Wireframing is the art of creating an outlined prototype or storyboard of a website purely to illustrate placement, alignment and hierarchy. It comes into play just before the design phase and focuses on the content and site goals rather than design so there are no distractions when it comes to deciding on the placement of the information. It’s also a great way of highlighting any potential problems before getting to the design, where it might be harder to change elements.

Visually it will represent only the bare bones of the site. There will be no graphics whatsoever just like the wireframe represented on the left.

The wireframe should be preceded by a detailed sitemap which outlines every page so it’s easy to visualise the user’s journey through the site.

Used together the sitemap and wireframe are the perfect tools in planning out a new website or redesign and will make the design and build processes much smoother.

Should I wireframe my website?

As rough guide I would generally say that for a static site under 10 pages with limited content, user journeys and goals for the site may be obvious enough to not warrant a wireframe.

However if your site involves complex user interaction, an e-commerce or social networking site for example, or if it’s a large site with multiple user goals, wireframes would be highly recommended.

More often than not though, whether a site adopts the wireframing stage might depend on other factors such as budget. Where there is limited budget, this is often the area that gets pushed aside. However the importance of wireframing and the whole planning phase should not be underestimated, and for a smoothly functioning site it is vital.

The background:

Lorem ipsum is the name given to the filler text used in the digital and print media industries. It originates from a piece of classical Latin literature from 45BC but the text you may see used nowadays has been used since the 1500s.

Over time there has been many variations on the traditional Lorum Ipsum text, some with hidden humour, others with made up words. But the traditional text uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words as well as standard sentence structures.

But why use it?

Firstly and more commonly in these industries it is used to avoid distraction. When trying to display a layout and communicating other aspects of a design it is important that the text does not distract in any way so it is possible to gain feedback solely for the purposes required. The normal distribution of letters within the text and its untranslatable nature mean it is perfect for this job as opposed to using ‘text here, text here’ making it at least look like readable English.

Secondly, sometimes the final copy just isn’t ready when a design is completed and ready for presentation, therefore the Lorum Ipsum text is the perfect placeholder.

There will be articles exploring everything from the importance of design, good copy, user experience and Twitter, to simply explaining what ‘branding’ is and why it is important.

Not only this, but there will also be offerings of advice and guidance to those who have a shiny new website and know not what to do with it. Your website’s life starts at upload but it will only grow and achieve what you want it to achieve if you love, nurture and encourage it, much like a child of your own.

You can expect to read articles covering all marketing avenues for your newly launched website such as insights and analysis on Google Adwords, email newsletters and explanations on search engine optimisation.

In time, I hope to have every digital angle covered and no techie stone unturned so you can take as little or as much as you like from this blog.

On a personal note, the aim for this blog was to help my customers with their new websites. I felt some sadness handing over a perfectly designed website when the owners had no real plans in place to tell the world about it. After all, what’s the point in having a website if no-one will see it. So I hope for you it will inspire some genius marketing campaigns.

Another aim addresses the need for customers to understand what they’re getting into. After all I wouldn’t expect someone to sign up for a new website and hand over well-earned cash without researching the topic to some degree. Just like you wouldn’t just show up at the airport if you were planning on trekking to Everest base camp, some background knowledge and planning needs to be done beforehand. Therefore I wanted to use this platform to shed some light on what I do and what I offer as a service, so customers can fully understand what they are paying for.

But of course you don’t have to be a customer or a potential customer to read this blog, if I am able to help anyone through these articles, then it will be worth it.