Why we love wireframes and you should too

Wireframing in web design and redesign is what makes websites more visually appealing and streamlined. But most web designers often skip the wireframe stage, dive directly into the good stuff, and create well-detailed designs.

While this will take you one step closer to the launch of your site, overlooking this step might prove disastrous to your website. You might end up spending lots of time, money, and effort revising the website design.

Wireframes are the building blocks of websites, irrespective of their size and shape. They're an integral part of the website creation process. We understand creating a new site is no simple task. But it's essential to follow all the vital steps if you want to succeed.

In this article, you will learn about wireframes and their importance in the web design process. Let's start by defining a wireframe.

What Is a Wireframe?

A wireframe is a basic and simple website layout featuring key components, such as headers, footers, forms, etc. However, it's devoid of colour, images, font choice, and logos. It's a website skeleton that outlines the size and placement of page elements, conversion area, and other site features.

A wireframe directs focus on the arrangement of visual effects and a hierarchy of information on a web page. Using it, web designers can address their site's function and navigation issues hassle-free. They can focus on user experience (UX) without thinking of beauty elements.

Reasons to Use Wireframes

Displays Your Website Design Visually

Large sitemaps can overwhelm designers, developers and clients, especially those with numerous links. Wireframes convert sitemaps into clear information with no distractions. Taking a sitemap to a wireframe helps to bring a visual process to a project. It organizes every content and visible component on the same page, ensuring a logical and enjoyable UX.

A sitemap is a list of information outlining what pages relate to which content on a site. A wireframe allows web designers and stallholders to identify the users' purpose. It clearly brings the site's architecture to the forefront, making it easier for the team to make adjustments before going too far ahead.

Basically, it expands the sitemap and becomes a more explicit representation of site components and how they function. Stakeholders get a visual guide of what clients can expect to see on a web page, the functions available, and rules linked to the displayed information.

With the help of the best Figma wireframe toolkit at SiteManager, you can create stunning, seamless wireframe projects hassle-free. You can import ready-made layouts, symbols, and components to save time and focus on what really matters through the platform.

Presents An Opportunity to Know Clients Better

Wireframes present web designers with the opportunity to know stakeholders better. Spending time with your clients allows you to get a clear picture of them. You will understand their inspirations, motivation, and behaviours. Eventually, their feedback on the project will give you an idea of how to best work with them in future projects. Plus, how to boost your productivity while working with them.

It's wise to show your clients wireframes in the initial meeting to capture their focus. Most stakeholders like to skip wireframing and jump to the exciting stuff about the website. But presenting clients with wireframes allows them to digest the website structure first, instead of being distracted by what they like or dislike about the end product. As a result, any changes the client makes to the design at this point of the project will be easier to address on the wireframes.

Pushes User-Experience to The Forefront

Website designers who tend to skip wireframing get caught up in the tiny details that make sites attractive. It's possible to forget the integral parts of a web design system: usability and functionality for visitors. But jumping into the design without creating wireframes can have a detrimental impact on your site.

When creating a site, it's crucial to think more about the layout- not only the website's information or service. Wireframes help push the usability and functionality of your website users to the forefront.

A well-designed wireframe makes it easier to design a functional and visually appealing site so that both parties can benefit. It eliminates colour, logos, and other information, allowing the designers to survey the page layout. As a result, a designer is forced to focus more on the site's ease of use, navigation placements, and conversion paths.

Brings Order to Chaos

Skipping the wireframing process to focus on design is not wise. There's a high chance you can forget to include some features or misplace information on the web pages. That's true, especially if you have a long list of features and components to include in your site.

Create wireframes to build your design on well-laid out knowledge rather than assumptions. Wireframes help to bring order to all the chaos of the web design system. You will create designs based on solid web layouts.

Gathers Feedback

Wireframes make it easier for designers to gather feedback and determine flaws in the web design. It increases productivity and efficiency. Start with low fidelity wireframes and work your way gradually to high-fidelity wireframes. This way, you can capture all details and get a good visual impression of the completed website layout and navigation.

You might get tempted to create a high-fidelity wireframe to save time and money, but keep in mind skipping a step can come to bite you later. You need to gather quality feedback if you want to save yourself the painstaking and time-consuming design changes.

Try now, enjoy forever

Including wireframes in web design is a win for both designers and clients. Wireframes form the building block of the design process. They eliminate the headache of constantly revising the plan by allowing web designers to gather feedback. It also helps to save time and money. You can use several tools to create a wireframe, including sketch and Balsamiq. But if you're after the best Figma wireframe toolkit, look no further than SiteManager.