For decades, the static mockup has been a standard step in the website design process. Presented as a high-fidelity image or PDF, it’s meant to be a preview of your future website, a final checkpoint before development begins. On the surface, it seems logical. You get to see what your site will look like and sign off on the design.

But this traditional process is a holdover from the era of print design, and it carries a fundamental flaw. A static picture of a website is not a website.

Relying on mockups introduces unnecessary risk into a project, but that risk doesn’t fall on the design agency. It falls squarely on you, the client. It’s a process that prioritizes the agency’s internal workflow over the client’s final outcome, and understanding its limitations is critical to protecting your investment.

Why the process still exists.

To be fair, the static mockup isn’t born from malice. For large agencies with siloed departments, it serves as a simple handoff document. A design team can create a mockup, get client approval, and pass it to a separate development team for execution. It can also be a convenient way to coordinate with outsourced developers.

In these scenarios, the mockup is a tool that simplifies the agency’s internal communication. The problem is that what’s convenient for the agency is often detrimental to the client. This streamlined internal process comes at the cost of genuine collaboration and a predictable, high-quality result.

A picture can’t capture an experience.

A website is not a static object; it’s an interactive document. Users scroll, click, hover, and type. They experience the site through motion and feedback. A static mockup fails to represent any of this. It’s like reviewing a movie by looking at its poster. The poster can show you the actors and hint at the tone, but it tells you nothing about the pacing, the dialogue, or the plot.

When you approve a mockup, you are approving an idea, not an experience. And once that approval is given, the agency is protected.

The illusion of scale and context.

One of the most immediate problems with a static mockup is that it’s almost always viewed out of context. You’re likely reviewing a single, flat image on a large desktop monitor. It looks clean and perfectly proportioned. But what happens when that design is translated into code and viewed on your phone? Or a 13-inch laptop?

Suddenly, text that looked perfectly legible is too small. Buttons that were easy to see are now cramped. The visual hierarchy that seemed so clear on a big screen is lost on a smaller one. These are not minor details; they are fundamental usability issues that a static image is incapable of revealing. A truly responsive design must be felt and used across different devices, not just viewed as a picture.

How mockups shift the risk to you.

Here lies the biggest danger for the client. The “mockup approval” stage is a formal project milestone that contractually shifts responsibility. When you sign off on that static image, you are effectively accepting the agency’s interpretation of how it will eventually function.

If the final website is confusing to navigate or has a poor user experience, the agency can point back to the approved document and say, “This is what you signed off on.” Any flaws in the user experience become your oversight, not their responsibility. You are being asked to identify complex usability problems from a document that is fundamentally unsuited for the task.

The unfair pressure to be an expert.

This process implicitly asks the client to be a user experience expert. It expects you to look at a flat picture and accurately predict how it will feel to use it. When you express concerns, you might not have the technical vocabulary to explain why something feels wrong, leading to frustrating feedback cycles.

You shouldn’t have to imagine what your website will feel like. You should be able to experience it directly and provide feedback based on that real-world interaction.

An honest approach: The interactive draft.

A more transparent and effective method is to skip the static mockup entirely and move directly to an interactive draft. This is a functional, working version of your website built on a private server. It’s not a picture; it’s the real thing.

With an interactive draft, you can:

Use it on your own devices: Open the site on your phone, your tablet, and your laptop to see exactly how it adapts.
Test the real experience: Click the buttons, open the menus, and fill out the forms.
Provide concrete feedback: Instead of saying “I think this button is too small,” you can say “This button is hard for me to press on my iPhone.”

This approach empowers you to make informed decisions based on tangible experience, not abstract imagination. It removes the guesswork and ensures that when you give your final approval, you are signing off on the real deal. There are no surprises and no excuses. The process should protect the project’s quality, not just the agency’s liability.