In the early days of building web applications, tools such as Photoshop and Flash were used extensively to get pixel-perfect mockups. They are hardly recommended or used anymore.

Giving a native and consistent experience across mobiles, tablets, laptops, and other platforms is now considered more important than getting that pixel-perfect look. In fact, most web designers directly create layouts on HTML.

Creating an HTML mockup is a lot faster and easier than ever before. If your web designer is unavailable, developers can use a CSS framework such as Bootstrap or ZURB Foundation framework to create pretty decent mockups.

The goal of creating a mockup is to create a realistic preview of the website. It should not merely focus on details and polish to look closer to the final product compared to a sketch, but add interactivity as well. Make your static HTML come to life with working links and some simple JavaScript-driven interactivity.

A good mockup can give 80 percent of customer experience with less than 10 percent of the overall development effort.