Professionals such as product managers, Web developers & designers, and marketers in an organization are required to put in a lot of research when designing the wireframe of a website. Or at least when deciding on the type of website that they’d like to build or simply the look from the perspective they have developed post doing a study of their competitor’s website.

Creating mock-ups comes into the picture right at this point. But ironically, even though you need mock-ups for eventually deciding on the look, feel and functionality of a website, you don’t necessarily have to be possessing advanced knowledge of graphic designing or web designing for that matter. Basically, you don’t have to be a designer to be able to create mock-ups of the website and this simply implies that anyone can do it.

Yes, you read it right! Anyone can do it BUT only with the right tools at their disposal.

And Pixtel is one tool that you need. With Pixtel you will be able to take screenshots of any number of webpages that you feel are noteworthy.

Because conducting research, especially when studying the website of your competitors or others in the market, is arguably the easiest part of the process but it is the conveying of your ideas and suggestions across that is the difficult part. Taking screenshots makes this part easier thereby easing communication between you and other concerned departments & individuals.

Since knowing or possessing the tool alone isn’t enough then let us walk you through the right steps for you to be able to create amazing mock-ups of websites using Pixtel.

Know your Starting Point:

We all know that good start and a steady run always result in a win. It is for this reason that knowing your Starting Point is important.

A lot of professionals end up wasting a lot of their precious time trying to create things anew from the ground. Do NOT make the same mistake. Do NOT start from scratch. There are most probably many a good examples on the web and with a little research, you may be able to find a website or set of them that seem similar to what you have in your mind. When you find the right example, capture the entire thing. Don’t worry if it doesn’t match perfectly, as we’ll add to the design and customize it later.

Capture what you couldn’t in the first go:

While taking the original capture, you may have not been able to capture everything. For instance, an email sign-up for a monthly newsletter and a login option that rests at the top of the navigation bar.

Find such pages that you liked and capture the parts of the mockup that you couldn’t in the original capture. While making this capture, do not worry so much about the colors and the fonts. At this juncture, your attention has to be only on finding concrete examples of the ideas and functionality you want to create.

A tip is to ensure that you select exactly what you need, probably with the help of Pixtel features such as Regional Capture.

Customizing the Design:

You can customize the design once you are pleased with the layout in front of you. There is an option that lets you combine all images into one. It’s the Flatten option which you will find in the Edit menu at the top of the tool. You may add annotations or delete them too while customizing the image.

In case you are displeased with the capture and wish to make certain changes to it then you may be able to make changes by blurring or fully editing out objects from the graphics.

Bring all the captures together:

After you are doing making all the customizations to your heart’s content, simply look copy or cut the screenshots taken after the original capture and then paste them onto the original capture. From there on, you may position and resize each capture on top of the original capture in ways you deem fit.

Ask for feedback:

After your mock-up is ready, before you share it with everyone concerned, share it with a few of your close associates. Ask them for their thoughts and suggestions. In fact, if they use Pixtel to review your mock-up then they’d be able to add their own comments to your captures.

If you aren’t using Pixtel already then you know by now that it is one tool that’s worth a try. Give it a try by downloading.