What is the Difference Between Web Design and Web Development?

It’s a common question that we get pretty often:

What is the difference between a web designer and a web developer?

Typically, most Internet Marketing companies offer both services and most companies that advertise website design also offer web development. Other times, you need to find a web designer AND a web developer to complete the website process from start to finish. This is what is great about Internet Marketing companies — They offer both so you don’t have to try to find 2 separate professionals and go through the headache of weeding out the ones that you don’t feel comfortable investing your money into. If you’re looking for Ontario, CA web design and development, contact us! Now, let’s look at the details of both the professions.

The Web Designer

The web designer takes a blank slate (a blank canvas, if you will) and creates the visuals of the website. Usually this is done in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. The design they create includes graphics, images, main navigation, sizing for the site (such as site width, and width of the components within the layout), color scheme, etc. The design they create looks just like the completed website and can be presented to you in .jpg format, but it is non-functional on the web. You can’t click, you can’t scroll, it is layers and layers of images and graphics in a single file.

The Web Developer

The web developer takes the layers of the images (the design) and translates it by writing (well, technically typing) code so the Internet can display it properly, just like the web designer laid it out in his or her design. They use lines and lines and lines of code in order to achieve the best possible functionality of your website on the Internet. The coding used is HTML, CSS, and often PHP and JavaScript. After the web developer is finished, you can now access your website at your domain name, click, scroll, and cheer for your completed web project!