5 Steps for Creating Wireframes for Your Website
The best eCommerce frameworks to develop a customized eCommerce website
When customers are online, suppliers have to be online to reach customers. So, if you already have a brick-and-mortar store or are starting a new business, do consider building an eCommerce website. You can reach new markets, target new audiences, and get brand recognition with an eCommerce site.
For this, you need to create a dedicated eCommerce website to allow you to have control over all aspects of your eCommerce business. But a crucial step that you need to take is deciding on the eCommerce framework for developing your website. You need to understand your business needs and your goals from your eCommerce website to decide on the appropriate framework.
Let’s understand what is an eCommerce framework, its types, and the best options available in the market:
This structure of a website is called WIREFRAME. It is a basic layout of the website. A part of user experience (UX). An information hierarchy plan.
It shows the elements of the interface, layout, placement of components, navigation, and user journey. A wireframe defines the what, how, and where of the website.
Wireframing is a crucial step in creating a website. Once you have a detailed wireframe ready, it is simpler to make the website. But, be careful with the goals of creating a wireframe so that you can focus on the user flow.
But why creating wireframes is vital for any website? Let’s look at the purposes of creating wireframes:
Purpose of Creating Wireframes
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Wireframes define a clear direction for your website
You understand the client’s requirements and visualize the website. But wireframes help you give a structure to your visualization. It helps you and the team discuss and decide if you are moving in the right direction. It is a roadmap that makes the website development process more manageable.
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Wireframes keep the website focused on the user
You can plan the user flow through wireframes. That means you can determine the placement of all website elements and how any user navigates through them. The visual hierarchy and visual priority provide a user-specific perspective of your website. Users’ feedback leads to finalizing a wireframe that goes on to the final website.
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Wireframes save time, money, and effort
Wireframes define the layout and the placement of all elements of a website. So, before creating the final website, it is a skeleton structure of the website. This structure allows you to find errors and inconsistencies and improve them in subsequent iterations. Thus, you can save time, effort, and money by making adjustments in wireframes instead of doing it when the code and design are fully completed.
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Wireframes help the team collaborate and communicate better
Wireframes are an excellent way to bring the team on the same page. Different team members might be involved in different phases of the website development project. They may have processed the requirements differently. Wireframes help them look at the final website, find errors, and correct them in subsequent iterations. Thus, team communication and collaboration become better.
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Wireframes aid in time and effort estimation for actual website development
Wireframes are draft versions of a website. You can edit them, make changes, iterate more, and keep repeating the process. Thus, you can determine the website requirements when finalizing the wireframes. In a way, you can forecast the time and effort needed to create the final website.
Steps of creating wireframes
Let’s look at the key steps of wireframing a website:
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Step 1: Research, research, and more research
To provide any solution, you must know the problem. Step 1 is all about researching the problem and identifying the pain points. That means studying your client’s business, products and services, and goals and objectives.
With an understanding of the client’s business, you get to know their audience, their needs and expectations, current products/services they use, the USP of your client, etc. This research helps you create user personas and comprehend their requirements. The website has to address these user personas.
But, the research process does not end here. You must also have information on your client’s competitors and the industry in general. With competitor research, you get to know about best practices, trends, challenges, etc.
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Step 2: Consider the user flow through the website journey
You need to know a customer’s journey through your website. Details such as what page they land, what page they move to, when they click on the CTA, and when they leave the website. If you are not aware of these details, wireframing may become a challenging process.
Identifying the user flow makes your website creation process simpler, faster, and more relevant to the users. Also, your team members are more aligned in their efforts because of the defined user flow. It gives you a direction to follow while adding features and functionalities.
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Step 3: Time to create the wireframes
It is time to sketch whatever ideas you have generated in the first two steps. Create a basic layout of the website – the wireframe. You do not have to get into details such as color, images, aesthetics, etc.
In this step, you will organize the elements of every page. Keep working on it until you find the best way to address the requirements of your client’s customers. You will not find it in one go. It will be a trial-and-error process.
Consider the static elements and their placement. Move on to the interactive elements. Determine the hierarchy of information on your website. Decide the position of CTAs. Organize all the elements the way you want your final website to look like.
While doing this, incorporate your internal design principles. Also, consider the industry best practices to not look out of place. You can use pen-and-paper or a software tool to complete this step.
Discuss the wireframe with your team members, stakeholders, and senior management. Get their feedback and incorporate them to create better versions. Keep iterating with the fact in mind that you have to achieve company goals and make end-users happy.
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Step 4: The most crucial step - Testing
It’s time to test the wireframes you have developed. Whether you create a wireframe on paper or software, testing is essential. Perform usability tests to get actual users’ opinions. Just observe the following:
- Are they able to see the features?
- Where do they land for the first time?
- Do they agree with the sequence of pages?
- Are they able to navigate through the pages?
- Is there any permanent obstruction to the user flow?
When you get answers to these questions, you understand where your wireframe stands. Now, you can create more iterations based on the test reports.
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Step 5: Convert your wireframes into mockups and prototypes
When all are in agreement with the wireframe, convert it into a prototype. Prototyping means a visual simulation of the wireframe that you created for the website. Now, you can use the colors, images, content, placement of elements, and interactions.
These are the steps to create wireframes for your website. If you forget this step, there are higher chances of a bad user experience. If you include this step but do not consider the user requirements, it will still be a bad experience.
So, manage all the steps mentioned above and instil a sense in the hierarchy of pages. Also, remember that the wireframe must be clear and simple enough to aid the user navigation. It’s not about aesthetics and attractiveness in the wireframing stage; it’s only about achieving goals from interacting with it.
Digiwagon Technologies manages all these steps for its clients’ websites. It is a leading website development, digital marketing, ecommerce development, and IT consulting firm in India. You can satisfy all your digital requirements at one destination to give your business a strong push.
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