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Website Design and Development
Taylor Tunnison • July 15, 2022

There’s a lot that goes into modern websites. With a little finesse, they can be customized to suit almost any personal or professional purpose. This matters because with over 200 million websites currently active on the internet today, standing out from the crowd is a necessity. The differences between website design and development aren’t always clear, though, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the processes involved. Collaboration is common in this industry and many aspects can fall under either category. Here we highlight some of the overlap and key distinctions between website design and development.

Website Design

For a website to be successful, visitors must find it visually appealing and intuitive. It should nurture all users and create a positive, well-branded experience from the very first click. These tasks usually fall to website designers who are responsible in part for most layout, graphic, and conversion-generating components.


Website designers can generally be classified into three categories: user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and visual designers. However, this isn’t necessarily a hard-and-fast rule. There’s certainly some overlap between each role, and all may collaborate with developers, but this basic framework is useful as an introduction to the field.


UX designers are tasked with creating a cohesive and enjoyable website experience. This requires them to step into a user’s shoes and see from their perspective. Successful UX designers encourage new visitors to stick around, return often, and recommend the website to others. They do this by designing webpages that are simple enough to interpret on all devices, yet engaging enough to hold one’s attention over time.


UI designers tend to handle the interface elements of a website. This includes input controls such as buttons, menus, and data fields, as well as navigational components like icons, search fields, image sliders, and directional links. They also construct informational inputs like notifications, progress bars, and message boxes. UI designers often create custom graphics, illustrations, and branded typography to enhance the display of websites across various device views.


Someone who prefers to only design custom graphics with creative tools like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator may be known as a visual designer. However, most UX, UI, and graphic designers can also double as visual website designers. In general, website designers work together to create wireframes, mockups, visuals, color palettes, and branded templates that make webpages engaging, user-friendly, and visually stunning.

Website Development

New and returning users expect websites to function properly. This often requires the expertise of programmers who specialize in website development. They take the ideas and elements envisioned by web designers and transform them into fully functional webpages.


Website developers tend to inhabit one of three roles: front-end, back-end, or full stack. They’re generally responsible for establishing the functionality and architecture of a website. Website developers are technically savvy and proficient in programming languages including but not limited to PHP, CSS, Python, Ruby, HTML, SQL, Java, and JavaScript.


Front-end developers focus on many aspects of a website that users interact with directly. These “client-side” elements include website structure, behavior, content, text styles and colors, images, videos, graphs, buttons, and navigation. This often requires them to work directly with UI and UX designers to create an intuitive, enjoyable, and seamless user experience. Front-end developers are also concerned with a website’s overall performance and responsiveness. They work to ensure all webpages appear normally on different browsers and devices of varying sizes.

 

Back-end developers establish the foundational code and underlying infrastructure that support a website. They focus on “server-side” aspects including domains, hosting, servers, bug fixes, troubleshooting, data logic, security, databases, content libraries, and application programming interfaces (APIs). Most of these aspects aren’t clearly visible to users, but that doesn’t make them any less important. Few, if any, of a website’s front-end UX and UI elements would function properly without them.

 

Full-stack developers can implement both front- and back-end website elements. They’ve generally mastered a wide variety of programming languages and may be able to greatly assist other programmers. Full-stack developers can often reduce the cost of a website project by quickly creating prototypes without the need for collaboration.

Professional Websites Matter

Website design and development overlap in many ways. Regardless, every company needs a high-quality website. Consumers expect it, and it can significantly improve any business’s credibility. While many free and paid website builders exist today, the benefits of hiring a professional web developer are hard to overstate. If your current website needs some work or you’re ready for a new build, then we hope you’ll contact us to get started today. We’ll sit down to discuss your unique vision and walk you through our process every step of the way.

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