In order to build up your brand image at a small business, you need to maximize the effectiveness of your graphic design; it is important to keep design consistent. Here are a couple reasons why:

Comfort

Customers will build a certain amount of comfort and familiarity with your brand when they see patterns and consistency. If you constantly change your logo, brand or color, it brings about confusion and doubt in the customer’s mind. A customer may pose the question, is this even the same company? You don’t want to throw any curveballs when a customer is in any stage of the buyer’s journey.

Time

Consistent design is a time saver. It promotes recognition with your company and with your content. A customer will start to remember how the layout of your website, ebooks or blogs look, and navigate through them to understand your message.

A good example of a consistent mobile website design element that is almost universal is the “hamburger menu.” You may not know it by name, but rather by function. Almost every user knows clicking this menu leads to a larger navigation list for the website. Knowing this consistent design element makes it quick and effortless move about a website.

There are a few things you can keep in mind while designing, in order to keep it consistent:

• Use hierarchy in your content
• Stick to specific colors
• Reuse design elements
• Create content from templates & modules
• Establish fonts

Design consistency does not mean your brand is boring. You can always incorporate fun accents, visually pleasing elements and unique color into your design. Consistency never has to compromise your creativity.

Do you prefer consistent design, or do you often like to switch up the way your small business designs look? Let me know in the comments below!