Website Wireframing Made Easy with Balsamiq

As a business owner you want to be involved in every step of your company’s growth; this includes building a new website.

If you feel out of touch or as though you can’t help in the process beyond just giving your suggestions and hoping that the designer can visualize what you are saying, don’t worry we have a solution for you: create a wireframe.

Wait, don’t start shaking your head or thinking to yourself “I don’t even know what a wireframe is and you expect me to make one!” It’s actually a lot easier than you think.

A wireframe is basically a bare bones sketch or outline of what you are envisioning for your website. There is no actual design work or intensive skill needed to create one, just you, your computer, and your ideas. Think of a wireframe as your skeleton then you send your skeleton off to the designer who will make the ‘skin’ or outer beauty appear, and finally to the developer who will create the brain and inner workings of your site.

Before you think this is too good to be true I should mention that I was once in your shoes. I thought there was no way I could articulate what I wanted my website to look like and that I would spend loads of unnecessary time trying to explain where I wanted things and how I wanted them to work on the pages.

I say ‘once was in your shoes’ because during my career I was introduced to a software called Balsamiq. With Balsamiq I was able to create wireframes in a matter of minutes depending how extensive my project was. This software gives you pre-made images that you drag and drop into place to create your website’s skeleton. You can change text, colors, and sizes so you can perfect your wireframe. Even better is their online bank of new images that you can download to your computer giving you up-to-date images for things like social media, graphs, mobile devices, etc.

Check out this video from Balsamiq and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about: