User experience (UX) is one of the most important parts of web design. In fact, it is increasingly becoming a differentiator that companies rely on.

As internet users, we can probably all remember times when we stopped browsing a website because it was difficult to navigate. This is usually due to a poor layout or an overload of advertisements.

A practical starting point to tackle this problem is a concept known as “web design wireframing”. In this article, we’ll take a look at what it is and when you should do it, and explain the benefits of integrating it into your web design.

What is web design wireframing?

But before we go into the details, let’s start with the basics. After all, this is a complete guide, so we have to start from scratch.

“Wireframing” refers to a concept of information architecture which, similar to a building plan in architectural terms, defines the structure of a website. It is a skeletal composition that is often designed by UX practitioners to illustrate the basic form of a website.

A wireframe can be either digital or illustrated. It allows everyone involved to exchange ideas about the layout, functionality and behavior of the site before the site is created. This in turn ensures that everyone is familiar with the basic elements of the website, which makes the next design steps much easier.

Since this is an initial structure, more complex elements such as font, color, images and the like are either not present at all or appear in a basic form. If you are in the wireframing phase of your web design, decisions on these elements of your website are not yet necessary.

When does Wireframe make sense?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, wireframing usually takes place in the initial phase of a website or product launch. Like smoke testing, it’s something you have to work on and get right long before an end user ever sees your website.

When web developers and designers are determining the requirements of a new website or product, it is important to build on a stable platform. After all, you wouldn’t build a house without first providing a stable foundation.

Ideally, this should take place before your first round of feedback arrives. If you have the outline of a website or product page and present it for feedback, you can identify any issues from the start and ensure they don’t make it into the final design.

The different types of wireframes
As mentioned above, there are also different forms that your wireframe can take. Just like web domains themselves – a .uk, .us or .ae domain will either be familiar to you or not, depending on where you spend most of your time – they come in a wide variety of styles.

These are often discussed in terms of “low”, “medium” or “high” “fidelity”. A low-fidelity wireframe is a fairly crude representation of the look and performance of the website.

Designers tend to draw these by hand, as this is still the most efficient way to transfer ideas from the brain into something that others can then discuss and suggest changes to.

These are useful wireframes in the very earliest stages of development, but since they don’t take size or scale into account, they’re not as optimized as they could be.

If we turn the detail slider up a notch, we get wireframes with medium fidelity. These are often created digitally as this gives a better sense of how the designer wants the wireframe, and therefore the website, to function in the intended environment.

Wireframes with medium fidelity create a balance between minimizing the time required and including important details. They do not contain any complex elements such as images, fonts or colors. However, they define their different segments in a way that is not the case with low-fidelity wireframes.

If you’ve followed along up to this point, it seems obvious what the main difference between mid-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes is. And even if the latter actually go into more detail by including highlighted images and examples of written content, this is not the only difference.

High-fidelity wireframes also include pixel-specific design. Therefore, these usually only occur in the context of design trips that are not time-specific, which, as you can imagine, doesn’t happen all that often.

Regardless of how detailed your wireframe is, we’ll now look at the reasons why wireframing is always crucial in web design.

1: Clarity

Perhaps the main reason why you would use wireframing when designing your website is to achieve a certain clarity. In business, clarity is key, whether it’s in training materials or in your business phone systems.

Discussing ideas through words and conversation alone can be of some benefit. However, it is also possible that everyone involved in this conversation has a different idea of the appearance or function of the website in their mind’s eye.

If you write it down – either on paper or on a screen – you can make the conversation time more productive. As a group, you can achieve something well thought out and clear in terms of presentation and goal.

2: Time saving

A natural by-product of this increased productivity is the saving of valuable time. We are all looking for ways to do our work more productively. CMS programs offer the solution for content managers. A wireframe works well for web designers.

Both in terms of developing a working website idea and then putting it into practice: if time is of the essence, maximizing that time is of the essence.

By using a wireframe, you can identify and solve any problems with the original design much more quickly than would otherwise be possible. Without this concept, you could get to the final stage of the process without realizing that a key element is unnecessary or counterproductive.

At this point, it could be much more difficult and take much longer to fix.

3: User friendliness

If you have a clear vision that you’ve arrived at quickly, then wireframing has already definitely helped your web design process. Fortunately, the benefits of using such a device do not stop there.

Using a wireframe at the very beginning of the journey of creating a website shapes your opinion of the product you end up with. By forcing you to discuss how the website works from the outset, you prioritize its ultimate usability.

Providing user-friendly websites is one of the main goals of a designer. This is something you could do without a wireframe, but why risk it? By creating a wireframe first, you can focus on usability without having to consciously discuss it.

4: Repetition

You can also say that wireframes shape your thinking around the cohesion of the entire website. If the process involves two clicks for one function and five for another equally important function, you may need to simplify the latter.

The way a wireframe helps here is by providing a repeating structure so that each function of the site can be discussed step-by-step from the beginning.

By separating layout and branding – two forces that often work against each other in web design processes that don’t use wireframes – the potential for poor functionality is significantly reduced.

5: Scalability

The purpose of creating a website is to give your company space to establish itself. When things are going well and the audience starts to grow, companies need to think seriously about scale and how to deal with this welcome demand.

By having a wireframe that influences the initial stages of website design, you can determine how well you are doing in this situation. Just as you can use WFM solutions to figure out how to best optimize your workforce, wireframes illustrate the limits of your web design depending on how busy it is.

If this does not happen, a redesign or rebranding may be necessary. That’s something that could drive away the new customers you’ve worked so hard to attract.

In general, it is important in business life not to overdo it. By addressing the “what ifs” of potential scalability through a wireframe, you’re future-proofing your brand against the disruption that success could bring.

6: Cost savings

This last but crucial point may not seem obvious at first. After all, the cost of doing something tends to be higher than the cost of not doing something. If you consider web design wireframing as a cost-saving measure, you need to look at your company as a whole.

An initial investment of time and money may be required. However, as all of the above points show, it makes it much easier to overcome future hurdles. In the long term, this means that your website, and therefore your company, will be better able to adapt to change.

Think of it as the introduction of a new CMS system. This is a big commitment at first, but it will save you a lot of trouble and unproductive time in the future.

And this could prove to be the key differentiator between you and your competitors. So why waste it when you have the chance of not having to spend the money upfront?

Conclusion
In this article, we’ve taken a look at what web design wireframing is, when you would use it, the different forms it can take and why you should consider using it.

It is a concept that is proving to be increasingly important in the digital age. It offers both security and strategic advantages and is one of the very few business frameworks that can offer a company a real win-win situation.