Web design and web development are two different terms. But a lot of people use these terms as if they have the same meaning. We will discuss the definitions of each term and the differences in this post.
What’s Web Design?
Let’s break it down. Web designers can have an extensive set of skills to help them when web designing. Applying visual design “to improve a design’s/product’s aesthetic appeal and usability” of a website is one of those skills. To better describe a web designer, they deal with the customer-facing part of a website which is known as the front-end.
Also known as User Experience Designers or UX Designers, web designers apply design principles to help create an overall better experience for the end-user. Including transitions, interactions, and visual elements to portray a user-friendly website.
Some of the industry-standard skills that web designers have are:
- Wire-framing & Prototyping
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
- XD
- Framer
- Figma
What’s Web Development?
Development relates to the programming side of a website. Web Developers are responsible for building a website, maintaining and optimising a website. Web development can be seen in two parts, front-end & back-end.
Front-end development is similar to web design but with a few extra skills. Picture a web designer with visual design skills along with front-end programming skills—those skills including the three layers of web development, HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Back-end development focusses more on a more advanced, behind the scenes programming level. This could include knowledge in databases, payments or API handling. Back-end web development creates the functionality of a website.
What’s the Difference?
To simply describe the differences, web design just focusses on the front-end of a website and how a website is used and looks. In contrast, web development focusses on both front-end and back-end development to build the website on through programming.
We can build a website for you.
Fonseka Innovations has a team of talented web designers and web developers to help build a beautiful and functioning website for your business. So if you’re interested in taking your website to the next level, contact us, and we will be in touch.
