

Designers might also share multiple mockup versions with stakeholders and ask for feedback, or test different versions on users.Īdditionally, mockups keep internal teams aligned on the final product. If you’re asked to change a design aspect of the site, you have the freedom to do so in the mockup. Mockups are also easy to share with stakeholders and clients for eliciting feedback. Optimizing your design in this phase is important - once you move on, even small changes result in wasted developer resources. For example, if you think your home page would read better with a different font and background color, you can draft an alternative mockup and directly compare the two. Visual accessibility, including color contrastīecause they’re basically images, mockups can be easily altered, making it easy to test alternate versions and choose the best one.Buttons, CTAs, forms, and other prominent page elements.For little cost, they let you visualize and finalize the key design aspects of a website, including: Mockups are a key phase in the design process. Once the prototype is approved, the website’s design is finally handed over to a development team that programs the website and prepares it for launch. Designers use prototypes for user testing to receive valuable feedback about the site’s usability. While not the final coded website, a prototype simulates a website’s look and behavior as closely as possible. In prototyping, the mockup is converted into a high-fidelity, interactive demonstration of the website. Below, we have a low-fidelity mockup on the left and a high-fidelity mockup on the right: Like wireframes, mockups can have different levels of fidelity. It’s also here that designers will receive feedback from stakeholders and iterate on their mockup designs before continuing to prototypes.

A mockup takes the fundamental layouts from a wireframe and adds content, branding, and styling. Mockups are the next phase after wireframes, when low-fidelity sketches become fleshed-out website designs. In the example below, the wireframe on the left is low-fidelity and the one on the right is high-fidelity: It acts as the basis for designers to add visual elements on top. A wireframe is a blueprint of the website that maps the basic functionality, elements, content, layout. In the ideation/research phase, website and product designers determine what the website needs to accomplish and what it needs to include to satisfy the client and users. While approaches to site development vary, most will include five broad phases: ideation and research, wireframing, mockups, prototyping, and programming. Website mockups are made in the middle of the website creation process.

These are added to the design later in the prototyping phase and eventually in the final website. It doesn’t contain moving parts like animations, pop-ups, image sliders, clickable buttons, or working links. Importantly, a website mockup is static - it shows how a website looks, but not how it behaves. A mockup is designed to resemble the final product, but it is not yet functional (i.e., you can’t interact with it).Ī website mockup will typically include a site’s main layouts, page elements, branding, colors, fonts, and content like text and images (though it may use placeholder content like lorem ipsum text and stock images), with the goal of simulating the final website for designers, developers, product managers, clients, and other stakeholders. A website mockup is a static visual model of what a web page, website, or web application will look like in its final form.
