If you look at your Google Analytics you’ll find businesses are looking for both web design company as well as web development services. Nowadays, these two terms have become interchangeable. The truth is that both the terms refer to two different aspects of website building process and that both need two unique skill sets. So, what’s important is that you should know the difference between these two.
Web design Vs web development in a brief form
In a nutshell, website design generally refers to the aesthetic part of the site as well as its usability. The web designers make use of the different kinds of design programs like Adobe Photoshop for creating the layout & many visual elements of the site.
Website developers, on the other side, take a web design and create a functioning site from it. They make use of programming languages like HTML, PHP, CSS, Javascript & others for bringing design files to life.
A closer look to web design
Web designers should always start by considering the objectives of a client site and then move on to the information architecture for setting the website’s information hierarchy & guiding the process of design. Next, the designers may start to create wireframes & finally move to design phase. These professionals generally use basic design principles for achieving an aesthetically pleasing layout, which even provides great user experience.
Design principles:
- balance
- contrast
- emphasis
- consistency
- unity
A closer look to web development
Web developers, also known as programmers, take the design that’s created by the web designers and develop a fully functioning site. If you put it simply, you can consider design as a non-interactive picture of a site. It is the programmers who take that design & break it up into its main components. They use HTML, PHP or other programming languages for developing the various pages of a website. A lot of advanced web developers use bespoke CMS web development services to streamline development allowing clients an easy way of maintaining and updating their site.
Web developers have the potential to convert any static layout into a dynamic site by using content sliders, image, active states for buttons and links, and other elements that are interactive.
A few final words
Medium and small sized businesses looking for a site or wanting to re-design their existing site are often confused when it comes to the words ‘web design’ and ‘web development’. Though there are professionals who can do both, most of the companies have specially skilled designers who are responsible for creating the layout of the site as well as developers who basically complete the development stage.
