Why you should use a prototyping tool as a web designer

At my first job as a web developer, the web designers at our company used to provide the designs as PDFs, and for a long time I thought this was the norm. 

So much so that when I first started my business I told my clients they could provide me with their website designs in any format they liked, including PDFs.

And looking back I wonder how on earth I managed to develop a website from a PDF file, because you can’t easily extract detailed information from a PDF!

You can’t figure out the size or spacing of any elements on the website. You can’t tell what fonts are being used, and what the size, weight, letter spacing and line height of the text. You can’t reliably extract images or content to use on the website.

I’d have to go back to the designer and ask so many questions before I could get started on the development. And even then, when I had developed the first draft of the website, the revision rounds would take forever because there were so many things I needed to change.

It was a terrible experience for me, the designer and their clients.

Eventually I would change my policy and insist that designs were provided as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator files. At least this way I could extract more information from the designs, and this meant there was less back and forth between me and the designers.

But there was an even better solution out there, and when I discovered it, it completely revolutionised the way I worked; prototyping tools!

Tools like Figma and Adobe XD were created specifically for creating interactive products such as websites. And not only are prototyping tools beneficial to you as the web designer, but they also benefit your web developer and your clients.

In this post, I’m going to share some of the benefits of using a prototyping tool for designing websites.

You can showcase features that would normally be invisible on a static design

Websites are not static; they’re interactive. When we click on a link or a button, we are taken to somewhere else. When we hover over that link or button, it might change colour or shape or size. When we scroll down the page, the header might stick to the top of the page, content might slide or fade into view, or a pop-up might appear.

It’s a lot harder (and often impossible) to show these types of interactive features on a static design. You as the designer know in your mind how you envision all of these features working on a live website, but your client and the web developer can’t determine this out from a static design.

However, an interactive design created using a prototyping tool will allow you to showcase these features to clients and developers before the website is built.

The client gets a better understanding of how the website will work

Clients often struggle to visualise how a website will work and flow when they’re looking at a static design, which can make it difficult for them to provide feedback during the design phase.

Sometimes the client will give the go-ahead for a website to be developed after reviewing the designs because they think they understand how the website will work. But when they see the actual working website for the first time it might not be working as they expected it to.

Prototyping tools can help to eliminate this type of misunderstanding and confusion as the designs they produce are interactive. As the client has a better understanding of how the website will work and flow, interactive designs can help to reduce the number of revisions or changes that need to be made once the website has been developed.

It’s always easier and quicker to make changes to a website during the design phase than it is the development phase, and if we can avoid the need to make changes during the development or revision phases, it will help to keep the project running on schedule and on budget.

It’s quicker and easier to make changes to multiple pages

Prototyping tools make it super quick to make small changes or iterations to the design; even quicker than using traditional design tools.

Let’s say you’re designing a website in Photoshop, and the website has some navigation links in the header. If you wanted to update the links in the header on the design, you’d need to go through and edit each page or artboard to make these changes consistent across the whole website.

However, a prototyping tool will allow you to make that change in one place, and these changes will be implemented across all pages of the website design. Not only does this massively speed up the design process, but it also reduces the chances of inconsistency issues across the entire website design.

It’s easier to hand over the designs to a developer…

As a web developer, I love working with prototyping tools because I can extract so much information from the design without needing to go back and forth with the designer.

Developers can easily grab HEX codes for colours, find out which fonts are being used, copy the images and content to use during the build, and get the accurate sizing and spacing for elements. They don’t need to get out a ruler and start measuring elements manually (seriously, that’s how we used to do it!); with just a couple of clicks we can get accurate sizing information.

…and it will speed up the development process and reduce revisions

Web developers can extract all the information they need from the website design within the prototyping tool, which means there’s less back and forth between the designer and the developer.

Prior to using prototyping tools, when I developed a website I would spend a lot of the project speaking to the designer, asking them for specific details about things like font weights, sizing and spacing. It was a huge waste of time.

But with a prototyping tool, as soon as I receive the design I can get stuck into the development and be left to my own devices.

In addition, because the information extracted from a prototyping tool is accurate, it means that the final website that is developed will more closely match the designs created by the designer. This in turn means fewer revisions.

So what do you think of prototyping tools now? Will you be using a prototyping tool to design your websites going forward?

Are you ready to outsource your website development?

If you’re a web designer who loves creating beautiful websites but hates the coding side of things, I can help!

I specialise in turning designs into fully-functioning WordPress websites that not only look beautiful but that are also functional, strategic and fast.