The Website Wireframe Pocket Guide: Examples, Process, and Tools

Welcome to the website wireframe 101! Whether you’re new to the concept or seeking to deepen your understanding, in this article, you will learn everything about wireframing, and get a solid foundation to create efficient and user-friendly website designs.

In this guide, you will:

So, without further ado, let’s get started and unlock the power of website wireframes.

 

The wireframe is a visual representation of a website’s structure and layout. It serves as a blueprint for the design, providing a skeletal framework that outlines the key elements and functionality of a web page. Unlike a fully designed mockup, it focuses on the structural aspects rather than the visual aesthetics. This is why, by simply stripping away the distractions of colors, typography, and detailed graphics, wireframes allow designers and stakeholders to focus on the core layout and user experience.

Wireframes typically include essential components such as headers, navigation menus, content sections, buttons, and other interactive elements. They basically outline the placement, hierarchy, and relationships between these elements, which gives a clear visual of the website’s information architecture.

Since wireframes present the layout in a simplified manner, they make collaboration and feedback among designers, developers, and clients easier. This itself ensures a solid foundation for the subsequent design and development phases.

To sum up:

This example by Yana Vynohradova shows a wireframe for a sugaring salon’s landing page. Stripped of all color and eye-catching visuals, we can easily understand the landing page’s structure and layout.

 

As you might have guessed, creating a website wireframe is a mandatory step in the design process. Now, let’s see why.

Here are several reasons why you should incorporate wireframing into your web design workflow:

✔️ Visualize Structure and Layout:

Wireframes provide a visual representation of the website’s structure, allowing you to see how various elements and content will be organized on each page. This helps you identify any potential issues with layout and navigation early on, ensuring a solid foundation for the design.

✔️ Focus on User Experience (UX):

Wireframes prioritize the user experience by emphasizing functionality and usability. By mapping out user interactions, you can identify and address potential usability issues, improving the overall user experience before investing time and resources in the detailed design phase.

✔️ Iterate and Refine Ideas:

Wireframes offer a flexible platform to iterate and refine your design ideas. They allow you to experiment with different layouts, information hierarchies, and content placements without getting bogged down in visual details. This iterative process helps you fine-tune the user flow and ensure optimal usability.

✔️ Streamline Communication and Collaboration:

Wireframes serve as a visual communication tool, enabling effective collaboration among designers, developers, and stakeholders. By presenting a clear structural representation, wireframes facilitate discussions, feedback, and decision-making, ensuring everyone is aligned on the website’s direction.

✔️ Save Time and Resources:

By identifying and resolving design issues early in the wireframing stage, you can save significant time and resources in the later stages of the project. This proactive approach minimizes the need for extensive redesigns or reworks during development, leading to a more efficient and cost-effective process.

Here we have a wireframe by Adam Kalin for a special app CheerMeOn that showcases what will the user experience look like for two users if one invites the other to their fan club via SMS. In this case, wireframing this scenario allows the designer to visualize the user flow, ensuring a seamless experience. Here he easily plans the layout, organizing screens for SMS invitations and acceptance via the most basic visual elements. This facilitates early feedback and improves the overall user interface design.

 

Wireframing is an integral part of both UI and UX design processes. Although the terms UI and UX are closely related, they refer to distinct aspects of the design discipline. Understanding the role of wireframing in each of these domains helps clarify its significance in the overall design process.

UI Design and Wireframing:

UI design focuses on the visual elements of a website or application, including the layout, typography, colors, and interactive components. Wireframing in UI design establishes the foundational structure and layout of the user interface. When UI designers create wireframes, they can outline the placement and relationships of various interface elements, ensuring a visually appealing and functional design.

UX Design and Wireframing:

UX design encompasses the entire user journey and overall experience when interacting with a website or application. Wireframing also plays a role here as it helps UX designers map out user flows, information architecture, and interactions. This way they can focus on the usability and intuitiveness of the interface, ensuring that the user’s needs and goals are met effectively.

To sum up, wireframing bridges the gap between UI and UX design. It allows designers from both disciplines to collaborate and align their efforts for creating the aesthetics and functionality of the product.

By the way, if you wish to learn about the difference between UI and UX Design in more depth, check out our UI vs UX guide where we explain the similarities and differences between the two; the responsibilities of UI and UX designers, and a typical 10-step UI/UX design process.

 

When it comes to the design process, it’s important to understand the distinctions between mockups, wireframes, and prototypes. While these terms are often used interchangeably, they represent different stages and levels of fidelity in the design journey.

Here’s the difference between the three:

Wireframes

Wireframes are low-fidelity visual representations that focus on the structure and layout of a website or application. They are typically devoid of detailed design elements and visual aesthetics. Wireframes serve as a blueprint, outlining the placement of key elements and navigation paths. They are essential for defining the information architecture and user flow, facilitating collaboration and early feedback among designers and stakeholders.

Here we have an example of wireframes for a study course website by Asiya Akter with placeholders and a basic layout.

Mockups

They are high-fidelity representations that showcase the visual design of a website or application. Unlike wireframes, mockups incorporate visual elements such as colors, typography, and imagery. They provide a more polished and realistic representation of the final product, enabling stakeholders to envision the visual aesthetics and user interface in greater detail. Mockups help designers refine the visual design and align it with branding guidelines.

This example shows the card screen mockups for a mobile banking app by David Odafe.

Prototypes

The prototypes are interactive representations of a website or application, allowing users to interact with the design and simulate the intended user experience. They can vary in fidelity, ranging from basic interactive wireframes to fully functional and clickable designs. They are used to test and validate the usability and functionality of the design, uncovering potential issues and gathering user feedback before development.

Here is an example of an interactive prototype for an eCommerce shoe store app by Ibrahim Khalil that showcases the user experience.

In summary, wireframes establish structure, mockups bring the visual design to life, and prototypes enable interaction and validation of the user experience.

Highlights:

 

Wireframes come in various types, each offering a different level of fidelity and serving specific purposes in the design process. Designers can choose to utilize one or multiple types, depending on the complexity of the project and their specific goals. The types of wireframes range from the lowest to the highest fidelity, allowing for flexibility in applying changes based on feedback. Let’s explore the different types of wireframes, considering the advantages they offer at each level.

Hand-drawn Sketch Wireframe

At the lowest fidelity level, hand-drawn sketch wireframes provide a quick and simple way to visualize the layout and content placement. They allow for rapid ideation and iteration, making them ideal for early-stage conceptualization and gathering initial feedback.

This is an example of a hand-drawn sketch wireframe for a fitness app tracker by Rishabh Rai.

Detailed Hand-drawn Wireframe

Building upon sketch wireframes, detailed hand-drawn wireframes offer a more refined representation. They include additional annotations and labels, helping to communicate design intentions more precisely while still maintaining a relatively low fidelity.

A much more detailed and polished hand-drawn wireframe for a CRM system by An Zhuravlev.

Digital Low-fidelity Wireframe

Moving into the digital realm, low-fidelity wireframes created using dedicated software tools provide a more structured approach. They offer greater flexibility and scalability, allowing for quick modifications and adjustments. With minimal design elements, they focus on the core layout and content without getting caught up in visual aesthetics.

As we can see in this low-fidelity wireframe example by Zahidul Hossain for a medical landing page, the layout is much more polished and the website structure is much clearer.

Digital High-fidelity Wireframe

As fidelity increases, high-fidelity wireframes incorporate more visual details, such as colors, typography, and imagery. They provide a clearer representation of the final product while still prioritizing structure and functionality. High-fidelity wireframes are beneficial when presenting the design to stakeholders or conducting usability testing.

Here we have a higher-fidelity wireframe by Luke Krzemiński for a career page builder that showcases the functionality of the editor.

Low-fidelity Interactive Wireframe

This type of wireframe adds basic interactivity, allowing users to interact with clickable elements or simple transitions. It helps simulate the user experience and gather feedback on usability, ensuring the design meets user expectations and requirements.

This is an example of an interactive wireframe for an onboarding screen by Alex Gilev.

Wireframe Mockup

Combining wireframe elements with design aesthetics, wireframe mockups bridge the gap between wireframes and the final visual design. They incorporate visual styles, such as typography, color schemes, and imagery, giving a more polished representation of the design concept while maintaining the flexibility to make changes based on feedback.

This example by Yehor Haiduk already shows not only the functionality and user flow but also the overall aesthetics, logo, typography, color scheme, layout, and other visuals.

When creating different types of wireframes, designers can tailor their approach to the project’s complexity and specific design needs. Starting with lower-fidelity wireframes enables easy iteration and adaptation based on feedback, while higher-fidelity wireframes provide a more detailed and realistic representation of the final product.

 

With the theory out of the way, let’s create some wireframes. In this section, we’ll guide you through the essential steps to craft a well-crafted wireframe that captures your website’s structure and functionality.

✔️ Step 1: Define Goals and Requirements

Begin by clarifying your design goals and understanding the project requirements. Identify the target audience, the purpose of the website, and the key features or content that need to be incorporated.

✔️ Step 2: Research and Gather Inspiration

Conduct research to gather inspiration and insights. Explore existing websites, industry trends, and design patterns that align with your goals. This research phase will help inform your wireframe design decisions.

✔️ Step 3: Outline the Information Hierarchy

Establish a clear information hierarchy for your website’s content. Determine the most important elements and prioritize their placement within the wireframe. Consider the flow of information and how users will navigate through the site.

✔️ Step 4: Sketch the Initial Wireframe

Start by sketching a rough draft of the wireframe on paper or using digital sketching tools. Focus on the overall layout, positioning of key elements, and the general structure of each page. Keep it simple and iterate as needed.

✔️ Step 5: Refine the Wireframe

Transfer your initial sketch into a digital wireframing tool or design software. Create a more detailed and refined version of the wireframe, ensuring alignment with your goals and requirements. Consider the visual hierarchy, spacing, and overall usability.

✔️ Step 6: Add Basic Interactions (Optional)

Depending on the level of fidelity desired, you can choose to incorporate basic interactions into your wireframe. This can include clickable buttons, navigation menus, or other interactive elements that simulate the user experience.

✔️ Step 7: Review and Iterate

Share your wireframe with stakeholders, team members, or potential users for feedback. Gather their insights and incorporate relevant suggestions to refine and improve the wireframe further. Iteration is key to creating a successful design.

✔️ Step 8: Annotate and Document

Add annotations to your wireframe to provide clarity on specific design decisions or functionalities. Document any important notes, such as explanations of interactive elements or specific requirements, to guide the development process.

✔️ Step 9: Handoff to Designers and Developers

Once the wireframe is finalized, it serves as a valuable reference for designers and developers. They can use it as a blueprint to create the visual design and implement the functionality, ensuring the final product aligns with the wireframe’s structure and goals.

Remember, wireframing is an iterative process, so don’t be afraid to revisit and refine your wireframe as needed. It’s a valuable tool to communicate your design vision and set a strong foundation for a user-friendly and visually appealing website.

 

When creating wireframes, it’s important to consider the varying screen sizes of different devices, such as mobile phones, tablets, and desktop screens. Additionally, keep in mind that the window on a desktop can be scaled up or down, affecting the viewing size. To ensure accurate measurements, it is recommended to use pixel measurements rather than inches or points. Here are the standard sizes for each screen type:

Remember, these sizes are general recommendations, and you can adapt them based on your specific project requirements and the target devices you are designing for. The goal is to create wireframes that accurately represent the layout and functionality of your website on different screen sizes, ensuring a consistent and user-friendly experience.

 

Now let’s look at some wireframing in action via a couple of really good examples from the web. These examples provide practical demonstrations of how wireframes effectively communicate website structures and layouts, including the final product design as well.

The first website wireframe examples comes from a landing page concept for Meme X by Olha Olha where we can see the layout and overall structure of the page.

And here’s how these wireframes translate into the final product:

Next, we have the design concept for an insurance business by Sharin Khaham where we can easily compare the low-fidelity sketch wireframes and the final product next to one another:

Kateryna Nakonechna also shares her case study for designing the landing page for Clay modeling courses. So we can see what the desktop wireframes look like.

As well as the final landing page for both desktop and mobile:

The following example doesn’t have a final product screenshot, since it’s mainly a concept to inspire designers. Here we have digital wireframes for a restaurant website by M Nadeem Rasheed for desktop and mobile.

And last, here’s a simple eCommerce homepage concept for Baskin-Robbins by Ludivine Franco with both digital wireframes and what the final result looks like:

 

Wireframing tools enable design teams to create high-level blueprints of a product, fostering discussions on components and overall functionality. These tools facilitate collaboration among team members, regardless of their location, and offer visibility to stakeholders who have access to the tool.

So, let’s explore some wireframing systems, highlighting their best use cases, and notable features, and providing snapshots of their user interfaces to give you a glimpse of what to expect.

Figma: For Drag-and-Drop Wireframe Kits

Figma is a dynamic design platform tailored for web and graphic design, with a strong emphasis on the future of the web. It offers a plethora of innovative features to expedite the design-to-development process and empower designers.

Let’s explore the key aspects of Figma:

• Wireframe Kits: Figma provides wireframe kits that facilitate idea validation and accelerate design workflows. These kits enable you to transform wireframes into clickable prototypes effortlessly, incorporating interactivity without coding.
• Pre-built Website Components: The platform offers a wide range of pre-built website components, including navigation bars, headers, features, and buttons. With Figma’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface, creating wireframes becomes accessible to anyone.
• Customization Options: Figma allows you to customize the provided components to match your desired style, directly from your browser. You can personalize various design elements to ensure the wireframes align with your project requirements.

Pricing: Starts at $15/user/month and is free for students and educators.

In the meantime, you can also check our Figma vs Sketch review where we make a comparison between the two tools so you could easily discover which one suits your specific needs, workflow, budget, and preferences.

Adobe XD for UX Design

Adobe XD, an integral part of the Adobe Creative Suite, is a widely-used vector-based design tool tailored for UI and UX design. With its versatility, it empowers designers to develop stunning applications and websites. Unlike traditional design tools, Adobe XD enables the creation of fluid and dynamic designs that push the boundaries of user experience. Let’s delve into the notable aspects of Adobe XD:

• Wireframing Templates: Adobe XD provides a range of pre-designed wireframing templates, offering a quick starting point for your design work. These templates help streamline the wireframing process, allowing you to kickstart your projects efficiently.
• Versatile Design Support: Adobe XD supports web design, app design, brand design, and game design. It offers a comprehensive platform that caters to diverse design needs, ensuring a seamless transition from wireframing to delivery for the development team.

Pricing: $9.99/user/month or as part of the Creative Cloud

You can also check out our comparative Figma vs Adobe XD review, based on factors such as pricing, performance, collaboration, functionalities, and everything else that could help you make a decision.

InVision: For Collaboration

InVision is an innovative workspace that centralizes workflows, allowing designers to collaborate seamlessly throughout the project life cycle. With a wide array of features and integrations, it empowers teams to streamline their design process and create impactful wireframes. Let’s explore the key aspects of InVision:

• Real-time Collaboration: InVision provides a real-time workspace that enables designers to collaborate effectively and efficiently.
• Templates: The design software includes over 100 templates from partners such as Microsoft and Atlassian, providing a diverse range of options to accelerate design results.
• Embedding Capabilities: InVision allows you to embed editable Google Docs, Mode dashboards, Jira issues, and Kanban boards, consolidating your design and project management resources in one place.
• Whiteboard Collaboration and Wireframes: InVision combines the power of whiteboard collaboration with the clarity of wireframes, allowing teams to prototype and iterate rapidly while facilitating feedback and decision-making.

Pricing: $4.95/user/month, and a limited free version is also available.

Lucidchart: for Diagrams and Mapping

Lucidchart is a powerful web-based wireframe app designed to visualize complex ideas and foster alignment among stakeholders. With an extensive library of shapes at your disposal, you can effortlessly build wireframes for various projects, be it websites or mobile apps. Lucidchart offers ready-to-use templates to kickstart your wireframing journey.

Additionally, Lucidchart integrates well with Lucid’s virtual whiteboarding application, Lucidspark, offering a comprehensive collaboration experience throughout your entire workflow.

Pricing: Starts from $7.95; it has a limited free plan

Mockplus: for Interactive Wireframes

Mockplus is a cloud-based design platform dedicated to prototyping and wireframing, emphasizing team collaboration and an intuitive design experience. With pre-built components, icons, and drag-and-drop functions, you can effortlessly implement realistic screen designs. The platform offers various testing options, allowing team members to provide feedback through the commenting feature.

Pricing starts at $12.95/user/month and also has a free version.

You can also go further and check out the 10 handiest web design tools created to make lives easier for designers all over the world.

Website Wireframe Kits

The best wireframe kits are determined by two essential factors: simplicity and compatibility with various platforms like Sketch, Figma, and XD. These elements are crucial as they ensure an intuitive and user-friendly wireframing experience, allowing you to effortlessly create and navigate your website’s skeletal framework. Choosing a wireframe kit that excels in both simplicity and compatibility is key to streamlining your design process and achieving efficient results.

 

✔️ FreeWire

Compatible with: Adobe XD versions

FreeWire is a sleek and user-friendly wireframe kit for Adobe XD, that offers a range of basic elements your website may require, including About, Features, Testimonials, and Sign Up sections. It’s ideal for creating a blog, an eCommerce site, a service business page, or a portfolio, FreeWire is an excellent choice for various website purposes.

 

✔️ Wireframy

Compatible with: Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD versions

Wireframy is the ideal wireframe kit for both beginners and professional designers. Its clean and simple interface ensures effortless navigation, making it user-friendly for everyone. With the added convenience of drag-and-drop functionality, creating wireframes becomes a seamless experience.

It offers an abundance of elements such as 10 color styles, 15 typefaces, and a vast collection of over 1,500 icons. Additionally, you can leverage its extensive flow charts and access more than 75 template examples for your design projects. Despite its elegance, Wireframy stands out as one of the easiest wireframe kits available.

 

✔️ Paper Wireframe Kit

Compatible with: Photoshop, Sketch, and Figma

Why complicate your wireframing process when you can simply streamline it? Paper may be a straightforward set, but it holds the power to create remarkable wireframes for your website. As described on its page, “It’s like a sketch on paper” – effortlessly simple and effective.

 

✔️ Basic Wireframe Kit

Compatible with: Photoshop, Sketch, and Figma

Basic is designed to streamline the intricate task of creating a skeletal framework for complex websites. With Basic, simplicity reigns supreme, making it suitable for both beginners and experienced users. When it comes to wireframing, simple truly does work wonders!

 

✔️ Sections

Compatible with: Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD

With over 330 layouts and seamless customizability, it’s no surprise that Sections stands out as one of the top wireframe kits in the market today! This versatile kit is compatible with Sketch, Figma, Photoshop, and XD, making it an excellent choice, no matter which platform you prefer to work on.

 

Feeling motivated and inspired to roll up your sleeves? Awesome. In case you need a web development partner for your current and future projects, here at htmlBurger, we are more than glad to discuss your needs. Wanna talk?

Let’s Wrap It Up!

To sum up, website wireframes transform abstract ideas into tangible structures, guiding designers from initial sketches to interactive prototypes. Collaborating through wireframes streamlines the workflow, ensuring a user-friendly interface.

With wireframe tools and kits, designers break boundaries and craft exceptional user experiences with ease. As technology evolves and user expectations change, wireframing remains essential, anchoring the purposeful design of every website element. We hope this guide gave you all you need to start wireframing!

In the meantime, let’s explore more insights and resources on web design and web development by checking out our other articles!

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