New-age websites have the capability to provide enhanced levels of interactivity and personalization to users. They have the capability to tell visual brand stories.

Embedded video/audio files can add sight, sound, and life to your website content. For example, internet infrastructure isn’t an interesting topic for the average consumer. So, CityFibre used embedded video and full-screen photos to make this topic more engaging and notice worthy.

Infographics can simplify complex information and make raw data on your site appear visually compelling. Here’s a Sky News article where infographics are used to simplify the complex concept of how the 2016 Brexit vote impacts the United Kingdom’s economy.

Custom illustrations can integrate a sense of artistry into your website and help create immersive user experiences. Here’s an example of adding artistic illustrations to a website from El Periódico. These illustrations depict the ongoing space race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Offering such multi-faceted user experiences can help websites create personal connections with their target audiences. But, keeping track of so many visual or UX elements in the early stages of web design is not easy. Even more challenging is tying all of these design elements together, in the later design stages.

That’s why, long before any designs are created, web designers have to create “storyboards.” The term “storyboard” has always been synonymous with motion pictures. But, the art of storyboarding isn’t just performed on movie sets. Most web designers of today use storyboards to plan and organize their ideas.

In web design, a storyboard is a visual account of a website’s structure, layout, and content. Storyboards help web designers visualize their creations. They help them understand what their websites should look and feel like before any of the design work begins. Storyboarding before you begin coding/designing can also save you time, effort, and money in redesigning.

Here’s everything web designers need to know about this indispensable, pre-design and pre-visualization tool:

Storyboarding in Web Design

The concept of narrating a story through a sequence of chronological illustrations actually dates back to Egyptian hieroglyphics. Scientists claim that cavemen drawings of stampeding cattle were one of the first storyboards humans created. Since those ancient times, storyboards have been used as the premiere pre-production tool for all types of creative projects.

Whether you’re making an animated film or a website, the job becomes much easier when a storyboard artist has arranged all the key visual elements of your new creation in a logical, narrative sequence. In web design, a storyboard is the visual record of the website’s appearance that every member of the creative team must work towards.

Some basic facts about storyboards include:

• Storyboards can be created using pencil sketches of sophisticated digital tools.
• The goal is to help web designers visualize the user journeys they’re trying to create on their websites.
• Storyboards should be simple and easy to understand, but they must feature key web design elements such as the website’s menu, header, footer, content sections, etc.
• Storyboards should also reflect the brand and its target audience.

When Does Your Website Need a Storyboard?

If you’re planning to develop and design a new website, you might wonder exactly when you need to hire a storyboard designer. Technically, you don’t need to hire a storyboard designer: the website designer or agency you’re working with should already have professional storyboard designers on their team.

You need to ask your website designer about collaborating on your new website’s storyboard. A good website designer will not provide you with templated website designs. They collaborate on creating a customized website storyboard with you. The storyboard will be customized as per your brand and target audiences’ needs.

Ideally, this whole process should happen during the initial stages of website design. Creating a clear, well-defined storyboard will ensure that all parties on the web design team (including yourself) are on the same page regarding what the final output should look like. It will also provide a sense of cohesion at every step of the web design process.

The Key Elements of a Website Storyboard

You must share all your inputs regarding your website’s storyboard before designers start coding your website. Once your web designer sketches a draft storyboard for your new website, seek additional insights from other members of your team. Ask your marketing, sales, customer service, and other departments about what they like/dislike about the storyboard.

Your final website storyboard should feature the following elements:

Format

Propose a basic format for your website. This format will serve as the foundation for your website’s overall look, structure, and feel. Feel free to use simple box, circular, or rectangular elements to create this baseline format.

Don’t try to add complex visuals or business-specific design elements to this format. The goal of creating this format is to understand what type of layout and structure you prefer for your website.

Wireframe

A wireframe is a simple sketch that outlines the positioning of key design elements on a website. This includes the search bar, navigation menu, content sections, etc. A wireframe doesn’t have to be a complex work of art. It can be a basic, black and white sketch.

It should be sketched well enough to help designers organize the website’s layout, content, and core functionalities before they actually design the product. Web designers need to have an in-depth understanding of your business goals to create a wireframe that accurately outlines the structure and flow of your website. Most new-age web designers create interactive wireframes.

You can click through the interactive elements on these wireframes to better understand your website’s navigation, the sizes of your key design elements (e.g., menu buttons on your website), and how much space each design element on your website’s main pages takes up.

For example, here’s a basic wireframe for a simple eCommerce website (created by Midjourney). As you can see, the wireframe showcases the proposed locations of the website’s basic design elements.

UX Elements

In addition to wireframes, your web designer will also add some basic user experience (UX) elements to your website’s storyboard. This section of the storyboard will be focused on how users interact with your website.

For instance, do you want your users to get a drop-down menu when they hit the “Services” tab or do you want them to open another page? Deciding on how different sections of your website behave as users navigate through them, is the key objective of this stage.

Of course, you want your target visitors to take certain actions as they navigate through your site. So, your site’s behavior should be optimized to encourage these actions. For instance, if you want your site to generate a lot of leads, you should focus on placing appealing CTAs under and around multiple design and UX elements on your website.

Content

A website storyboard will not contain actual content. But, it must define the content sections. Based on this data, web designers will add specific amounts of text data in specific numbers of text boxes on each webpage.

How to Create a Storyboard for Your Website?

Storyboarding before you begin designing or coding for your site can save you a lot of time, effort, and money. So, let’s design a basic storyboard for an imaginary eCommerce store that sells Japanese art products:

Step 1:

Develop a conceptual plan for the site. Determine its basic layout, what type of content it will feature, and other basic design elements.

Step 2:

Draw mockup sketches of different web pages on your website. Make sure these sketches contain all the essential graphical elements that typically appear on eCommerce webpages.

Step 3:

Draw mockup sketches of all content pages. Demarcate the locations and spacing of all key design elements on these pages.

Step 4:

Review the storyboard, make necessary revisions, and maintain visual consistency across all web pages.

One of the main challenges of storyboarding is addressing the demands of the different members involved in the web design process. That’s why the best storyboard artists create on demand. They can deliver professional-grade sketches, wireframes, graphical illustrations, etc., under pressure. Hopefully, this guide helps you make the most of your future interactions with professional storyboarding artists!