Planning and collaboration have always been the two major pillars of any successful web project.

As a web designer, you too would have invested a good amount of time and effort into using different techniques that can aid you in designing the website well in synchronization with the expectations of your client. It is here that wireframes have a significant role to play. Continue reading the post to know more about wireframes and reasons which make them a must-have for every web designer(an amateur or professional).

What are Wireframes?

Wireframe is basically an image or a set of images which display the various functional elements of a specific page that needs to go into a website. Especially used for planning the website’s layout, Wireframes offer a skeleton, helping you chart out a perfect layout for your website.

Wireframes – What makes them a necessity for web designers?

• Defining Navigation Positioning becomes a breeze
A distorted navigation can silly ruin your entire website. Making users squint their eyes for finding links is something that won’t prove beneficial for your site’s visitors’ count. It is wireframing which enables you to place the navigational menus and links at their appropriate location. And that’s not all, even the accurate placement of CTA buttons and other navigational links becomes quite convenient when you have wireframes ready for your use.

• A viable means of creating meaningful content
The process of building a wireframe includes the task of leaving small boxes for all the content that needs to be accommodated into the particular web page. Since nobody is inclined on reading long pieces of text, as a web designers it is better if you choose to include just the content that is utmost essential for enabling visitors to understand the message that you intend to convey via the website. Wireframe would render you a good indication of where to position the subheads, how and where different font sizes should be used etc.

• Getting a clear insight into website features becomes easy
There are chances that your client might not understand the meaning of common website features like: google map integration, news feeds, light boxes, dynamic slide show and many more. It is under such a scenario that creating a wireframe will allow you to make your client understand how the website features would work and where would they be positioned on certain web pages. Hence, your client would be able to focus on other key aspects related to his/her web project.

• Cost of design changes is reduced by a considerable level
Design changes can’t be avoided, especially when you are delivering a website to your client. It’s hardly possible that the client gives you a ‘green’ signal for your very first design. He/she will definitely ask for some or the other changes in the site’s layout. While some changes consume little amount of time, others take multiple hours to get completed in the desired way. Here, working on the design in synchronization with the wireframes is undoubtedly an intelligent decision. By reviewing the wireframes, it becomes convenient to work on the changes that have been asked by your client. You are only required to do some coding tweaks and things can be achieved effortlessly. Plus, making changes on wireframes actually involves minimum expenses-something that you’ll feel delighted about.

• Allows you to push website usability to the forefront
As one of the vital aspects of wireframing process, pushing usability to the forefront definitely serves as a great sigh of relief for the web designer. By enabling you to point out errors in the site’s basic architecture, you’ll be able to look into the website’s conversion paths, placement of navigation, naming of links, placement of key features and a lot more. All this serves as a great help tool for finalizing everything associated with the website’s looks and functionality.

• The overall project development time is reduced
With wireframing, you can get onto attaining more calculated designs. That means, your entire website design and development team is well aware about everything that needs to go into the website. They know how the different features are going to work and where would they be positioned on multiple web pages.

Wrapping Up

Experience shows that wireframing is indeed one of the most vital parts of a web design process. Just like the way a house is being built using a blueprint, in the same manner, wireframing the web process makes way for quick and efficient development of the desired website.