What is Web Design and Web Development and what is the difference?

Web design

Web designers transform an idea into a aethetically appealing design and use their layout to determine the user experience and user journey throughout the entire website. They design the website’s look and feel just as an architect would when they create a plan of your house before building it. A web designer models the layout of a website before a web developer starts developing it.

Often underrated, web designers have a tough role in the chain. They need to come up with the best user experience possible while creating a welcoming outlook for the user. They have to come up with an idea based on writing, into a usable design and interface that captivates. A website isn’t great if there was no application of proper design strategy in the early stages. Unfortunately, nowadays web designers are still rated below that of web developers. But this misconception affects the entire website because without a great user experience and design, the development cannot be truly appreciated by the user.

These are some of the main roles of a web designer:

• Plan and build the layout design of the website
• Have a good feel for user experience, to identify the simplest approach possible to attain the desired function. This includes the layout, buttons, images and the general format of the website.
• Web designers need to keep themselves up to date with the latest design trends. It’s also important to keep design consistency that is made popular from other web giant companies, such as Google, and Facebook. This makes the website environment and interface easier to navigate and use, as it is already familiar to the users eyes.

Web development

Web developers are those who turn the designs into a live website. Web developers uses web languages and software tools to develop the design and functionality of a website. There are two types of developers, front-end developers and back-end developers. Front-end developers are the connection between web designers and back-end developers. A front-end developer is the one who builds the interface, and provides the layout as the interaction between the back-end of the website and the user.

Front-end developers use three main languages; Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript (JS). With these languages, a developer is able to create a full-fledged website. From the main design layout, to inserting images, applying different types of typography and font families, implementing animations, the flow of different pages, form interfaces, and more.

Back-end developers are those who control the server data and requests. Usually a website requires back-end services if it contains dynamic data. This means, for example, users submitting a form with personal data (such as creating an account), or saving an article for your blog page. Generally, if the website requires data to be saved, and making it accessible at a later stage, it means that it would also need a database connection. Database connections are made possible by a direct connection from the server itself. Thus, a back-end developer then uses server languages such as PHP or ASP.NET, and writes database queries by using languages such as SQL or MySQL.

Here are some of the main roles of a web developer:

• Building the actual interface through which a user interacts with the website. This interface is built by front-end developers using HTML, CSS, and JS languages.
• Front-end developers provide the markup design to back-end developers, so they can implement a dynamic website, and submit all the required data on the server and databases.
• Back-end developers create the backbone of the website using languages such as PHP and MySQL.