According to legendary American entrepreneurs and authors, Tom & David Kelley: ” If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings.” This statement is true because a prototype of your website is a clickable journey of your proposed design. A prototype of a website may not have all the features of the final build, but it does represent the basic layout and core functionality.
With the help of website prototyping, entrepreneurs and designers get an idea of the visual version of the website that allows them to understand how the website will work and interact with the end users in the future. Let’s explore the top five reasons why it is essential for you to build a prototype for your website that can give your final product the edge it need to survive in the competitive world.
1. Seamless Assessing & Testing Of The Designs
It is quite possible that the designs and drawings that your team has prepared are not that much capable to depict your final product in the real-world. This is where website prototyping comes into the picture.
By creating a product prototype, you can get an idea of how the real version of the product will look like. Also, you can identify the aspects that are worthwhile and the areas that need to be modified.
Creating a website prototype, allows the designers to assess the product and test it before it goes into the actual process of development. Therefore, developing prototypes of the websites is equally important for giant enterprises as well as small companies and startups.
2. Helps In Determining Production Costs & Sort Relevant Issues
The prototyping allows business managers and designers to get accuracy on how much it costs to build an app and web. They can identify the areas that can be altered, combined or eliminated. This helps them to streamline the overall development process. Also, they can minimize the actual cost of production.
In addition, with the help of a prototype, it becomes easier for you to discover the steps that are creating problems. You can take the necessary measures in order to rectify those aspects before actual production begins. With the help of prototyping, the design team can figure out the most favorable technique for production.
3. Allows The Project Stakeholders & End Customers To Have An Idea Of The Final Product
When you have a website prototype when you are doing the marketing presentation to the stakeholders and investors of the project, it becomes easier for you to give them an idea of what the final version of the product will look like early in the production lifecycle. These people can assess the prototype and can give their feedback so that you can modify it and make it in accordance with their specific requirements.
A prototype gives life to a raw idea or concept and it becomes a lot easier for you to sell that idea to a potential customer. With the active participation of the end customers, the website prototype will experience a few rounds of usability testing and will get constantly refined unless the design team and the relevant project members are satisfied give their consent to progress it to the next phase of development.
4. Saves A Lot Of Your Time & Money
Website prototyping is a crucial part of the entire design process, as it saves a lot of your precious time and money in the early stages of the development process. With the help of a website prototype, you can identify the problem areas and can solve them then and there so that to avoid any complications in the future.
The prototyping saves the entrepreneurs from spending their valuable time and money on a product that is not worthy and useful. There is no need for them to regret a couple of months after launch of the website that it’s not working the way they wanted it to.
5. Ease Of Getting Into Patents
When you are working with a unique and novel concept, you need to consider patents. There is no use if you end up building a product only to have one of your rivals working on a similar concept because you forgot to patent the key aspects of your unique design. Therefore, it is mandatory for you to patent your design so that to prevent it from getting stolen by your competitors.
When you create a prototype, you can sit with a patent attorney and evaluate design features which can be patentable. Also, you can figure out that which part of your prototype and design breach patent of others and how you can modify these before starting the actual development process.
Overall, we can conclude that website prototypes are interactive mockups that can be used to gather feedback and gain consent from project stakeholders and end customers. There are several prototyping tools available in the market which can help you in developing an ideal prototype for your website. But it is tricky to choose the most appropriate tool in order to test your concept and give it life.
Anubhuti Shrivastava is a content crafter at Arkenea, a custom software development company helping entrepreneurs and businesses build successful web and mobile apps. She is passionate about writing articles on topics related to design and the software development industry.
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