If you are an online marketer, then you might already know how dynamic the industry is. Each year, we see new trends and benchmarks that redefine the landscape of internet marketing. Lately, the concept of prototyping has taken online marketing by a storm as it can help you meet your marketing needs tactfully. If you are also not sure how prototyping can help with online marketing, then read this beginner-friendly guide and change your marketing tactics for sure.
Prototyping 101: What You Should Know?
Before you know how prototyping can help in online marketing, it is important to cover some basics. In nutshell, a prototype is considered as an experimental model or a sample of the end-product that would let others know the overall context and purpose of the tool.
Based on how close the prototype would resemble the actual product, it can be considered a low, medium, or high-fidelity representation. These days, high-fidelity prototypes are made for apps, websites, and software, letting us test the product and save our time in development.
Prototyping is now considered a vital part of UX and product development. It gives us an actual representation of the end-product at an early stage and lets us know if we are working in the right direction or not.
How is Prototyping Crucial for Online Marketing?
Let’s suppose you are coming up with a new app and you are not sure how you wish to market it? Well, why wait for the development of the app when you can start pitching new clients by using its prototype. The best thing about prototypes is that they let us market a product before its official release.
Therefore, if you already have a prototype ready for your app, website, desktop software, or any other product, then you can easily come up with a marketing plan. In this way, when the product will be released, you would already have a loyal customer base to start with.
Apart from having an early advantage, prototypes can also help you get instant feedback from prospective customers. If there is an issue with the prototype or your design, then you can instantly make the needed changes in it before releasing the product.
When and How Prototyping can Help in Online Marketing?
When it comes to internet marketing, it is all about being a few steps ahead of your competitors. Now when you know the basics of prototyping, you can easily excel in online marketing in the following ways:
- It can provide the overall perspective of the end-user right from the early development stages.
- If you already have a prototype ready, then you can come up with a better online marketing strategy.
- By getting an in-depth knowledge of the product via its prototype, you can easily target its leads and prospective customers.
- Prototyping can also help you come up with test marketing campaigns, letting you judge the response of its actual customers before the release of the product.
- Once you have a prototype, you can easily compare it with your competitors and can also use it as a basic source for content marketing.
- By knowing the unique selling points of your products, you can push the prototype ahead while developing internet marketing ads.
- Since creating a prototype is not expensive at all, it will save a lot of time in online campaign design and even the development of the product.
How to Make Prototypes: Basic Process for Online Marketers
Even if you have no prior technical or designing experience, you won’t encounter any issues with creating prototypes for online marketing. Though, to make the entire job easier, I would recommend exploring a reliable prototyping tool. The good news is that you can follow the same approach while working on most of the prototyping tools.
- Empathize
At first, you need to think from the perspective of your users to identify the problem. This will eventually help you come up with a solution that would end up becoming the product.
2. Define the product
Once you have emphasized the overall requirements of your end-users, you need to work on the product development. To do this, you need to create a dedicated definition of the product which will involve its working, purpose, extensions, etc.
3. Ideation
Now when you know how your product would behave, you need to come up with different ideas to create or implement the product. There could be several ideas and it is recommended to create a virtual map for each dedicated pitch.
4. Prototype Development
Based on your ideas and the definition of the product, you can now start the designing process. I would recommend using a reliable prototyping tool for online marketing that will let you maintain different versions of your prototypes for seamless backtracking.
5. Testing and Iteration
After coming up with a dedicated prototype for online marketing, you can test it and analyze the response of your audience. Based on their feedback, you can iterate the entire process again till you reach the final working prototype for development.
How to Choose the Right Prototyping Tool?
By now, you can notice how vital prototypes can be for internet marketing. Though, if you want to get better results in online marketing, then you should pick the perfect tool. These are the things that I would consider noticing while picking a prototyping tool.
- Ease of use
A lot of online marketing professionals don’t have prior designing experience. Therefore, you should pick a prototyping tool that is easy to use and has automated options.
- Overall features
You should check the overall design and prototyping features that the tool offers. For instance, you should pick a tool that can help you create high-fidelity prototypes with dynamic elements and must have an extensive library of widgets to make your job easier.
- Compatibility
Besides that, the prototyping tool should run seamlessly on your preferred platform (like Windows, Mac, or Linux). Most of the experts recommend picking a web-based designing tool that can be accessed on any platform.
- Collaboration
Chances are that your online marketing team would be working together on a prototype. Therefore, you should pick a prototyping tool that would let you collaborate with others, assign job roles, and maintain version histories.
- What More?
Apart from that, make sure that you come up with a rough budget in advance, explore the feedback of its users, and check the reliability of its customer support.
The 3 Best Prototyping Tools for Online Marketing Professionals
If you are an internet marketing professional, then I would recommend exploring the following prototyping tools.
Used by both beginners and pros alike, Mockitt is the best rapid prototyping tool that you can use online and on various platforms. While the basic version of Mockitt is available for free, you can always upgrade to a premium version to access its advanced features.
- Since Mockitt is a user-friendly application, you can create all sorts of prototypes with drag and drop actions.
- There is an extensive library of design elements, tons of widgets, and thousands of components that you can readily use.
- Using its dynamic widgets, you can link various screens and set up different states to create high-fidelity prototypes.
- Users can instantly get a preview of their prototypes and export their projects in different formats like JPG, PDF, CSS, HTML, etc.
- With its cloud-based integration, collaborating with your team is extremely simple. You can also assign dedicated roles to your colleague and maintain different versions of your prototypes.
2. UXPin
UXPin is another popular designing platform that you can use on the web to create mockups, prototypes, and wireframes. Though, accessing some of its advanced features can take a while to master.
- Users can create all kinds of prototypes by reusing and customizing the design elements.
- You can set up all kinds of states, variables, and interactions for its dynamic widgets.
- An instant preview of your prototypes can be obtained (based on its target platform).
- You can export your projects into different formats and even collaborate with others on the cloud.
3. Protopie.io
This is another user-friendly rapid prototyping tool that can be used by online marketing professionals. The application is extremely easy to use and offers a wide range of plugins.
- You can instantly import projects from Adobe XD, Figma, or Sketch to Protpie.io and export your work in formats like HTML, JPG, PDF, etc.
- There are tons of readily available templates and dedicated libraries that you can use and customize.
- The application can be used to create clickable prototypes by using its interactive design elements.
- You can create a shareable space to work together with your team by assigning different roles.
There you go! As you can see, prototyping is extremely important for online marketing professionals and is now considered a vital skill. Though, if you also want to create engaging and visually appealing prototypes for internet marketing, then consider using a tool like Wondershare Mockitt. The desktop/web application offers hundreds of widgets, vectors, and other design elements that would let you create dynamic prototypes on the go.