Web Design or Web Development: What’s the Difference?

Websites are crucial business tools and are a window to the online audience far and wide. A website needs to be appealing and functional to fulfill its business purposes. The process of building a website includes web development and web design. However, there’s massive confusion on if they’re the same or who does what in building a website.

While most people use these terms interchangeably to refer to either service, they are fundamentally different. These processes both help build websites but on entirely different levels. Look at how the two differ from each other and the benefits of each in building a website.

What’s Web Design?

Web designers look more at the aesthetic look and usability of a website. They begin by considering a website’s objective and create an information architecture that sets up the sitemap for the information in the design process. This includes things like choosing the standard fonts for websites that enhance accessibility, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make a website discoverable on search engines, user interface, and experience for better usability.

The general principles of web design are:

Layout Balance

For web design, creating well-balanced page layouts is crucial to the look and usability of a website. It also involves balancing heavy and light elements and using their correct proportions. This enables users to interact easily with web features without struggling to find their way around.

Feature Emphasis

This is where web designers intentionally highlight some web elements to show emphasis or importance. This principle aims to give more life to information architecture to ease navigation by directing web users to the essential features they need to interact with.

Contrast

According to the color theory, contrasting colors are on the opposite sides of the color wheel, and color contrast plays a vital role in web design. It determines how explicit, accessible, and usable the content is, and it’s a requirement in creating accessible website design. However, web designers also use contrast in textures, shapes, and sizes to bring attention to sections of the website.

Consistency

This is considered to be giving web pages a rhythm, and it’s a critical element in web design. It ensures that the website shows harmony and looks comprehensible throughout with consistent navigation, page layout and menu structure, and typography and fonts. It makes it easier for web visitors to understand the website quicker, creating an excellent user experience.

What is Web Development?

As for web development, it’s taking the design and actually building it into a functional website. Web developers or programmers, as they’re also called, use programming languages to put all the web design principles into an operational system which is a smooth, functional website. Web developers can either develop websites from Content Management Systems (CMS) or custom by coding everything from scratch.

There are three types of web developers:

Front-end developer: The developer works with the client whose focus is how the users see the website. This is the category of developers most likely to have had their minds were racing, working on what will replace adobe flash when the program retired in December 2020.

Back-end developer: They work on the server-side of development to ensure seamless communication between the database and browser. They fulfill the requests developed in front-end development.

Full-stack developers: These developers have skills and expertise in both front and backend development.

Final Thoughts

The main difference between web design and web development is that the design focuses more on how the website feels and looks to a user. On the other hand, web development is focused on how the design, front, and backend development merge to create a functional website. Web designers are more creative and must be skilled in design principles, basic coding, and web design tools. As for web developers, they’re more technical and must be proficient in programming languages. Confused? You can take help of experienced web design firm to develop your websites and web apps.