Like an architect creating the bones of a building, website wireframes help you and your teams design a website with optimized pages for the digital experience. They explore the type of content that your new site will need, the functionality your development teams will need to build, and define the paths your visitors will take through your site.
Without the website wireframe process, your web design and website development teams may become disconnected, and your marketing teams may end up pulling their hair out. Wireframes help all of your teams get on the same page before moving on to design.
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Wireframes Help Kick Start Your Content Strategy
What kind of content do you plan to use on your website? What content assets do you have at your disposal already, and what content will need to be created? Website wireframes give your teams a sense of how content will be used on your website and an idea of how that content will be presented to site visitors.
Select Key Pages to Wireframe
It’s best to prepare a few different wireframes, three or four pages, for example, for the various pages of your website. Be strategic and pick the most important pages and templates. The homepage is an excellent place to start, followed by your product or service pages.
Other site pages like an about page or contact page are an intelligent follow-up, depending on the design you intend to use––will they be different designs for each page, or will you reuse page formats? This will help your designer know what to work on and where they can save time.
Improve Collaboration With Your Development Team
Website wireframes showcase the type of content that your new website will need and the functionality you intend to use to engage site visitors. Your development teams will appreciate the advanced warning of what they’ll need to build so they can gather the right resources ahead of time. It’s also useful for the creative team. Your designers can use wireframes to compile a list of all the components their design system will require.
It also presents an opportunity for your developers to question functionality or reject it entirely, offering an alternative that may be a better solution than your original choice. With today’s focus on site performance because of the Google Page Experience Update, your developers may notice proposed improvements could bring down the site’s speed. Maybe your content plan includes a background video on the home page. Your engineers can get a head start on selecting a video content delivery network and preparing mobile alternatives.
Wireframes Are The Design Documents for User Experience
The process of creating website wireframes not only gives you insight into your content needs and development needs but also defines the paths visitors can use. Ask yourself, is this an improvement on the current website, or are you overcomplicating your conversion funnels?
Your goal should be to make it simpler for visitors to find the content they need. During the website wireframe process, you may encounter that new layouts will confuse visitors rather than engage them or send them further down the page. Pass the wireframes to a few different members of your extended team to test and validate before moving on to design.
Wireframes Help You Design a Smarter Website
Buildings that have been built without following an architect’s plan may end up harder to build than expected, not take advantage of local resources, or not meet the owner’s expectations. Your website is similar. Website wireframes help you and your teams design a website with optimized pages for the digital experience.
Kickstart your content strategy with wireframes and start collaboration between your design, marketing, and development teams. Help your website design process and your teams build more thoughtful websites with better bones.