Designing stunning websites for companies and businesses is an incredibly visual process. The imagery, text, colours, animation, icons and layout, each need to be provide a cohesive overview of your company branding and persona. And by working together, these visual elements can create a visually attractive, and effective website. Here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are leading web design professionals. And we work with companies and clients across Manchester, and the North West, to deliver high quality, professional websites, with an emphasis on the visual experience. As a result, we have produced this guide to visual consistency in web design.
Visual consistency in web design
Consistency is key to a well designed website. Each element of web design needs to complement, or pair well, with the others. So that the overall result can be effective.
But it’s not just about the visual appearance. Cohesive and consistent visuals are also extremely important for the user experience. A website with too many colours, random animations, and mismatched icons can be confusing for your potential customers. And it also gives the impression of an unprofessional company. Which makes it much more difficult for customers to concentrate on signing up, or purchasing from your website. As a result, you will lose out on conversions.
So how can you ensure visual consistency in web design? Well, there are some key visual factors to concentrate on. And these include:
- imagery
- text
- colours
- animation
- icons
Imagery
The style of your imagery needs to remain consistent throughout your website. And this style needs to also reflect your branding. So if your company is fun, playful and not too serious, you can have a lot of fun with more relaxed imagery, and even illustrations. But if your company is all about the serious, you need serious imagery to complement this. Whichever side of the fence you fall on, make sure you use original imagery that is professional quality to give the best impression of your business. And only use imagery that is consistent with your chosen style.
Colours
Colour consistency is essential for good web design. You need to make sure your colours are suitable for what you need to achieve. And what kind of image you want to portray to your potential customers. If you choose three colours for your website, you need to use these colours consistently, for primary, secondary and tertiary purposes, across your website. Otherwise, switching these colours can be distracting and off-putting, for your users.
Animation
Animation in web design can be a fantastic tool to encourage interaction and direct user attention. But there are certain animation rules that you need to agree on, and use, on all pieces of animation. This includes:
- the speed of the animation
- the angles of the animation
- the timing of the animation
This is because, uniform animation that responds the same way across your website, is much more effective at helping users to understand the purpose of the movements, and know what to expect. This results in more interactions, and potentially, more conversions.
Icons
Finally, when creating visual consistency in web design you need to make sure your icons are consistent with one another. This means that your icons, on all pages, need to be the same size, design, and style. This helps create a positive effect, and makes it easier for users to compartmentalize these icons, and what to expect from them.
For more information or for professional web design support, get in touch with the professionals today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.