What are Mockups in Web Design?
Are you looking to get a website designed? Maybe for your business or even a hobby? Well, before you can take that dive inside the world of websites and web design, we highly recommend reading this article as it might be a game changer for you!
If you’re familiar with the world of website design then you might have heard the term ‘mockup’. Don’t be alarmed, it’s not something highly technical or a new domain. Mockups have been in existence for a long time. In fact, even you might have drawn a mockup! Any simulation or a sketch of a product idea can be defined as a mockup.
This is where website mockups come into play!
What is a website mockup?
Simply stating, a website mockup is an image of your website and how it would feel if it was to be developed. It’s just a combination of images, graphics, and a UI all made up together so that you can actually get an idea of the look of your website before you put in your investment. A website mockup in textbook terms can be defined as a “high-fidelity simulation of the final product”.
The major word here is simulation as it’s just a simulation and not it’s developed form. The interesting thing here is that mockups are a quick solution to your design needs and can align your thought process on the very idea of a website. Here are some benefits of website mockup:
1- Error Free Design:
Creating a mockup can change the way your development team initiates the development process. Website mockups can be changed easily once designed, if you feel like certain aesthetics and functionalities haven’t been achieved you can change the course of design.
Once your design keeps getting refined, it can go into the development process without any errors. Also, fixing these errors from a development perspective is quite time consuming so it’s better to check all the boxes for design before initiating the development process.
2- Ease the Development:
Believe it or not, mockup websites can ease the development process significantly. As highlighted before, error free design is something everyone loves and the same goes for the development team. When they know what needs to be done, their job becomes a lot easier which also speeds up the process.
Website mockups allow the processes to get streamlined both from a developer’s perspective and a design purpose as well.
3- The Cost:
The best part is that the costs pertaining to mockup websites are much lower instead of going directly into the development process and finding out that your design shouldn’t have been like it. At times, the idea of a website itself is quite problematic to begin with.
This is the reason why you need mockups for websites because then you’re better able to understand where your idea lies and can actually help you save a lot of costs in the long run.
4- Set the Aesthetics:
Setting up the aesthetics isn’t a process which you decide during the development phase. Aesthetics are important and they can make or break the way your website even appears. Hence it is essential that you have all the aesthetics lined up in accordance to your requirements.
Aesthetic elements include color schemes, typography, images & icons etc. All these things must be decided predevelopment and introduced in the website mockup. Once it appears in front of you, you can make a better decision. Trust us, there will be plenty of changes for you to make once you actually see the mockup for yourself.
5- Interactivity:
A website mockup that doesn’t interact with a user is a lot less useful than a one which does. This is the reason why website mockups should be interactive or clickable. Upon clicking on certain elements in a mockup, one should be able to maneuver within the website. This gives a better idea regarding the structure as well as the overall working of a website. If a website mockup is clickable you can even get to experience how the website would actually be experienced once its developed.
In a Nutshell:
Website mockups can be seen as the closest thing you can get to a real website. It has plenty of benefits as discussed above but the most important one is that it allows you to refine your idea. Things in front of us have a higher impact in comparison to things that are just in our head. Without mockup for websites, it’ll be like throwing darts with a blindfold and hoping to get lucky. Remove the doubt today with Mockup Machine!
