The two terms ‘Web Design’ & ‘Web Development’, are quite different and almost interchangeable. Nowadays’ web companies use these terms to alternate the way they describe their services. Each have their own unique skill sets used in the process of building websites. It is very important that you know the difference between them, especially when looking for someone to design and develop your website.Web Design & Development, these are two terms that are constantly mentioned when describing the designing or building of a website! But what do they mean and what is the difference between them?
What is Web Design?
Web Design is the planning and creation of websites. It is normally used to describe the design process to the front-end (client side) design of a website including writing mark up.
It encompasses many skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; interface design; authoring, including standardised code and proprietary software; user experience design; search engine optimisation (seo). Combining these with the principles of design will create a website that meets the goals of the owner and designer. A web designer is someone who concerns themselves with the look of the website and how the customer interact with it. They know how to put together the principles of design, to create a site that looks amazing. They also know how customers use the website, and how to create a site that customers want to navigate around in, because it’s easy to do so. Their role involves creating mark up, and they to keep up to date with web accessibility guidelines. Web designers use several basic design principles to meet a pleasing layout which also offers excellent user experience. The five basic design principles are balance, contrast, emphasis, consistency & unity.What is Web Development?
Web development is the back-end of the website, the programming and the interactions on the pages.
Web Developers, sometimes called programmers, take the design created and build a fully functioning website. Their focus is on how a site works and how the customers get things done on it. They understand how web forms work and can keep a site running effectively. They use HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and other programming languages to bring to life the design files. To put this in simpler terms! Think of the design as a non-interactive picture of a website. They take that design and break it up into components. They convert a static layout into a dynamic website by using image and content sliders, active states for links and buttons, and other interactive elements. Then they either use just HTML or PHP to develop the various website pages. Advanced web developers use a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress or Joomla to streamline development and allow clients an easy way to keep up their website.
