There seems to be a lot of confusion on what differentiates web design and web development. Fortunately the answer is rather simple, and we figured we’d go ahead and clarify things for our readers.

Web design is what the customer seems. It’s the visual aspect of the website. A web designer is mostly concerned with the appearance of a site and how users will be able to interact on it. Good web designers understand key principles of design and are able to create beautiful pages that are easy to navigate and are appealing to the eye. Often, they will use programs such as Adobe Photoshop to create the layout or will utilize a pre-existing layout and go back and revamp it for the client’s taste.

A designer’s process usually involves speaking with clients to understand what the customer is looking for. They will then create wireframes, or mock-up visuals, of what the pages on the website will look like. They’ll then design the website and create demos of the site to check the functionality. A good designer will be sure there are no bugs or glitches before finally launching the site for the world.

Web development on the other hand is the back-end of a website. This tends to include more of the programming and functions of a page. The web developers main focus is on how the website works and how the users are able to interact with it. Web developers will most likely use programs like HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP and other related programming languages to deliver the living website.

To put it simply, the web developer takes the web design, which can be thought of as the picture, and then programs the correct code in order to make it come to life and work the way it should.