When you visit a well designed website, you will notice and appreciate
design consistencies that extend across all pages in the website. For
example, the page titles will hopefully appear at or near the top of each
page in a consistent color and fond. A "home" button will appear in
the top left hand corner. The highest level site menu options will
appear below the title and a list of related pages will display on the
left hand side.
If your website consists of only a few pages, it is not a big issue to
apply consistency as new pages are added. In fact, many people just
clone existing web pages and then make the required changes. The problem
with this approach, however, is that when the need arises to make a change
(e.g. add a new hyperlink to the menu), that change must then be replicated
on multiple pages. Should inconsistencies inadvertently be introduced (e.g.
fonts, colors, position), the site can appear unprofessional or
confusing to the visitor. To avoid such problems, it is a good idea to
construct your website using reusable web page parts or partitions as depicted in the
following diagram:
