Let us say that you are considering updating the website you currently have, or you are thinking about building a website from scratch, and you want to know if there is a difference between web designing and web development and if so, what are the differences?
It is not hard to get terms that are so similar mixed-up. Furthermore, at a time when you need a particular service for your site, it is of great significance that you know which professional service to hire, such as a web designer or a web developer, for the work you need to be performed.
We will also be explaining the difference between the two, along with helping you decide which to use, the web design vs. web developer.
Description of Web Design and Development
First, let us discuss the differences between web design and web development and each individual term.
What Exactly Is Web Design?
When speaking about web design, you are referring to the aesthetic looks of your website (what users see when they visit your site) and the way all the different part and elements are working in a combination in order to create an online space that is going to help your business to be successful.
A web designer is not going to build you a website. Instead, it provides different programs such as Illustrator and Photoshop that is used for creating a home page that has its own unique internal pages.
What the designers do is create an underlying structure for the website, which will be a flat canvas having no functionality and presents itself as being a roadmap to benefit the developer.
This will give you an idea of where your website is headed, as well as giving developers a building block to work with when building their site.
This will also allow you to give the designer feedback on their design and to let them know thing things you like about it and what you do not care about it. You get to tell them what you would like to change, add to, or remove from their mock-up/draft.
To be ensured that you going to have a beautiful website created, it is important to hire a company that utilizes web designers and developers alike.
Web Developing, What It Is?
You now know what it is the web designer does; let us discuss what a front-end developer’s responsibilities are.
The web designer provides programs that help in creating your home and internal pages and the website’s underlying structure. It is the web developers who make your website functional.
For instance, when a web design has three call-to-action (CTAs) buttons placed on its home page, These buttons have to be hard-coded into the website in order to ensure they are going to respond as they were meant to when clicked by a user.
Every element placed on your website must be attended to in the same manner, regardless if it is the navigation bar, hyperlink within the content, or a contact form. Put it this way, the web developer is who designs a website prototype and makes the website come alive and functional.
A developer uses resources such as different content management systems (CMSs) such as Joomla and/or WordPress, and they also have the ability to start from scratch in coding your website using languages such as PHP, CSS, and HTML.
A Recap on Web Design vs. Web Development
It comes down to web designing and web development is two totally different positions to hold, and both are necessary to have an aesthetic and functional site.
If it falls under cosmetics, it is the responsibility of the web designer. It is up to the web developer to make sure that things on the website, such as navigation bars, buttons, links, forms, and videos, are working correctly.
There are both of equal importance; after all, both are necessary to have a website come alive. That is because web designs are not going to work without having a development, whereas if there is no web design, there will not be anything to develop.
Hire a Web Designer and a Web Developer Out of One Company
Just because web designing and web development are two separate positions does not mean they have to be hired individually. There are companies today that make it possible to hire both from just one place.
In fact, it is recommended that you go through an agency that handles both.The following is a list of benefits from hiring through a company or agency that hires out both a web designer and a web developer:
- They occasionally offer marketing strategies that can benefit your website.
- They both will work together to give your site a good appearance and function correctly.
- They only give you one dedicated point of contact rather than several.
- They get rid of the disconnect between the design and the developers.
In order to get have a good experience with your web design and the development strategy, it is recommended that you seek a company where you can make just one step to get it all.
