or FrontPage's "themes" are so often used by small businesses making their first forays onto the web - they provide a consistent appearance with reduced effort on the part of the person building the site.

A consistent appearance to your web pages, with a standard layout and repeated elements like logos or title styles or button styles, also presents an image of professionalism - especially if they're low-key enough not to be distractions.

All this doesn't mean that all of the pages on your site need to be structured identically, always in the same colors, and so on - it's OK to have two or three different designs in a site, so long as each design is used consistently - one design for long articles, one for navigation pages (pages whose primary purpose is to provide links to other pages), one for summary information, and so on. Even when different designs are used, there should be some consistent elements in them, to provide a psychological link between the pages.