Web Design vs Web Development

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between web design and web development?
No?
Well, I am going to tell you anyways.

When the subject of web design vs web development comes up, we don’t worry ourselves too much about it because most of our customers don’t really know the difference and, to be perfectly honest, don’t really care. But for those that do want to know, here is the quick and dirty on the subject.

Web Design

Web design, for all intents and purposes, is the culmination of all the graphical elements of a website. This  includes the layout, the colors, the styles, fonts, and overall user interface. This, in most cases, also includes the basic HTML (Hypertext Markup Language – the basic building blocks of every website) and style sheets (CSS – cascading style sheets).

The easiest thing to remember about web design is that it encompasses most of the actual design elements that you see.

Web Development

While web development plays a hug role in what a site looks like (we’ll get to that in a minute), the key to remember here is that development usually consists of all of the backend programming on a website. HTML and CSS usually do not fall into the development category because much of it is generated through WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. So, while there may be some editing of code to get that exact look a designer is going for, it is not necessary to sit down and write line after line of code to get a design and layout like we used to have to do back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Because of this, the industry kind of adopted the terms web design and web development to to differentiate people with different skill sets.

Web Developers usually are more limited in their design potential because they are more analytical and process or logic oriented. These folks are programmers by nature and they typically are thinking more on the lines of functionality over design. The kicker here is that web developers directly impact the design of the site based on functions and what-not they are developing for functionality. This is why it is so important to have designers and developers working on a website – so you have someone looking at the design elements and graphical interface/user experience, and you have someone that is truly concerned about the functionality.

Web Design vs Web Development – Putting it All Together

The key to our success over the years is that we do have web designers and web developers working together towards a common goal and oversight to make sure they all play nicely together. Spend too much time on the design and not enough on the backend systems and you have a beautiful website that does nothing. Spend too much time on the backend systems and not the design and you have a wonderfully functioning site with a poor user experience.

Isn’t it great working with a company that can provide both?