Most web developers tend to skip the wireframing process and go straight to design. There are two reasons this happens: One, the web developer does not know what wireframing is or two, he knows what it is, but is afraid that clients will not care or understand the wireframes he/she will create.
Yet, wireframing is one element that will make your website’s foundation more solid. Without going through it or creating one, the website you will develop will become either messy or amateurish.
What is a wireframe, anyway? It layman’s terms, it is the blueprint or initial layout of your site. It is devoid of any design. It will represent the main structure of your website, which focuses on the required web elements, functionalities, and their respective locations/placements.
But what are the specific benefits of creating one?
1. Wireframes Let You See The Big Picture In Detail
Wireframing lets you develop a coherent sitemap. It can be negligible for small websites, but if you are dealing with more than a hundred pages of content, having a clear and organized site maps allows you to work modularly. There will be no need to create new and redundant code or markups manually. You will be leaning on “copy-paste” code.
2. Wireframes Let You Know Which Web Features to Implement
Your client might want to add a carousel of images or multiple jumbotrons on his site. You started working on the project, and when you’re finished, you saw that the carousel does not jam with the rest of the website—and the client agreed. You then proceed on removing it, which effectively made you waste hours of work.
Wireframes can easily make you spot this kind of potential incompatibility in the site early on during the development cycle.
3. Wireframes Let You Focus On UX First
With no distracting images and designs, you can quickly determine how your website will be used and navigated. If your website is useless without the design and colors, it will still be useless even if you add the design and colors. You can put glitters on crap, but it will still be crap.
4. Wireframes Let You Design Your Site To Keep Up With Constant Updates & Growth
This directly ties in with seeing the big picture and implementing modular development. A website grows fast, especially if its owner is active and produces content nonstop. With perfect knowledge on the foundation of the website, you can easily roll updates and fixes since you know the parts where these updates are needed and the places you do not need to touch.
5. Wireframes Let You Focus On Design Purely Later
Once you are finished with the wireframe and the content is ready, you will be left with the design process only—assuming that someone else is responsible for the hosting and other administrative tasks. At this point, the design process will be as easy as coloring a page. The outline is already there; you just need to get wild with those crayons of yours.