Some practical approaches to building more consistent and responsive user interfaces.
After reading this article you’ll know how to:
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Apply web design consistency principles
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Build a responsive application adapted to various devices
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Choose the typography and color schemes
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Stylize individual page components
Creating user interfaces is similar to painting and furnishing your apartment - not shall you only approach it by adding aesthetically appealing elements, but you also need to make them practically helpful and provide the best possible experience for yourself and your guests. Well-furnished rooms, a fully functional kitchen, and a proper choice of paint in interior design equal a nicely structured layout, responsive pages, appropriate color scheme and typography choice in web design.
What makes design consistent?
What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘consistency’? Cambridge Dictionary defines consistency as ‘the state or condition of always happening or behaving in the same way’. On the other hand, Merriam-Webster Dictionary states that consistency is ‘an agreement of harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole’. These statements are absolutely factual when it comes to the consistency of a user interface - a mixture of well-aligned components, content, and interactions on one hand, and tasteful fonts, color schemes, images, and icon styles on the other. Let’s take a look at the whole list of essential points to keep in mind when building an application interface.
Match your branding with real world familiarity
A well-designed interface should speak the user’s language. This means using words, phrases, and concepts that are familiar to your audience, avoiding technical jargon or internal terminology that may seem natural to you but alien to your users. By following real-world conventions and arranging information in a way that feels natural, you create a more intuitive and approachable experience.
Designing in this way starts with understanding your users. Icons, terms, and images that make perfect sense within your team might confuse someone outside of it. To keep things clear, consider how each design element will resonate with your users and whether it aligns with their everyday understanding.
In this example, you can see that familiar icons help create more divined navigation, choosing something odd for a homepage link, instead of the often-used 'house' icon, can cause confusion or slow down your users.
When controls and interactions in your design reflect real-world practices and lead to predictable outcomes—a principle known as natural mapping—users will find it easier to learn and remember how to navigate your interface. This sense of familiarity contributes to an intuitive experience, making your application feel both approachable and efficient.
Color scheme
You’ll not be surprised if we remind you to use a specific color palette throughout the website, including background colors, text colors, and accent colors. For instance, if your brand colors are blue and yellow, these colors should be consistently applied to buttons, headings, links, and other design elements. If your branding is minimalistic and colorless, you should keep it strict and business-like (see the example below).
Employ a limited color palette to maintain a clean and cohesive design, and wisely choose the primary and secondary colors adding some accent colors on top. Also, think about highlighting key elements like buttons, for example, the orange color will give a sense of urgency and can be used for the Purchase Now button.
Most color choice options within the Betty Blocks platforms revolve around the theme builder. There you can apply the above-mentioned primary, secondary, and accent colors. Some of the page builder components, like buttons, can be stylized individually. All of this and more can be found in Color use: best practices.
Typography
Uniformity in font choices, font sizes, and text formatting (such as line spacing and letter spacing). Selecting a primary font for headings and another for body text and consistently applying them maintains a cohesive typographic style.
By default, there are few options for choosing fonts in the platform’s theme builder, but that’s not a big deal because you can upload your own fonts and font families and use customization options like transforming (choosing lower scale, upper scale typography, etc.), resizing, color change. Surely, after a bit of experimenting, you’ll be able to match the typography of your brand. Go to this article for more information.
Layout
A consistent layout structure predictably organizes content. For example, if your homepage features a hero image followed by three content blocks, this layout structure should be maintained across all pages to provide a familiar user experience.
Here are a couple of articles in order to get you started with layouts:
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Setting up your page gives an overview of the most important page components and teaches you how to build a new homepage using the basic header and footer template.
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Building a page layout is aimed to give you some ideas for a page components arrangement from scratch and creating custom cards.
Obviously, there are many approaches to structuring your page layout and you have to choose one depending on the kind of page you have (detail page, data page, landing page, etc.) and the kind of content you have to place within it. Check out our page templates which may simplify things for you. If you’re looking for inspiration and ideas for modern user interface designs, see services like Dribble or UI8.
Navigation
Consistency in the placement and styling of navigation bars, side menus, buttons, tabs, breadcrumbs, etc. is as important as everything mentioned earlier. Users should easily identify how to navigate through the website and find the relevant information in a few clicks, with navigation elements appearing in the exact location and style on each page.
There are various kinds of ideas to come up with while creating a navigation in your application too. The most common is creating a navigation bar on top of a page with some buttons right on it or a slide-out menu, similar to what you can see in the example below.
When you have some deeply nested pages, you may use breadcrumbs to make navigation easier and more consistent. This component is used to apply secondary navigation schemes that use breadcrumb items to reveal the user’s location within an application.
Button styles
Use consistent button styles, such as size, shape, and color, across the application. The primary action buttons could be a distinct color like green or blue, while secondary or tertiary buttons may be grayed out or less prominent. Additionally, button labels should be clear and concise, conveying their intended action. For example, a Submit button on a form should clearly indicate its purpose. Buttons should exhibit consistent behavior, such as visual feedback on hover or click. They should also be easily clickable, with adequate spacing to prevent accidental clicks.
If you apply the color scheme via the theme builder, such components as a navigation bar and buttons will be changed according to the primary color of your application. Nevertheless, you can change the colors of these components separately. To do this, click on the button and go to the styles overview. There you’ll find various styling options, in particular, changing the background color of the button.
Also, for the sake of style consistency, we highly recommend:
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Using style presets in a component’s styling options. By saving some particular styling and naming it, you can reuse them on different pages and make your application’s design more consistent
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Saving as a new component which can be found at the bottom of the options overview of a component. This function allows you to save a component with its styling as a new component that will be added to the components section in the page builder.
Icons and symbols
When using icons or symbols, maintain a consistent set of icons throughout the site. For instance, if a magnifying glass icon represents search functionality, it should be used consistently wherever a search is available.
In the example below, unique icons indicate sensors and locations. It creates a straightforward association in users' minds, and these icons can be reused within the different pages.
Responsive design
Ensure that the design remains consistent across different devices and screen sizes. Elements should adapt precisely to maintain their relative positioning and readability.
Always remember to test out responsiveness for different devices down in the page builder’s options menu. This way you’ll prevent unpleasant surprises when you are about to wrap up designing your interface. Some page components, like the navigation bar are converted into other device versions automatically, unfortunately, it doesn’t always work with all layout components and you have to be careful with their hierarchy.
Branding elements and uniqueness
Integrate consistent branding elements such as logos, taglines, and brand-specific imagery to reinforce your brand identity. All of that contributes to the uniqueness and reflects a brand’s personality, values, and messaging. A well-designed user interface stands out in a crowded market creating a long-lasting impression and a sense of trust and loyalty.
To wrap it up, it's worth saying that application styling is not just about aesthetics, but also about some fundamental aspects of creating user-friendly, consistent, and responsive design. Users shouldn’t have to guess whether different terms, actions, or scenarios mean the same thing. Stick to platform and industry standards wherever possible to create a seamless experience.
People spend the majority of their time on digital products other than yours. This means that their experiences with other products shape their expectations. Straying from these familiar patterns can increase cognitive load, as users may need to pause and relearn something new. By maintaining consistency, you make your interface more intuitive and easier to navigate.