Web Designers vs. Web Developers

June 22, 2007 10:47 am sharleeplett Website Design, Website Development

The question often comes up as to what is the difference between a Web Site Designer and a Web Site Developer.  This article takes a look at some of the key differences between the two roles in website design and development.

Web Designer

A Web Designer is one that has skills and talent in the areas of Web Page Design and Layout.  The Web designer may or may not be particularly artistic in terms of creating artwork that will be displayed on the web page, but they usually have a good eye for layout and the ability to design and build attractive and functional web pages using various web creation tools and clipart libraries. If the Web Designer is not particularly artistic, but need custom or unique graphics or logos, a Graphic Artist may be called in to do the art work.

The secret that most Web designers would like you not to know is, building and designing a simple web page is not particularly difficult when using the appropriate tools. It can be like using a fancy word processor to create a newsletter. Once you are familiar with a web design tool and if you have a little creativity, you can produce your own web pages. This is evident by the number of web pages already on the internet. Basically, the tool creates the HTML code needed for each web page and the Designer provides the creativity and data input. Graphics in many cases come from clipart libraries or from a graphic artist.

Having said all this, it is important to have a good web designer that can build a page or site to fit your needs and make your site stand out. A good web designer will consider many factors in creating a web page that the novice will not.  Things like logically organizing the information on the page and the site, ease of navigation, load time over slow modems, etc. Think about the sites you may have visited that a page seemed to go on and on forever and took a long time to finish loading. You simply don’t see these problems on well designed sites.

Web Developer

A Web Developer is someone that uses programming skills and tools similar to someone that writes computer software. The Web Developer goes beyond simple web design. They actually create programming code that may run on the web server, on the client (the users browser), or both. Code running on the server is never seen by the user, but will do things like customize a page before it is sent to the user’s Web Browser by pulling information from a database or other source. A search engine is a perfect example of this. You go the search engine website, type in your search words,  code run’s on the server to search a database for sites that match the words you typed in, the code then formats a page with the appropriate information and links and sends them back to your browser. Page Counters, calculators, games, database access, login screens, interactive web sites are just a few of the examples where a web developer may be needed. In short, if you need a web page with these type of features, you need not only a Web Designer, but you also need a Web Developer. This may or may not be one person or company.

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Design vs. Development    

You’ll probably find the titles “Web designer” and “Web developer” to be used interchangeably. This isn’t accurate. Designing a Web site is actually very different from developing one.

There are two major components to designing a Web site: the “front end” and the “back end.” While there can be quite a bit of crossover, for the most part design refers to the front end, development to the back end.

Front End Design

The front end is what your customers see: The “pages” that display the graphics, the images, and the text on your site.

Web designers concentrate on the front end, choosing appropriate images and fonts for the site and determining how images and text should be arranged.

A Web designer’s strength is the appreciation for aesthetics. A designer doesn’t have to be a technical whiz. But one should at least have a strong understanding of what will work visually on a computer screen, and what the technical limitations are in designing for the Web.

A good Web designer will also have experience in collaborating with a Web developer.

Back End and Development

Web developers work on the back end, making a site work. It’s not visible to visitors, but is essential to enhancing the visitor’s experience.

Back-end functions include making images change or move, allowing visitors to view different pages or enter data on themselves, or performing sales transactions.

If you’re hiring a Web developer for your Web site project, learn to speak the language. Make sure the resumes of those you are considering include the following skills:

• HTML (for the text and layout framework of a Web page)
• Web imaging (how to create and compress images for the Web)
• Javascript (writing programs that run as part of Web pages to do tasks like validating form fields before submitting a form)
• ASP (customizing a Web page for a particular user on the server before it is sent down to the user)
• Java/C++ (writing programs that are embedded within a Web page to do things that Web pages cannot do — like playing space invaders in a Web page)

Whom to Use?

Can an individual be both a Web designer and a Web developer? You bet! There are plenty of talented individuals who are adept at both. And for the sake of convenience, not to mention your budget, you may prefer to work with these hybrids.

However, if your heart is set on a snazzy design that puts your competitors to visual shame, your best bet is to hire a separate designer with strong graphic experience.

Or say you want to include complex e-commerce transactions that require special programming skills. In this case, you may end up with a top-notch Web developer who has absolutely no interest or experience in graphic design.

What Are Your Options?

If you’ve never designed a Web site, could you be capable of handling both ends of Web design? Quite possibly!

Then again, taking on such a big undertaking could be foolhardy. It all depends on your goals.

Do it yourself.

In-house design is certainly the cheapest route. If your needs are relatively simple, some excellent software packages can guide you through the whole process.

Outsource it all.

If you want animated graphics, interactive tools, or complex e-commerce functions? You’ll need an expert in CGI scripts and important Web programming languages like PERL.

Combine the two.

Your third option is to do some of the work in-house, and contract out for the tasks your company can’t handle. Look around your company. Do any of your staff have experience with graphic design software like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator? Maybe he or she can design the images for the site, and then use a contractor to work the images into the overall design.

Or are you a better-than-average photographer? Scan and use your own photos for your site, or use a digital camera and upload the images onto your site moments after you take them.

Keep in mind that if you’re already thin on resources, even if you have some capable people in house, it may still make sense to use contractors and save your full-timers for what they’re there for: growing the company.

But be creative. Got an intern who built her own homepage? Or one of your staff’s high-school-aged kids — you might be surprised at how capable they are of putting a page together.

And don’t forget ongoing maintenance. No matter who designs and develops your site, you can’t just put it up and leave it there. A good site creation plan should incorporate the long term.