People are demanding about good website design these days. If the website isn’t user-friendly, nobody will scroll it despite exclusive content.
That’s why we’ve decided to create a full guide on how to create a website design mockup. Additionally, we’ll discuss possible pitfalls and how to simplify the development for designers and software engineers.
What is Website Mockup?
Wireframe means a simple sketch of the website, but mockup stands for the almost finished design. The mockup shows all the components of the website along with chosen colors, shapes, and so on.
It’s possible to consider wireframe, mockup, and prototype as steps to the final product.
As you can see, the first step is a wireframe. It displays only the necessary elements of the website and their places.
As for mockup, it shows the style of the page, colors, shapes, and more. Mockup provides you with an overall view of the page.
Prototype stands for a clickable website that can be tested since it has several functions. You can use a prototype to show the investors your concept.
Why Do You Need a Mockup for Website?
During web design process, you need to draw wireframes. After that, it’s crucial to create a mockup and a prototype. Mockup brings several advantages to both designers and product owners.
It’s high time to discuss the benefits for designers.
- Detect the challenges beforehand. The imagined design may look different in real life. So, it’s essential to see the project in reality. Creating a mockup, a designer can see the drawbacks and change everything.
- Offer a choice. It’s ok for designers and customers to have a different vision of the final product. Mockup allows designers to show other solutions.
- Easy to hook a client. Sometimes it’s complicated to explain the designer’s idea to the client. Seeing a mockup, the customer understands the concept better.
Mockup creation also brings some advantages to the product owner.
- Attract investors. Of course, it’s better to show a prototype to potential investors, but it can be quite expensive. At the same time, to reduce expenses, you can show investors an attractive mockup. And the better it looks, the more opportunities you have.
- Mockup as a guide. Mockup gives an understanding of how the website feels and functions. So, you can decide whether to change something or not.
- The mockup is changeable. Looking through the mockup of the website, you can see drawbacks and change them easily — for instance, the size of the buttons or the place of the other object.
How to Create a Mockup?
The website design needs to be user-friendly and attractive. Users won’t appreciate perfect design if it’s uncomfortable to use. As a result, a mockup has to unite these two aspects.
To create a perfect website design mockup, you can answer several questions to gain the information. Below you can look through them:
- What is the website idea?
- What features are required?
- What services will the website offer?
- What is the target audience of your website?
- What kind of content will appear on the website?
This data is essential not only for developers but also for designers. Additionally, it’s necessary to provide the UI/UX designers with examples to show the main idea of the project.
After that, the designers can start planning. If this stage goes well, the development process can be faster.
One more point for discussion is the website design on the mobile device. Sometimes, you can decide to replace or delete some elements to make the website more good-looking on the mobile screen.
Steps to Develop a Website Mockup
There are several rules that every designer has to follow to create a website mockup that can attract the clients’ attention.
- Style. At the beginning of the project, you need to choose a website style and follow it. Don’t try to use another color palettes because the users will notice it.
- Logo. It’s necessary to consider the place and the size of your logo. It should be noticeable but not conspicuous.
- Structure. Pay attention to the information structure. It’s much easier to understand the organized data.
- Call-to-action elements. Some buttons can offer to make a purchase, subscribe to the blog, or contact the company. They should stand out to motivate users to click.
- Choose a layout. There are three main types of layout — Z-pattern,F-pattern, and Gutenberg diagram. The choice will depend on the type of your website and the content you want to place.
Common Mistakes When Developing a Mockup
Of course, there are several pitfalls that you need to consider beforehand. Below you can look through the most common.
- Too many details. The website should include only the necessary details. If you aren’t sure about the element, you don’t need it. A lot of content can distract users’ attention.
- Wrong colors. You need to utilize a color scheme to choose only matching colors. Many tools for website design mockup already have such kind of palettes. However, there are inappropriate tools that you don’t need to choose.
- Unreadable text. The colors of the text and background provide the readability of the text. The best choice is the light color of the background and dark color for the text. Users that can’t read the website content will close the page immediately.
- Different gadgets. You should consider how the website will look on various screens, e.g. smartphones, tablets, computers, and so on. You need to make sure that the text and pictures look organized.
- Include links. With the help of links, users have a chance to follow them and find out something new and useful. So, it’s better to pay users attention to the links by highlighting them with a different color.
Wrapping up, to be competitive in the modern market, you need to have an attractive and user-friendly design. Website design mockup is essential since it shows the possible drawbacks of the future product.
