The principle of “Consistency and Standards” states, “Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform and industry conventions.”

If you know me, you know I’m a HUGE fan of consistency. If the same thing has different names, formatting, or syntax, my eyes cannot unsee it. And my client will know about it.

It also doesn’t matter if things are “wrong”, as long as they are consistently wrong. For example, if you want to name a button “Generate Report”, then keep using the word “Generate” in similar contexts. Don’t call another button “Create Report” or “Build report” (with different capitalization).

Standards are equally important. Salesforce has a list of best practices that can be leveraged.

In addition, before beginning a large Salesforce implementation, consider writing a Salesforce design standard document. This document will define things like

  • naming convention for fields, buttons, flow and apex variables
  • tone of voice for descriptions, help texts, and validation rules
  • page layouts and lightning pages
  • how to use profiles and permission sets
  • report names and folder structure

The takeaway
Consistency and standards improve learnability. It’s quite possible your users are not using Salesforce every day. Some may use it only once a month. If they have to re-learn the system each time, their frustration will increase.

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