Why WireFrame?
Redundant to some, mandatory for others: wireframing leaves web designers with a limited amount of control, pertaining to web functions, however it provides a helpful story map, clearly laid out in non-web formatting, for the customer. To truly understand the benefits of wireframing your website, lets look at an example of wireframing that is not of a website, but from another industry. If you were going to build a roller coaster, would you use your adept skills and experience to estimate the amount of supplies needed, space required and thrill value to create those vertical G's and lat forces that make a roller coaster the superstar of a theme park? No. Any seasoned roller coaster designer would take it to the drawing board before they even solidify the final concept.
First they'd plot it out on graphing paper with a pencil, giving you the basics -- just like a web designer would paper prototype. And after they have an agreeable concept, take it to an computer-based coaster creator (could they even go as primitive as the RollerCoaster Tycoon game? I hope not) and the web designer takes their paper prototype to a software like illustrator or photoshop to map out the site in a more 3D style and with a little more flare.
Finally, both the coaster designer and the web designer go into actual production of their final project. However, they're not going into this blindly. Thanks to wireframing and paper prototyping, designers found out most of their problems early on and their largest expense was seeing their eraser become depleted.
I did a lot of my research via this incredibly informative and insightful website: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/01/35-excellent-wireframing-resources/
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