What website wireframe prototype do user prefer?

Contributed by Poll the People

Wireframes are a common way of quickly prototyping a website, software, or app. They are typically basic layouts or concepts with little color or branding. They allow teams, decision makers, and designers to show how a system might work for testing, stakeholders, and end users. When testing wireframe prototypes you are looking to get early feedback on the designs without worrying about the complex branding or design elements that appear in the final website.

You can use almost any design tools to create a wireframe prototype. When testing wireframes with Poll the People, most users create them with Adobe XD, Figma, Canva, or even powerpoint, but there are many other tools that work great for creating wireframes. You can also simply sketch your wireframe prototype on paper and take a picture to use in a test.

Poll the People is the perfect platform for testing wireframes because tests are completed in less than an hour and are extremely cost-effective. You receive the same quantitative and qualitative data when testing wireframes with our platform that you would get when testing high-fidelity websites.

In this test, two simple wireframe websites have been created without branding or complex designs, this is just to give users a basic idea of how the homepage will look and be navigated. The tester asks users which design is more appealing or has a better layout to understand the user-friendliness of their website before creating the final product.

When analyzing test results for wireframe prototype tests, make sure to ask about understanding, difficulties with the design, or other issues that might hurt the user experience once the website is done. Save the design questions for high-fidelity designs, instead focus your test on functionality of the design.

In the example test, you can see that it was a worthwhile exercise, the participants chose the wireframe that displayed the best layout, communicated the desired actions the best, or were the easiest to understand. The results can help you create the final product as they give you insights into user opinions and identify confusion or roadblock participants had.

Don’t be afraid to put your designs to the test early and often, finding problems when you’re still in the early stages of designing or changing a website will mean that there will be less redesign down the road. Your end users will get a more user-friendly product and the business or brand will attract more visitors.