The major difference between website design and website development is simple: designers “design websites” and developers work to “code the website”.
Today that question needs a little more distinction. You’d be hard-pressed to bargain with a web designer who didn’t know at minimum a little HTML and CSS, and you won’t consume to search far for a front-end web developer who can lash up a storyboard
Suppose you’re severely speaking about the general ideas of web design vs. web development. In that case, still, the distinction is a little clearer. Let’s look at these two ideas and their roles in structuring the functioning websites and apps we recognize and love.
What is Web Design?
Web design governs everything about the visual aesthetics and usability of a website’s color scheme, layout, information flow, and everything related to the UI/UX.
Web design is all about what the user sees on their desktop screen or mobile device and less about the mechanisms beneath the surface that make it all work. They bring digital knowledge to life through color, images, typography, and layout.
Many web designers are also aware of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It helps to create alive mock-ups of a web app when trying to pitch an idea to the squad or fine-tune the UI/UX of an app.
The web designer also often works with templating facilities like WordPress or Joomla, which allow you to make websites using themes and widgets without writing a single line of code.
What is Web Development?
Web development oversees all the code that makes a website tick. It can be split into two types front-end and back-end.
The front-end or client-side of an app is the code answerable for determining how the website will show the designs teased up by a designer. The back-end or server-side is answerable for managing data inside the database and serving that data to the front-end to be shown.
As you may have guessed, the front-end developer’s job tends to share the maximum overlap with the web designer. Some common skills and tools usually viewed as unique to the front-end developer are HTML/CSS/JavaScript, CSS preprocessors, On-site search engine optimization (SEO), and more.
Front-end web developers don’t usually create mock-ups, fine typography, or pick color palettes. These are frequently provided by the designer. It’s the developer’s work to take all those mock-ups to life.
Understanding what the designer needs require knowledge of the best UI/UX design practices. The developer can choose the right knowledge to send the desired look, feel, and knowledge to the final product.
Back-end developers grip the business logic and data management on the back-end of an app. They write the APIs and routing that permit data to flow between an application’s front and back end.
Web developers who possess an occupied knowledge across the front-end and back-end of a technology stack are called full-stack developers.
Website Design vs. Website Development major differences at a glance
Now that we’ve recognized that web design and development are two distinct disciplines, let’s look at the major differences between web designers and developers.
Most Web Designers Do Not Code
Web designers are answerable for the general look and feel of a website. They might use a graphic editor like Photoshop to create images or an app prototyping and animation tool such as In-Vision Studio to design layouts and generate high-fidelity mock-ups. But none of these main responsibilities need coding.
Beyond their outdated role as graphic designers, creating content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress and no-code website creators like Wix means there are web designers who can put on their graphic talents to build your website short of having to recognize how to code.
Web Developers Do Not Create Resources
Web developers are the programmers who have knowledge of the coding assistance needed to add functionality to a website. They clarify the designer’s wireframes and mock-ups into code with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Web developers don’t regularly have to create the graphic assets themselves, such as the pictures behind buttons, color schemes, and fonts. They just need to use code to instrument them into the page.
Web Developers are Normally More Expensive than Web Designers
The cost of signing a web developer tends to be higher than hiring a web designer. Conferring to ZipRecruiter, the regular rate for web developers is $36/hr. While the normal rate of web designers is $29/hour.
The primary reason for this inconsistency is likely to be supply and demand. There are more designers than developers, in overall, it is a highly sought-after skill.
As coding converts more global among the talent pool, the discrepancy between rates decreases. Whether signing developers or designers, you pay for experience in terms of expertise.
Joining The Skills of Web Developer and Web Designer
What ongoing out as a joke in the industry, the designer/developer hybrid who can do it all, is now a viable endgame for mutually web designers and front-end developers, thanks to the upsurge in the availability of informative resources across the web.
Those developers/designers who have a decent grasp of skills across both sides of the spectrum are extremely sought after. The “unicorn” can take your plan from the abstract stage of visual mock-ups and storyboards and carry it to finished front-end development all by themselves.
Not that you’d need them to the real value of developers who design and designers who develop are their skill to speak each other’s languages. This leads to a better statement on the team and a smoother workflow. It means you’ll land on the finest solution possible.
As a universal rule, feel free to rely on the “unicorn” for small projects, where it’s possible for one or more people to handle both the back and front ends of an app. Even if you hire a few “unicorns,” more clearly defined roles are required for larger projects.
You should hire a web design agency that has experience in their field. Before hiring any agency or company for your project, you have to ensure that they have some previous experience and are experts in their field.
To ensure that they have the experience, you have to ask them about the reference for their previous work. A portfolio of their previous work will also be great for you to know how many commands they have in their field of expertise.