Topics on This Page A prototype is a draft version of a Web
site. Prototypes allow you to explore your ideas before
investing time and money into development. A prototype can be
anything from a paper drawings (low-fidelity), click-through of
a few images or pages, or a fully functioning Web site (high-
fidelity). You can build a prototype at any time but ideally you
should create them as early as possible. You can begin with a
prototype of just the home page and a few secondary navigation
pages. This will help you find out if the information
architecture is working. It is much cheaper to change a product
early in the development process than to make change after you
develop the site. Prototyping allow you to gather feedback from
users while you are still planning and designing your Web site.
Nielsen (2003) states that the biggest improvements in user
experience come from gathering usability data as early as
possible. He estimates that it’s 100 times cheaper to make
changes before any code has been written than