The traditional freelance web design workflow is broken in a specific way: you spend days building mockups, present them to the client, and then discover they hate the direction. Or worse—they can't tell if they like it because a static mockup doesn't feel like a website.
So you iterate. More mockups. More presentations. More "can we see it with a different font?" emails. By the time you get to actual development, you've burned half your budget on exploration.
There's a faster way.
The iteration trap
Here's how most projects go: Client describes what they want. You interpret that through your design lens. You spend 20 hours in Figma. You present three directions. Client picks elements from all three and asks for a fourth that combines them. You build that. They say it's "close but not quite right." Repeat until someone gives up or the budget runs out.
The problem isn't the client. They genuinely don't know what they want until they see it. Static mockups don't help because they require imagination—"picture this, but scrolling, with hover effects, on your phone." Most people can't.
They need to click around. Feel the weight of it. See it on their actual screen, not in a meeting room projector.
Prototypes that breathe
What if, instead of mockups, you sent clients three live URLs within an hour of your kickoff call?
Not polished, production-ready sites. Rough concepts. Different directions. One minimal, one bold, one somewhere between. Each one actually works—scrolls, responds to screen size, feels like a real website—because it is one.
The client clicks through on their phone during lunch. Sends the links to their partner. Sleeps on it. Comes back with "I love the feel of option two, but the color palette from one, and can we try the headline treatment from three?"
Now you have something to work with. Real feedback on real artifacts. Not theoretical opinions about static images.
The workflow shift
We've watched freelancers adopt a specific pattern:
Hour one: Take the client's existing site (or competitor sites, or inspiration URLs) and generate three to five variations. Don't overthink it. The point is divergence—show the client the range of what's possible.
Hour two: Quick cleanup. Swap in the right logo. Adjust a headline to match their actual messaging. Fix anything obviously wrong. Still rough, still fast.
Send it: Three live URLs. "Here's where we could take this. Click around, share with your team, let me know what resonates."
The conversation: Instead of presenting and defending your work, you're having a collaborative discussion about real options. Clients engage differently when they can touch the thing.
Then: Download the assets from whichever direction wins. The HTML, the images, the structure. Use that as your starting point for the production build—not as the production build itself, but as a foundation you've already validated.
You skip the mockup phase entirely. The first design artifact the client sees is interactive.
What this isn't
Let's be clear: the generated sites aren't production code. They're not optimized, not pixel-perfect, not ready to hand off and walk away. That's not the point.
They're conversation starters. Decision accelerators. A way to get everyone aligned on direction before you invest serious hours.
Think of it like sketching, except the sketches actually work. You wouldn't ship a sketch. But you'd absolutely use one to figure out what to build.
The math
Traditional workflow: 20 hours of mockups, 4 rounds of revision, 2 weeks of back-and-forth, then development starts.
Iteration-first workflow: 2 hours of prototyping, live feedback within a day, clear direction locked in, then development starts with validated foundations.
Same quality outcome. Fraction of the exploration time. Clients feel more involved because they are. You spend your hours on execution instead of speculation.
Getting assets out
Once direction is locked, you need to actually build the thing. TEZELA isn't trying to replace your development skills—it's trying to shortcut the uncertainty that comes before.
Download what you need: the HTML structure as a reference, images already sized, the layout logic to translate into your framework of choice. Some freelancers use the generated code directly as a starting layer. Others just screenshot sections and rebuild by hand. Both work.
The value isn't in the code quality. It's in the clarity. You know exactly what you're building because the client already approved a working version of it.
Who this works for
This workflow fits a specific type of project:
Clients who don't know what they want (most of them). Projects where exploration time typically explodes the budget. Situations where getting to "yes" on direction matters more than getting to production fast.
It doesn't fit every project. If a client comes with a detailed spec and approved wireframes, you don't need to explore. If the project is a complex web app rather than a marketing site, rapid prototyping won't capture the functionality.
But for landing pages, marketing sites, portfolio sites, small business sites—the bread and butter of freelance work—starting with live prototypes changes the dynamic entirely.
The client conversation
Some freelancers worry about showing "unfinished" work. Won't clients expect the final product to look exactly like the prototype? Won't they question why they're paying for development if a site already exists?
In practice, the opposite happens. Clients appreciate being involved early. They understand "here are some directions we could explore" differently than "here's my finished design." Framing matters.
And when you explain that the prototype is the foundation, not the building—that your job is to take this rough concept and make it production-ready, performant, and polished—they get it. They're paying for the craft, not the concept. The concept is just how you both get on the same page faster.
Start somewhere
Next client kickoff, try it. Before you open Figma, generate a few live options. Send them with low expectations and an open question: "Any of these feel like the right direction?"
Watch how differently the conversation goes when everyone's reacting to something real.