Hello! I’d love to know how everyone presents website design concepts to their clients. Currently, we use wireframes and style boards in the initial design reveal. The problem is 9 out of 10 times the client can’t envision the look and feel of their new website. Any tips, tricks, and/or new approaches are greatly appreciated! J
I always start off with a site map depicting pages, content on each page, and the menu. While I’ll make style boards for internal purposes, I never share them with a client. Once they sign off on the map, and never before sign off, then I’ll mockup a home page. Once they sign off on that, I’ll begin building the actual site. This process has worked pretty well for me. The major advantage being when scope creep sets in, as it inevitably does on web projects, I can point to the approved site map and let them know when something is out of scoop. They can then decide if they are happy without it or if they want to incur additional charges.
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Great question.
Steve_O, what software do you use to prepare the site maps?
Don’t laugh at me, but I’m old school, so I use Illustrator.
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Hahahaha!
Sorry Steve.
Me too.
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You can use mind mapping software to generate flowcharts. Much easier than Illustrator.
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I like to go from general to more specific with websites, so I start with a simple diagram (I use InDesign because I’m fastest in that) showing what pages will be included and where they will go in the menu. It helps to ensure all content for the site is included. Then i create a diagram showing the content for the home page and an interior page, denoting where a hero image will be, a heading and where it will go, body text and where it will go and the width it will occupy, if there will be a sidebar and what it will contain, what the footer will contain, etc. It’s like a blueprint to ensure nothing gets left out. Then I upload and present the designs in InVision, where the client can comment directly on them, like they would be able to with a PDF.
The tool doesn’t matter. It’s what works for you and that the client can understand.
Okay, thanks. I’ve got a site map all mapped out on paper, so was hoping there was some slick open source genius software designed specifically for mapping.
Rats. 
I’ve used WriteMaps before, and it worked well for small sites. Didn’t try it for larger sites, though, and never used the paid version. But it’s free to try! Also, this is for online mapping, not for a printed map.
If you use Wordpress, there are some plugins for this: http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-create-a-visual-sitemap-in-wordpress/ Slick Sitemap was good but hasn’t been updated in a while. But you would likely only use it for a short time.
I know some designers who present style boards instead of mockups. It’s worked well for them.
Well, I signed up for the free Writemaps trial, but the free version doesn’t support exporting to pdf. However, I’m not ruling out the paid version…
And I like the WP map, although it seems to be limited to existing sites.
Testing out Slickplan. Liking it so far.
Hello, hello.
I know this is quite an outdated post, but I just wanted to share something that’s quite helped me out significantly as a manager.
Being non-technical, wireframes our are go-to. At times, designers would have the chance to make it more sophiscated; other times, it’s simply too much work to have to make everything a high-fidelity UI manually.
I came across a tool – Uizard, which uses AI to transform low-fidelity wireframes (usually sketches) to a working prototype in one’s design system, with code – so it’s really helpful for client presentations. It only takes a few minutes to have the entire prototype transformed from sketches, which has helped me a lot in the iteration process. 