Web Development Vs Web Design – Want To Know The Difference?

Web designing and Web development are used interchangeably so often that one forgets that they are technically two different functions. Adding to the confusion is the increasing number of businesses that promote themselves as Web Development Company as well as Web Designing Company.

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This blog post on web development Vs web design will delve into the two realms of website creation and elaborate on the differences between the two.

Web Development Vs Web Design

Before we go into details about web development and web designing, let’s take a quick look at the major differentiators between the two aspects of website building.

Web Design Web Development
Deals with the aesthetics of the website – the look and feelDeals with building the backbone of the website –factors and attributes that contribute to the function and performance of the website
Transform a concept into a visually-appealing layout Transform the design into a functional website

What is Web Designing?

As described above, web designing involves creating the look and feel of the website. A web designer creates a wire frame or layout based on the client’s preferences and specifications.

Read Also: Top 10 Web Development Companies In India

The wireframe will give a general idea of how the final page will look like. Once all the stakeholders approve the wireframe, sketches and mock-ups are created. These sketches and prototypes will give a precise picture of the final product.

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From the size and type of font to the colour palette of the web page, every design aspect is finalised during these stages. All these design aspects play a vital role in making the website attractive to the visitor.

Aspects of Web Designing

The process of web designing doesn’t simply end in creating a mock-up or choosing a background theme and typography. The various aspects of web designing include:

  • Creating a website format and layout that delivers the best user experience
  • Building the website prototype
  • Working on the graphic designs
  • Coordinate with website developers to convert design ideas into features
  • Creating web designs using CSS and HTML

Apart from these common tasks, specialist web designers focus on specific design tasks such as:

User Experience (UX) – It involves creating a web interface based on audience profiles and demographics.

User Interface (UI) – It involves building a foundation to improve user experience by incorporating elements for easy site navigation.

Visual Design – It combines both the elements of user experience and user interface to conceptualise the website’s unique brand and style.

Elements of a Web Design

While creating the visual design, web designers focus on the following design principles:

Balance – This principle elaborates on the need to use the right proportion of small and large elements, dark and light colours, and other elements to create a balanced web design.

Contrast – This principle is based on the colour theory that states that complementary or contrasting colours are placed opposite each other. Designers use contrasting colours, textures, shades, shapes and other elements to create an attractive page

Consistency – It is a critical design principle that ensures consistency of colour, design and layout across all the web pages of the website. It also ensures consistency with the brand image, logo and mobile app.

Unity – This principle involves building a relationship among the different elements of the web design to create a cohesive theme that grabs the attention of the website visitor.

Emphasis – This principle involves “emphasizing” on certain design elements to make it stand out on a web page to grab the attention of visitors.

Design Tools for Web Designing

The commonly used tools for web designing are:

  • Illustrator
  • Sketch
  • Dreamweaver
  • AI
  • Adobe Photoshop

What is Web Development?

Web development involves the use of codes to convert a static layout created by the designers into a dynamic functional website. There are two types of web developments – front-end development and back-end development.

Development that includes both front end and back end is known as full stack development. Front end development or building the user/client side of the website involves creating the interface and building the interaction between the backend of the website and the user.

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Front end web development bridges the technical aspects of web development with the aesthetic elements of web design. The backend of the website is the hardcore technical aspect of the website, or in other words, the backbone of the website on which the rest of the elements are woven around. 

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Front end web development bridges the technical aspects of web development with the aesthetic elements of web design. The backend of the website is the hardcore technical aspect of the website, or in other words, the backbone of the website on which the rest of the elements are woven around. 

Front End Website Development

JavaScript (JS), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the three major programming languages used to create the front end of the website.

It also includes using content management systems (CMS) like Joomla, Drupal or WordPress to streamline the entire development process and ensure seamless functionality.

Bootstrap, jQuery, and React are some of the frameworks used in creating the front end of a website. It also includes use of styling pre processors and JavaScript libraries.

The popular front end web development tools are

  • jQuery
  • Angular JS
  • Sass
  • Sublime Text
  • Chrome Developer Tools
  • GitHub
  • Twitter Bootstrap

Back End Website Development

The backend of the website is also known as the server side of the website and involves gathering accurate data based on the actions happening on the front end. It determines the architecture of the website and focuses on the script and the database.

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The server side is coded using programming languages such as Java, Python, PHP, ASP.NET, Node JS, C#, C, C++, and more while the server database is built using MySQL, Oracle, SQL and Mongo.

The tasks involved in building the backend of the website are:

  • Writing codes for the server and database interaction
  • Ensuring server-side code is secure and error free
  • Optimizing server-side code to handle the large volumes of traffic that the website expects to have
  • Implementing algorithms

The essential tools for backend website development are:

  • Programming languages such as PHP, Perl, Java, Ruby, Python, Erlang, Node JS and more
  • Web servers such as Nginx and Apache
  • Database management systems such as MongoDB, PostgreSQL and MySQL
  • Local development environment such as XAMPP, Wamp Server and Laragon to run and test codes before making them live
  • Website performance testers such as Full-Page Load Tester and Google Page Speed Tester
  • Microservice platforms such as Kubernetes and Docker

Many small and medium businesses that want to create an online portal look for web development and web designing services. Whether you are looking to build a new website or revamp your existing online portal to give it a new life, you can consult us.

Read Also: 25 Stunning Website Designs That Will Blow You Away

We have in-depth experience in website designing and development and can give you the best value for your investment. Contact us right away to create a stunning website for your business.

We have in-depth experience in website designing and development and can give you the best value for your investment. Contact us right away to create a stunning website for your business.

7 Trends That Are Going To Be The Future of Web Development

Keeping up with the ever changing web development changes is getting on the nerves for many.  While some of the changes are temporary and short lived, many of the others have a dramatic change prevailing the notions.

For example, Flash took the web development ethics to entirely a new horizon when it was initially introduced. But today, it’s just a design option.

While traditional web developers might see themselves getting out of fashion, the upcoming trends in web development will certainly bring in a new revolution. The following trends are worth our attention and how they are going to change the face of traditional web designs.

1. UI Animation

UI animations, or commonly referred as motion UI, is a SaaS library that’s used in custom CSS.  Although responsive web designs have been making around for quite some time, what everyone expects in the near future is something larger than just responsive.

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UI animation allows web developers to create a more interactive, animated and unique transitional design that adds value to your website. The technology is busy finding newer methods to implement motion UI in a more easy and efficient manner.

2. PHP 7

PHP, has far by now remained the most preferred language for backend of web development.  The language has improved a lot more than anyone can imagine with its latest release of version 7.0. It is recognised as one of the latest trends for web development in 2018.

The Laravel 5.x, the framework used in PHP 7, offers you with ready solutions that make working with complex tasks a lot more easier than before. The open-source framework has a large online community, making you worry less for any problems with your web app.

3. Virtual reality WordPress site

We have already placed our foot in the world of Virtual reality(VR), which always fascinated us with its research, and the same is seen in the case of web development methodologies. VR changes the way we communicate and interact with the technology world.

Implementing VR to the world of web development demands support from a huge library. E-Commerce websites have already enabled their customers to interact with the products and create an all new experience for them. With WordPress bringing in support for VR content in their sites, we expect to see widespread use of VR in web design.

4. Card Designs

Use of card based designs, a fundamental material principle from Google, is a piece of content which includes a text, image or video, is broken down into separate cards which allows a user to navigate through a site.  The UI cards can show a larger amount of data just on a piece of card.

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Also, the UI cards also blend well with mobile responsive designs and works best on tablets and various browsers. Cards also allow businesses to build robust systems which develop and organises data, which includes various filters and sorting options, to cater to specific needs of users.

5. Automated Coding

Believe us, automated coding, which is based on the principles of artificial intelligence can do wonders to developing your web strategy. Due to the much talked hyped about AI in web development field, many companies have now launch a DIY website builder, which builds you website with just a few inputs from you. Doesn’t that sound interesting!

But many of the researchers say that using AI in the field of web development can prove threat to developers. But that is not proved yet. Do you think artificial intelligence and automated coding can replace the human intelligence and design?

6. SaaS

Creating a code free website with the help of tools has become a trend nowadays. Companies offering these tools promise a breath-taking user experience that doesn’t require you to know coding and programming. You may only require to know a few basics of photo shop or any photo editor.

SaaS is a cloud based subscription model entity that can access your data via any browser.  Instead of downloading a product, installing it on your machine and then running the program, you just visit a SaaS site through your browser and access the product with their login details.

7. Conversational E-Commerce

Popularly known as Chat-Bots, this are computer programs that work like humans with the help of machine learning and natural language processing (NPL). They can communicate with the customer; get the message across giving illusion to the customer of being a human being. Chat-bots are widely used in E-commerce applications.

The Bot revolution has already taken the place of humans and only time can tell how far its going to take this trend. Lots of conferences and research paper are going deeper into the evolution of chat bots.

Conclusion

As long as the web lives, new trends will come and go.  Seeing the current trend, web developers need to look ahead and redirect their approach with new business ideas. The need to re-invent you will continue, especially for small enterprises.  All the web development trends above are going to help you stay competitive in the market work wonders.