If someone told you they were building a new house without plans or architect’s blueprints, you might think that they were a little foolish.
You might also predict that they were heading for a costly and stressful situation.
It is well understood that blueprints are an essential part of any build-process. Right from the outset they provide an agreed vision of what the final project will look and function like as well as ensuring clarity of communication between client and contractor.
The same is true of websites.
Website wireframes can be thought of as ‘screen blueprints’. Designing a set of website wireframes involves carefully outlining the building blocks of each page; titles, text areas, image galleries, menus, buttons, search bars and forms.
The illustration above highlights the journey from website wireframe to finished home page for our client Solar Vision. In this case the wireframe was created very early on in the web development process, approved by the client and then used as a blueprint by our designers and developers for the website build itself.
A set of wireframes will also address the overall information architecture of the site to be built; how large amounts of site data will be interlinked, how a visitor will navigate around the site from page to page and even what the preferred ‘pathways of conversion’ will be.