UX Wireframing is about “storyboarding” a user’s online experience so that company web designers can create a site that best serves the customer’s needs. And while it is technically a function of design, it is far more important than aesthetics alone. Below, we’ll discuss UX Wireframes in detail, explore why the concept is so important, and explain how understanding it can benefit your business. 

UX Wireframing Basics

More and more, websites are becoming the primary ways in which business owners interact with current and potential customers. This has made “designing” the user’s website experience increasingly important. This is where UX (Users Experience) Wireframing comes in.

If your business has a website, you’ve already considered most of the basic points of UX design – even if you didn’t realize it. In fact, you probably sketched a wireframe out on a piece of paper and handed it to your designer without a second thought.

You see, a wireframe is really nothing more than a simplified rendering of a computer interface. Think of it as the “skeleton” of your website or online product portal. It indicates basic functions, where certain elements will go, and what features will be displayed.

More importantly, your wireframe dictates “user flow.” After all, all websites have a purpose (or at least they should). With a UX Wireframe, you are fleshing out what the site or page’s purpose is and how you intend to fulfill it.

Why UX Wireframes Are So Important

A book is a big project. That’s why authors often spend weeks or months writing a detailed outline of their novels. An even larger project might be building a house or office building. Luckily, construction companies have detailed blueprints to work off of to ensure they don’t make any errors.

Your website’s UX wireframe serves the same purpose!

Wireframes take all the ideas you have for your website and allow you to outline them without having to code or even consider visual elements. This allows you to focus on the user’s experience, the flow of information, and the function of various aspects of your site. Like blueprints and outlines, they provide several distinct advantages.

They Provide Helpful Organization

Taking the time to create a detailed wireframe with your team is the first step to organizing an effective website that accomplishes your intended goals. Not only does it allow you to define a layout that your web designers can use to create the actual site, but it allows you to tinker with the flow of information to optimize how it is presented.

They Can Allow for Early Feedback

Imagine taking the time to build an entire website just to find out that your client, intended user, or – worse – your boss hates everything about it. This doesn’t just represent a loss of time and money, but a major setback for your entire team. In business, the last thing you want to do is go “back to the drawing board.”

With a wireframe, you can use your “drawing board” to elicit crucial feedback from your target audience, team members, designers, and more. This gives you that chance to optimize the experience the website offers before a single line of code is written.

Wireframes Solve Problems

Whether it’s on a napkin, a whiteboard, or a computer screen, your wireframe is a visual representation of your user interface. Therefore, it allows you to view the user’s journey and needs in a straightforward, comprehensive way. Rather than being distracted by that cool graphic your design team developed, you can simply ask, “is this current design solving the user’s problem effectively?”

Creating Wireframes

As we mentioned earlier, anyone who has ever thought about the layout of a website has done a form of wireframing. The same can be said for anyone who has ever sketched a basic template of their company’s home screen.

However, as websites are now integral to the sales process (if not acting as the entire sales process themselves), many marketing and design companies are now offering professional UX Wireframing services. The people performing these services are experts in the user experience, web development, and software that can better represent how a final website will appear and function.

Where anyone can create a wireframe, it takes a professional to design wireframes that really work.  In many cases, outsourcing the job to an expert will save you more time and money than doing it in-house. Professional, digital wireframes are also better at promoting user feedback, as many of them are functional enough to give users a detailed example of their journey through the site’s sales and / or information funnel. 

Conclusion

There is no denying that Wireframing is essential to the UX process. However, the decision to hire a professional to handle your wireframing needs is a crucial one. Generally, companies tend to consider the wireframe process a simple “outline” of the website and user experience they intend to design. While this is true, they forget that that outline is the foundation upon which their website’s function depends.

Fail to design the user experience your target audience needs, and you risk losing both sales and customers. Fortunately, there are professionals out there that can help streamline the wireframing process to help you design a user experience that will truly maximize your website’s impact.