We are here to help you with that; the first step in website building is creating a webpage mockup design. A website mockup will help you create a design blueprint for your website; it allows you to play with different website secure design styles and, thus, helps you bring your vision for the website to life.
How do you create a webpage mockup? That’s what we will guide you with; we will share some of the most valuable tools to help you create a fantastic mockup design for your website.
What is a website mockup?
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A website mockup is a design blueprint of your website. It is a static visualization of what your final website would look like in terms of the design and interface. Although it demonstrates the website’s final look, it is a static model, meaning it still needs to be functional.
It is like an image that contains placeholder images, dummy text and all the essential interface elements, placed in a manner of your choosing to give you a visual representation of what your final website will look like. Website mockups can be very useful to give you a clear, tangible, and visual sample of your website; they can even help you in assessing if a few areas need redesigning or any changes.
- Incorporate images, videos, and other visual elements
- Select typography elements like font styles and font sizes
- Choose a theme and colour schemes and evaluate colour contrast
- Help decide placement for branding elements.
- Selection of page layout.
- Ensure design consistency by ensuring all pages and design elements match the overall design.
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How to create a website mockup?
Now that we know how to begin your website-building journey and what a website mockup is, let’s move on to how to create a website Mockup.
So, to create a mockup, you first need a wireframe. Now, what is a wireframe? A wireframe is a basic website layout with only the primary and most essential interface elements, images, video, and text. It is an approximate visualization of the final video design. A wireframe is a mockup of a website mockup. It provides the building blocks for the website mockup design. While you can skip the wireframing step and move on straight to designing the mockup of the website, we suggest investing some time in working out a low-fidelity wireframe, as it provides you with some beneficial insight for the website design. Wireframes can help you identify the following:
- What elements to include in your website design?
- Where to add these elements?
- And what should be the overall look and feel of your website
Once you have a wireframe ready, you keep adding more detailed elements to it to create a website mockup. The wireframe is your initial building block; once you add colour themes and schemes, relevant text, images, videos and interface elements, you will have your website mockup ready.
We now know how to create a website mockup, but what tools can help you create your website mockup?
So, here are 10 of the best tools to help you create a high-quality and aesthetic website mockup design.
1. Adobe XD
Adobe XD is a website mockup design tool used to build mockups for webpages, websites, web applications, and more.
It is an easy-to-use application that can create high-fidelity mockups and prototypes. It also has a drag-and-drop feature to add design elements, innovative layouts, and grids, among many other features, which makes it a very simple-to-learn application for website mockup design.
Advantages of Adobe XD:
- Easy to design user experiences
- It has a drag-and-drop feature
- It provides material that helps in learning mockup design
Adobe XD is again a paid application, which can also be bought as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. It also offers a free trial version limited to a fixed number of projects.
2. Mockplus
Mockplus is a web-based mockup design tool. It is a handy design mockup tool with an all-in-one, powerful design platform. It is one of the most robust applications for website mockup design, collaboration and prototyping. It features a variety of template designs and a vast library of icons, components and other design elements, which makes creating website mockups a swift and easy task.
Advantages of Mockplus:
- Easy accessibility and work sharing by adding collaborators
- QR code feature enables easy accessibility on multiple devices.
- Allows complete customization of all design elements for a website mockup.
- Real-time project review.
The basic version of Mockplus is free, although it also has a paid version which provides you with the facility to add more collaborators to a project.
3. Balsamiq
Balsamiq is a website mockup design tool. It is also used to create wireframes. Balsamiq gives the experience of working on a whiteboard, which helps you focus on the design and the layout. It also provides for easy wireframe to mockup design transitioning. It is a user-friendly application for wireframes and website design mockups to help you create clear and beautiful mockups in minutes.
Advantages of Balsamiq:
- It gives you the feel of working on a whiteboard.
- It has the drag-and-drop feature to add design elements to your website mockup, which makes it quite user-friendly and easy to learn the software.
Although Balsamiq is a paid application, it does have a free trial version.
4. Moqups
Moqups is a web-based application that helps you create beautiful mockups, wireframes, prototypes and diagrams for websites, web pages, web applications and more. It features a ton of design elements and templates. It is an easy and quick-fix application to create wireframes and mockups. It also allows for easy project collaboration and is a one-stop shop for design tools.
Advantages of Moqups:
- It features real-time work sharing and collaboration with your mockup projects.
- It contains a built-in library comprising icons, fonts and many other design elements.
You can create a free account with limited access to the built-in library.
5. Gravit
Gravit is a vector-based application for website mockup design and UI design and is even quite helpful in designing icons, marketing graphics and concept art. It is a full-fledged design software that is beginner friendly. It was designed to cater to beginners as well as professionals. Gravit features easy cross-platform transitioning.
Advantages of Gravit:
- It also has an online version apart from an on-site version.
- Incredible pixel patterns
- Easy to use, beginner-friendly interface.
It has two versions, a basic free one and a paid version for advanced users and features.
6. Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is one of the leading applications for designing and publishing layouts. It is desktop-based software that is used to create any layout design, be it for a website, a poster, a magazine, a menu or even an ebook; it can be used to create n no. of layout styles for different purposes and is not just confined to website mockup design.
Advantages:
- You get the benefit of using adobe stock and plug-ins.
- With Adobe InDesign, you can directly publish your work to the web.
Adobe InDesign is a paid software, but it does offer a free trial version for a limited amount of time.
7. Fluid UI
Fluid UI is yet another web-based application used for
wireframing, website mockup design and even prototyping. Fluid UI specializes in mobile touchscreen interfaces and design. It features instant project sharing and collaboration, leading to quick feedback and incorporation of changes.
Advantages of Fluid UI:
- It is a web-based application
- Easy to use.
Although it is a paid application, it provides just one free project with a limit on the no. of pages, the maximum limit being ten pages. After the first free project, you must purchase the application to work on other mockup projects.
8. MockplusiDoc
MockuplusiDoc is a robust and handy tool for website mockup design and collaboration. It is a great product design application which allows for easy project collaboration and interactive mockup designs.
Advantages of MockplusiDoc:
- Easy collaboration on projects
- It offers interactive website mockups
- High-fidelity mockups
It is mostly a paid application, but all registered users will get five free projects, 5 team members and unlimited collaborators.
9. Justinmind
Justinmind is a mockup design tool used to create mockups for websites. It helps you to create high-fidelity website mockup designs which can be optimized for both web and mobiles. It has a unique prototype simulation feature which gives an exact simulation of your final website.
Advantages of Justinmind:
- It allows easy and multiple collaborations for projects
- Users get the benefit of using the prototype simulation feature.
- It helps generate HTML code for prototypes.
So, the Justinmind application has four versions; a free version with limited features, a standard version, a professional version and an enterprise version, all with varying feature availability.
10. MockFlow
Mock Flow is one powerful product design tool for website mockups, graphic designing, and prototypes. It provides end-to-end solutions for all web UI mockup tools. It has a unique built-in chat feature that makes collaborations on projects much more fun and accessible. You can even conduct virtual design meetings on the application itself.
Mockflow allows for collaboration and mockup workflow tracking, where you can mark a project as “in progress” or “completed”.
Advantages of Mockflow:
- It offers a high level of collaboration settings
- It allows for virtual design meetings that make brainstorming easier.
It has two versions: a free version with limited access to the application features and a paid version with many advanced features.
Conclusion
We have learnt how essential it is to have a well-functioning and well-designed website, how to create one, and the tools required to help us create some high-quality website designs. We now know that creating a website mockup design is essential to creating a fantastic website, and that is made more accessible by availing the services offered ball the mockup tools listed above.
We are sure the mockup tools enlisted here will help you create some wonderful and high-quality websites. So then, what are you waiting for? Get started making that website you’ve been envisioning for a long time.