A medium-sized website contains no less than 50 pages. After reading about the importance of wireframing you might say it is a waste of time to create a wireframe of over 50 pages. And you might be right. Very often it only makes sense to wireframe separate elements of a website’s user interface design.
Let’s say you are creating an online store. What user interface design elements would you include in your wireframe? The simple answer is: those that matter. But let’s take a closer look at the most useful parts to wireframe.
To begin with, I would certainly create a wireframe of the homepage. The homepage is important because it serves as an entrance to your website. Its layout may be critical to the number of sales you reach in the end. The homepage also shows repeating elements like navigation. The wireframe of a homepage alone is often enough to judge whether navigation is labeled effectively, whether there is too much or too little information, whether information is distributed on the page the right way and whether the call to action is visible.
It would be useful to wireframe the navigation processes that are important for the website, like in the case of an online store, the purchase process. Creating wireframes for the purchase process can help determine how good the concept is. Some wireframe software that allows wireframe testing can actually allow you to see at what stage of the process a user might get lost, feel frustrated and drop out. A good wireframe prototype can help you polish the purchase process and prevent customer dropouts.
According to statistics, a great number of users give up when it comes to signing up. This is another important process that I would wireframe. Testing a set of wireframes of the sign-up process will reveal its potential drawbacks, like too many fields or complicated instructions.
This way, you can break your website into the elements which are the most significant for you, and wireframe them separately. Wireframing does not have to be lengthy and repetitive – your wireframes should only be useful and therefore focus on the critical aspects of your user interface design.
