Getting your website from concept to hosting visitors can feel overwhelming. There are a huge number of questions to answer and team members to communicate your vision to.
However, approaching the creation of a website with the fundamentals in mind eases the process and lets you envision the outcomes you want.
Therefore, one of the first things you can do to create your website is making a wireframe. They are an essential tool in UX design, used to outline a website or mobile app.
Wireframes are quick and simple to make, which means they often go through many versions as users give feedback on the proposed flow and features.
Wireframes also help communicate ideas to each person involved in the design process, from developers to stakeholders.
With that in mind, we’ll cover how to create a wireframe, the different kinds of wireframes and what you need to get started below.
What Is a Wireframe for a Website?
How To Create a Wireframe in Kadence WP
Final Thoughts — How To Create a Wireframe: 5 Simple Steps
What Is a Wireframe for a Website?
A wireframe for a website is a rough draft of how a website will look. It includes page layouts, information hierarchy, and user flow. The goal is to determine each webpage’s layout, function, and relationship before a developer begins coding or a designer begins designing. Wireframing doesn’t usually include in-depth content, color or design choices.
The priority is functionality and user experience in this stage, which often requires multiple mockups and testing.
Wireframing is perfect for this because once you understand how to create a wireframe, you don’t need to spend a lot of time making one for your website. You can sketch on paper, whiteboards or use specialized tools to get your ideas out.
Types of Wireframes
There are three ways to categorize wireframes, broken down by how much detail they include. They are the following:
Low-fidelity Wireframes
These are the simplest forms of wireframes, often sketched on paper or whiteboards. They serve as the first wireframe to get your ideas out. The scale is imprecise, and lines are rough placeholders since the design will likely go through more revisions.
Mid-fidelity Wireframes
These wireframes add precision with exact scale and can begin to differentiate content with varying line widths. They can still be done on paper but typically require gridded or dotted notebooks.
High-fidelity Wireframes
The most detailed type of wireframe incorporates scale, varying line widths, and value to communicate each page’s hierarchy fully.
You may also choose to resize and bold fonts to demonstrate the flow of information further, but don’t get caught up choosing fonts at this stage. Usually, the fidelity required means using a wireframing tool like Figma or Balsamiq.
Depending on each creator’s workflow, you may create all three types of wireframes at some stage in your project, or they may skip high-fidelity wireframes and jump straight to prototyping.
How To Create a Wireframe
Ultimately, how you approach your website’s wireframe will depend on your team, preferences and needs.
The following are the best practices to ensure your wireframe is as helpful as it can be:
1. Do User Research
The primary purpose of wireframing is to answer how users will interact with your website.
To design your user experience to serve your visitors best, you’ll need to understand who exactly your users are and why they’re coming to your website.
To that end, you should research user personas and write out the use cases for your website. A use case outlines who will use your website, their goal, the steps to reach it and how your website responds.
It is also essential to understand the general expectations of your user for how a website will perform. Look at websites that are trying to achieve something similar, so you can organize your website in a way that will be clear.
2. Outline the Overall Flow of Your Website
Once you understand where your users are coming from and where they’ll be navigating to, you can develop the overall flow of your website.
That is effectively establishing a basic information architecture for your website. You should organize your website in a way that makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for.
Among other methods, you can organize content hierarchically, by topic, and sequentially. Whatever your approach, make sure it is consistent throughout your website to have a predictable experience.
To plan your website’s flow, map out using flowcharts how each page relates to the other.
3. Iterate on Sketches
The first step in learning how to create a wireframe is putting your ideas down. Then, refine your sketches over and over.
These questions will help guide you towards a practical and usable website experience:
- Hierarchy – Which information should be seen first?
- Usability – How can you make it easier for users to complete their goals?
- Expectations – What will users expect to see?
- Actions – What action should they take on a page?
4. User Test
Once you feel your website’s experience is mapped out in broad strokes, it’s time to get others’ perspectives.
Though it’s crucial that you like your website, user experience is the top priority. Even the very best user experience designers cannot predict all the ways that an end-user may feel about a website. That’s why it’s important to bring others in to user-test your wireframe.
Don’t stress about conducting large-scale research just yet, as initial tests can work well with just your colleagues.
However, the closer you can get to your ideal user, the more valuable their feedback may be. Then you can understand how to create a wireframe that caters to your specific audience.
5. Develop High Fidelity Wireframes
Now that all the significant decisions have been made, it’s time to create a wireframe with UI design elements in mind.
Before you begin building your website yourself or hand off your ideas to a graphic designer, make sure you’re communicating as clearly as you can to help others visualize what the final product should look like.
To create a high-fidelity wireframe, begin adding specific text. You don’t need an extensive long-form copy, but seeing how your headers, buttons, and calls to action look in place will help you refine your website even further. If you choose, you can add additional elements like color and logos.
Though high-fidelity wireframes take more time to complete, they help convey the user interface’s small details and visual communication, which can be hard to visualize and test in earlier stages.
Small color shifts can change your website’s hierarchy of design elements, changing how users interact and expect it to function.
Once you’re satisfied with your wireframe, you can create your website or move to another stage that adds functionality and interactive prototyping.
How To Create a Wireframe in Kadence WP
Although the initial sketches of your wireframe need nothing more than paper, once it’s time to add an accurately scaled page element, you’ll probably need the help of a wireframing tool.
There are many options out there that vary in difficulty and features. In the end, you don’t absolutely need a specialized tool for wireframing, but it can make the process go a lot more quickly.
You can create a drag-and-drop wireframe directly on your WordPress website with the help of Kadence WP.
Here’s how:
Once you have Kadence Blocks installed, open up WordPress like you would to make a new post. Then in the top toolbar, click Design Library.
Then click the tab that says Wireframe Library.
You’ll see several wireframe templates. There are a ton to choose from, but sorting by function can help narrow down your choices.
Final Thoughts — How To Create a Wireframe: 5 Simple Steps
A wireframe is an essential tool for every UX designer and thoughtful website owner. These blueprints for your website help you to create a more satisfying user experience, communicate your ideas, and test users’ reactions to your website before committing to every choice.
When all it takes to start is a pen and paper, there’s no reason not to try creating a wireframe to plan out your website.
Add in user research, information architecture, and more detail, and you’ll have a high-fidelity wireframe that ensures your team can create a website that satisfies you and your users’ expectations.
If wireframes aren’t enough to visualize the website of your dreams, try out Bluehost’s Website Builder. Its intuitive, easy-to-use features help you map out and test everything before you commit.
Frequently asked questions about how to create a wireframe
A wireframe is a visual blueprint outlining the layout and structure of a digital project. It’s crucial as it helps designers plan user interface elements, content placement, and interactions early in the process, ensuring a clear direction before proceeding to detailed design.
An effective wireframe includes basic outlines of content blocks, navigation, buttons, and essential elements. It prioritizes layout over aesthetics, facilitating collaboration and enabling quick iterations in the design process.
Yes, low-fidelity wireframes focus on layout and hierarchy, while high-fidelity wireframes include more detail and visual elements. Use low-fidelity for initial concepts and high-fidelity when moving towards the final design stages.
Popular wireframing tools include Sketch, Adobe XD, Figma, and Balsamiq. Choose the one that suits your preferences and project requirements for creating structured and visually informative wireframes.
Keep users in mind by considering their needs, preferences, and expected interactions. Prioritize usability and intuitive navigation, making sure that the wireframe aligns with a seamless user experience.
Wireframes set the foundation for a coherent user experience by mapping out content placement and interactions. They provide a visual guide for designers and stakeholders to align on the user journey.
