The most important phase of the web development process is wireframing. Before you will ever see results and constant traffic flowing to your website, you’ll want to take the time to use a wireframe program that allows you to map everything out. With thorough planning, you can create a site that is well-designed, easy to use, and most importantly, user-friendly.
When you plan your website and use dynamic wireframe tools, you can do things more efficiently, and all of the time and effort that you put into the planning stage will have an immense return on investment. Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of wireframing and how it can allow you to optimize your website’s user experience.
Early Visualization
Before a home is ever built, the builder takes the time to design blueprints and other visual diagrams. This same process stands true when designing websites. Before you start designing your live website, it’s important to take the time to create wireframes.
By using wireframing, you can turn abstract design ideas into something tangible. It’s one thing to know which pages your website needs to have or how the navigation should be mapped out. By putting these ideas into a wireframing program, you can visualize the flow and layout of your website.
Taking the time to put website ideas into an actual diagram is the first step in optimizing your site. With the ability to see the flow, you can pinpoint issues that may negatively impact user experience. In turn, these problems can be fixed before the site goes live.
Usability Is Front & Center
One of the biggest benefits of wireframing is that it allows you to put usability front and center. A website that’s lacking in usability won’t drive the traffic or conversions that you need. By using wireframing everyone on the web development team is able to thoroughly examine the bones of the website.
While most people focus on the colors and graphics on a site, what’s more, important is the underlying foundation. Through wireframing, you can look at the website objectively and focus on the minor yet critical details.
By creating wireframes you can look at details such as:
- Navigation placement
- Link naming convention
- Paths
- Feature placement
Examining these details upfront allows you to optimize the site and make it as user-friendly as possible. This way when it’s time to build and design the site, there’s no guessing as to whether or not the page layout is functional or where navigational links can be placed. These details can all be ironed out during the wireframing process.
Interface Clarity
Everyone has grand ideas of what they want on their website. By using a wireframing tool, you can visualize how certain website features will function and where they will appear on the site. For example, maybe you want your website to have a news feed, a dynamic image slideshow, and breadcrumb links.
These are pretty technical terms that not everyone on your team may fully understand. With wireframing, you can pinpoint exactly what’s expected out of each of these features, how they will look, and where they will be used on the site.
Wireframing not only helps to clarify your website’s interface, but it also helps to remove any misunderstanding or confusion from the internal team.
Improved Content Development
Not only do the look, feel, and functionality of your site matter, content does as well. Website content needs to look clean and crisp. Visitors don’t want to visit a site that has text all over the place. No one likes huge blocks of undifferentiated text.
With wireframing, you can better layout and present website content so that it’s readable and useful. For example, you can determine where numbered lists, bullet points, and sub-headers need to be used. By incorporating these design elements into your wireframes, you can maximize readability upfront.
Time Savings
Time is money, especially when it comes to the website development process. Without wireframing your website design is done totally on a whim. This is extremely problematic as your developers are more likely to overlook small details that have a huge impact on the functionality and usability of the website.
By taking the time to create wireframes, your website design is planned and calculated. Everyone is well aware of the website blueprint and knows exactly what’s going onto the site and where.
Wireframing eases communication and minimizes the risk of misunderstandings. Improper communication during the web design process can lead to tons of wasted hours and continuous changes.
Conclusion
Don’t be another company that designs its website on a whim. Instead, take the time to use wireframe tools so that you can optimize user experience from the get-go. With thorough planning, you can minimize design flaws that can render your website useless for visitors.
