Many people tend to use the two terms web design and web development interchangeably. Although they are similar, they’re also very different. Understanding the different elements of each is critical for figuring out what services you need for your website needs.
At a high-level, they both aim to serve the users of the website just like books are written for the audience reading them. The way you design the website directly impacts the impression and influence your website has on your visitors and potential customers.
Once you have your strategy and design in place, this is where development comes into play. Web development is the process of bringing your design to life and making it functional. We do this by leveraging the coding languages of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so that your website can be viewed anywhere and on virtually any device.
Good web design and good development are critical for delivering the best experience to your web visitors and potential customers. If it’s not done well, people won’t stay on your site long and they won’t have a positive initial impression of your business.
So you can start to see why proper design and functionality is key to influencing your potential buyers to stay on your website, learn about your offering, and take action or get in contact with you.
Read on to learn more about the difference between the design and development of a website and how each are important for achieving your online aspirations.
Web Design
Web design refers to what the user sees when they visit your website. Under each good design are principles that govern the arrangement of elements, the brand identity, and the user experience.
Design is intentional and is focused on meeting the needs of the visitor. Good design helps users find the information they’re looking for quickly which ultimately helps them decide if your website is what they’re looking for in the first place.
While the user (your visitor) is the most important, the design is also meant to help you achieve your objectives for the website. In most cases, this means more leads interacting with your website and hopefully converting into customers.
Good or bad design will directly impact whether your website gets you more business opportunities or deters potential clients from ever reaching out.
User Experience (UX Design)
Before getting to the first lines of copy or designing the homepage of your website, it’s important to thoroughly outline your UX design.
If you have the goal of earning more business and attracting more customers to your business, this is where you need to start designing. The focus should be on the user and develop your website around their needs—not yours.
By incorporating what you (the owner) and your user (potential customer) want to get out of your website, you start your strategy in a place that gives you the highest chance of getting the outcomes you’re looking for.
In the book, The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett, he organizes this process into a series of planes that build upon each other from the strategy plane to the surface plane. This gives us a logical structure for solving the challenges of user experience.
These planes include everything from content, information architecture, site functionality, visual communication and design. This is the UX framework we use at Red Bird in our web design and development process.
Copywriting
When it comes to the content on your website, the copy (or written text) is easily the most important part of your site. Believe it or not, well written copy and poor visual design can actually perform better than poor copy and really well done visual and interface design.
Similar to the web and UX design process, copywriting has to start by understanding your audience. Your visitors are coming to your website to have their questions answered and their ideas confirmed or corrected.
The best way to grab their attention is by writing your copy in a way that shows you understand them and their world. This builds trust, shows that you understand them, and can help them solve their challenges.
Again, depending on the goal and strategy of the copy, different structures such as AIDA or PAS might work well. However, what’s important is connecting with the reader emotionally, highlighting benefits and outcomes, and showing what’s in it for them.
Good copy can illuminate problems, evoke emotions, answer questions, and compel users to take action. Quality copy isn’t just about persuasive writing, it’s about providing real value and information people will find useful. Answer the questions your users are searching for and you’ll build trust and respect.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Another important facet of website creation is SEO. This field is important because it helps you get more visitors to your website and positions you as a subject matter expert. Ultimately, good SEO is more reliable and cost-effective than paid advertising and marketing efforts.
This is because paid traffic usually gives you spikes in traffic (when they’re running) and then they usually revert to normal levels after those campaigns finish. Meanwhile, SEO can help you build your domain authority and drive more consistent traffic volume.
SEO starts by understanding your users’ intent and what they are trying to get out of their search results. Are they simply looking for information on a topic or interested in buying products or services?
By understanding the intent, we can look into what people are searching for and see what kind of information they’re looking for. This also helps us figure out the search results you want your site to come up for in search. This can be done through keyword research, determining volume, difficulty, and strategic planning.
Through SEO research we can even see what your competitors are ranking for and opportunities you have to get a share of the web traffic for your target topics and keywords. This is critical for competing in the digital space and turning your website into a strategic revenue producing asset.
Visual Design/UI
Visual design has to do with the overall look, feel, and organization of content on your website. It follows design principles we find across many mediums like websites, applications, logos and branding, infographics, and even print media.
There’s no doubt you can look at a website or brochure and almost immediately decide whether it’s designed well or not. However, it can be a challenge to determine why something looks good and do it properly on your own projects without understanding visual design.
When we’re creating a website for your business, we focus on designing it for the user (your potential customer). It’s critical that they can find the information they’re looking for easily and quickly because if they can’t they’ll leave and your website will miss out on opportunities early in the process.
So we have to find a way to deliver that information and organize it in a way that eliminates friction and helps users find the relevant information they need. The way we design the website should promote this through intentional visual communication.
We could go on about the different elements of design like color, contrast, alignment, negative space, balance, and many more but the idea behind all of these is to deliver a positive user interface and experience that also fits with your company’s unique brand identity.
Doing this right creates a good user experience that’s memorable, frictionless, and leads to what matters most: generating interest and new prospective customers for your business.
Web Development
That brings us to web development which is where we take all of the web design parts and piece them together. This is the process of building out the site with functional code that uses the various elements of web design to bring it all together.
While there is back-end development which involves servers, database management, etc. We’ll focus on front-end development which is what your users see. Everything from your visual design, layout, and functionality is built out so that people can interact with it and browsers can render it.
The language of front-end development is comprised of 3 main programming languages:
– Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
– Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
– JavaScript (JS)
HTML is the code that creates elements on the page such as a link, image, list, etc. Think of this as a plaintext document without style that creates the base or skeleton of the website.
CSS is the way we can give those HTML elements style and develop the appearance and design of those elements in a way that matches our visual design and UI that we’re going for.
JavaScript works with your HTML and CSS to bring those styled elements to life. It’s used to keep the content updated, animate elements like an expandable list, or a contact form that your potential customers can submit their information into.
Whether you code your website from scratch using only these programming languages or use a page builder or even a generic website template, these languages are what brings your content to life in a way that allows users to view it and interact with it in their browser from anywhere in the world.
Another piece of web development that picks up on our previous topics is technical SEO. This is how we optimize a website for search when we are developing the website, functionality, and content.
This may include things like your site architecture, optimizing page speed, crawl-ability for search engines, meta data, and more. The main idea here is to make sure that your website is making it easy for search engines to digest the information to help you appear in search results.
Ultimately, the whole reason why it’s important to plan this piece out is to help you get the most out of your site. People have to be able to find you and search engines have to know how to deliver your website as a result of what someone is searching for.
Conclusion
Web Design and Web Development are related but each focus on different areas when it comes to creating and building out a functional website. The goal of both is to deliver a good user experience, help your business get found online, and ultimately help you reach your goals when it comes to online presence and business growth.
These are two broad subjects that cover a lot of information that most people are unaware of but it all comes together when we are following a structured and effective website design and development process. Design and development are two critical sides of the same coin and when we break them down and consider each element strategically, you will get the most out of your website.
For more information on how Red Bird Web Design can help your business with your web design and development needs, please feel free to reach out via our contact form for an introductory call. We’ll also be posting more articles on the subject in the future.