Web Design Vs. Web Development: What's The Difference?

Web Design Vs. Web Development

Web Design and Web Development Have two Different Meanings

The terms web design and web development are often used interchangeably but they shouldn’t. Whether you are looking for a career in the web industry or a professional to offer any of the two services, you need to know the difference in order to make an informed choice. Designers and developers of web pages have different skillsets. Understand what your business requires then choose the right professional for the job.

What Is Website Design?

Website designers have one important skill – the ability to come up with creative and innovative visual website designs. Their work is primarily based on what customers see or rather what web professionals refer to as the front-end design. Web designers are more concerned about how a website looks. They focus more on how customers interact with it, which is what is commonly referred to as user experience or UX.

Good web designers are able to incorporate the principles of web design in order to come up with a website that looks nice and appealing. Web designers also ensure that all the design elements and features they select are user friendly. Web design is all about creating websites that users want to interact with, find easy to navigate and are intuitive. Designers control how well the website interface turns out to be.

What Is Web Development?

There are two types of web developers – front end and back end developers. Front-end web developers are in charge of coming up with the code that builds the visual design. Front-end web development requires skill in html and CSS as well as other programs like Javascript. These programs are needed to create the different styles and layouts that a website has. For simple website, front-end web development may be the only web development that is required. However, most complex website projects require both front-end and back-end development.

Web developers who focus on back-end development have skill in more advanced programming languages. This kind of developers are more focused on the functionality as opposed to the visual look of the website. They work on implementing the way customers interact with the web pages. For instance, a back-end developer will come up with different features in an ecommerce website such as the payment process and shopping carts to make it easy for customers to complete transactions directly online.

Knowledge in programs like PHP is key in back-end development. This kind of development requires interfacing with the database, working with web forms and different APIs. Development generally involves coming up with solutions that help to meet the customer’s needs. Without existing software tools, back-end developers can still create software from scratch. They don’t always rely on software such as plugins to enhance website functionality. They produce software that helps to meet the clients’ needs.

Most people are more skilled in either design or development but have crossknowledge meaning that they may know something about web-design and also be able to develop some software from scratch.

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