You may not view web development as a crucial part of your brand’s storytelling, but the truth is that it can have a significant impact. Combined with web design, it can tell a compelling narrative of your brand.
Web design and web development have a common goal of creating a functional website, but they have different focuses. Let’s dive into web design and development, including their differences, similarities, and importance in a story-first website.
What Are Key Differences Between Web Design and Web Development?
Web designers and developers both have crucial roles in creating a website. However, their main roles and goals are vastly different. Let’s take a look at the key differences:
- Purpose: Designers focus on creating a visually appealing website with a functional user experience (UX). Developers use coding and other tools to develop and optimize a website’s performance.
- Skills: Designers use tools like Figma or Photoshop to create the layout and user flow. Developers use coding languages to create websites.
- Knowledge: Designers understand design and UX principles. Developers know programming languages, API integration, and other useful developer skills.
The goal of a designer is to create an engaging website. They will create visual assets, wireframes, mockups, and possibly prototypes. You won’t see a designer strictly coding, although they may have some coding knowledge.
A developer’s goal is to create a functional website. They add the functionality that designers envision in their mockups. Developers use coding to develop a website, but they won’t make any visual assets. Developers may also have more responsibilities like ensuring websites are secure and troubleshooting any errors.
What Are the Similarities Between Web Design and Web Development?
While web design and web development are two different disciplines, they share a common goal to create a functional website that engages users. Designers can’t succeed without developers and vice versa.
Both roles also have a significant impact on UX. While designers are in charge of creating an easy user flow, developers ensure that the site functions as intended. A CTA button is no good if someone clicks on it and nothing happens. Enhanced UX means that users can convert easily.
How to Ensure Designers and Developers Collaborate?
Any web development agency can tell you that effective communication is the foundation of a successful website. Designers and developers often work together to create a visually appealing and functional website.
Designers focus on the aesthetics, layout, and UX. Meanwhile, developers work to make the designs a reality. It may appear to be a transactional relationship, but it’s actually a collaborative effort.
Here are a few tips to ensure designers and developers can work together:
- Create a strategy: Consider marketing goals when creating a website. Content strategy can help inform the website architecture or features you want to add to your site. Examples include interactive content or collecting email addresses for segmented email campaigns. Understanding marketing objectives can help ensure teams stay on the same page.
- Feedback loop: Ensure there is a process for designers and developers to give feedback to each other. It allows each team to defend their side of the project. Feedback loops also help with sharing valuable insights into the technical feasibility or usability of a website element.
- Include users: Feedback from users is also a crucial part of developing a high-performing website. User feedback can help inform the iterative design process and ensure an optimized site.
- Develop soft skills: Clear communication, teamwork, and problem-solving skills are all important to establishing a collaborative environment.
What Are the Main Responsibilities of Web Designers?
High-quality web design is crucial to a company’s professionalism. A dodgy website may spook users into thinking your website is a scam. Web designers create a website that is visually appealing and easy to use. Some of the main responsibilities of a web designer include:
- Visual elements: Create a brand’s visual identity that aligns with the organization’s mission and appeals to users.
- UX: Ensure the user flow is smooth and easy to navigate. Enhanced UX helps engage users.
- Wireframing: Establish the layout and structure of a site before development begins.
- Responsive designs: Check that the design is accessible across multiple devices.
Tools and skills required
Web designers have a strong understanding of color theory, typography, UX principles, and design software. While they don’t code as part of their main responsibilities, web designers may find it useful to know HTML and CSS. It can help them communicate with developers on the usability of their designs.
There are plenty of tools to create visually appealing sites, even if you are a non-designer. Web designers frequently use tools like:
- Figma
- Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
- Adobe XD
- Dreamweaver
- Sketch
What Are the Main Responsibilities of Web Developers?
Web developers make a website operational. They provide the technical implementation to a website and make sure it operates as intended. There are two different types of developers.
Front-end developers take the designs and use code to turn them into a functional website. Developers may provide feedback on a design, especially if they find something not technically feasible. Some of their main responsibilities include:
- User-interface development: Turn designs into a functional user interface using code. Ensure that the layout, structure, and visual elements are user-friendly.
- Troubleshooting: Test code and fixing any issues. They may also fix user-reported bugs on the site.
- Performance optimization: Optimize the website for speed and performance, which ensures users have minimal download times and a good user experience.
- Maintenance and updates: Continuously maintain the website and verify that new updates are consistent with the branding.
There are also back-end developers that focus on data and servers. They usually aren’t involved in the design process, but they still have an important role in ensuring UX functionality. Some of their main responsibilities include:
- Server-side development: Build and maintain the infrastructure that hosts the website.
- API integration: Create and manage Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and ensure the APIs are operational and secure.
- Database management: Design and maintain the database while ensuring data integrity and optimizing performance.
- Security: Implement necessary security protocols to ensure sensitive data is kept safe from hackers or other unauthorized parties.
Sometimes a full-stack developer can handle both the front end and back end of a website. They can handle a wide range of responsibilities which can make them useful.
Tools and skills required
Whether you’re a front-end or back-end developer, you need a strong knowledge of programming languages. Front-end developers tend to know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Front-end developers may also need to understand on-page SEO since they implement those strategies.
Meanwhile, back-end developers know programming languages like Python and Java. They may also know frameworks like Ruby on Rails and database management systems like MySQL. Since back-end developers are likely responsible for security, they may also need to use authentication tools such as OAuth.
Key Takeaways
A seamless UX experience is the foundation of converting a casual reader into an engaged user. Web design and web development have two different roles, but they both can affect UX. A collaborative effort from both leads to a website that builds your brand narrative.
When creating a website, don’t forget to consider your overall marketing strategy. It can help inform what elements you need on your website to maximize conversions. Each element is one chapter of the overall story of your brand. Completing each chapter leads to a user completing the story and increasing the conversion rate of your site.
