Web Design VS Web Development

by Anna Khrupa on Mar 15, 2022

What is the difference between web design and web development? The simple answer to this question would be: designers create the design for your website and developers implement it through coding. However, there’s more to those processes that make the distinction a little more clear. Let’s take a look.

What is Web Design?

In essence, web design reigns over everything that has to do with the visual aesthetics and usability of your website. This involves everything the user actually sees on the screen of their computer or mobile device.

The web design process always begins with the analysis of a client’s project requirements and business objectives. These are then turned into an Information Architecture document that sets the right hierarchy of information for the website, including every page, element, and piece of content you see on screen. From color schemes and typography to page layouts and information flows, web designers use their skills to create wireframes, mockups, and entire design systems that they then hand off to developers for implementation—to bring this digital experience to life.

Web designers often use tools such as Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Zeplin, and InVision to share precise design and CSS data with the development team. Producing a shared design spec document like this saves both design and development teams a lot of time on communication. It enables them to share timely feedback on the same platform and results in improved workflows and better web development outcomes.

What is Web Development?

Simply put, web development is the process of coding to create a website with the intended design. The web development process can be divided into two distinct categories: front-end web development and back-end web development.

Front-end web development

The front-end or client-side web development is responsible for how the website will actually display the designs mocked up by a designer. Front-end web developers take the design spec documents provided by the web design team and turn these wireframes and mockups into a functioning user interface using programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Thus, it’s very important for a front-end developer to have some knowledge of UI/UX design and SEO practices to be able to choose the right technology stack so that it delivers the intended look and feel of the website and serves the business objectives of the client.

Back-end web development

The back-end or server-side web development is responsible for the infrastructure, business logic, and data management—everything that happens behind the scenes when a user performs an action on your website. Back-end web developers combine various server-side programming languages (PHP, Python, C#, Java), frameworks (Symfony, .NET), and database management systems (MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL) to ensure seamless performance, efficient data processing, and impenetrable security of your website.

Full-stack web development

Full-stack web development involves developers who combine strong skills and experience with both front-end and back-end web development technologies. These professionals can provide your project with a complete package of web development services.