The terms web designer and web developer  looks same as they are used interchangeably in the media and various advertisements. There is a big difference between the two. In technical terms they are referred to as the backend and the front end. Design involves what the visitor sees on your website which is called as the front end , development involves the site’s functionality which is usually called as the backend. This article explores the difference between these two disciplines.

A website contains several aspects:

Look and feel of the website – the graphics, color scheme, navigation elements, etc.
Content – information, products, etc 
Functionality – functionality includes for example shopping cart ,user accounts, self managed website also referred to as the CMS.
Usability – Your website from a visitor’s perspective and includes things like program interactions, navigation and usefulness.

Look And Feel of the website

The Look and feel of your website includes overall website appearance. A Graphic designer decides on what colors and fonts to use and how to work with the website layout.

Your graphic designer needs to have a really good appreciation for aesthetics and feeling for what combinations of colors and imagery will project the image that the website owner wants visitors to have of the site.

Content

Content writing remains the most important part of your website. This part will make or break your sales. Content is all of the text that is found on a website commonly referred to as the website content. It includes everything from website privacy policy note to a very persuasive sales letter. Content should satisfy your website visitor and answer all their questions .It should clearly explain the benefits of a product and asking the visitor to part with their hard earned cash and everything in between. If it is written text then it is part of the content. You need a good website copywriter and editor to create good content.

Functionality

The Functionality of a website  includes all of the interactive parts of  any web site and includes animation. The common denominator is that website programmer using  various web programming languages  on a web server or in a web browser create all of these functions. A good functionality of a website will ensure quick and easy sales. On the other hand it will allow you to self manage website. For all websites you don't need a web designer or programmer to manager website for you. A website which can be self managed are usually called as self managed website. At websites design all of our websites come with a control panel which can be used to easily self update your website with no technical knowledge involved. Simply login to the control panel and edit your website. With our website control panel you will be able to backup your website as well in seconds.

Flash can be used to animate website graphics. Perl, php and java are programming languages used on the web server to create sophisticated dynamic web sites. These pages can work independently but most commonly they use a  database to create all of the features we have come to expect from a website.

JavaScript is basically used in web browsers to create lot of cool animated effects such as swapping images when a mouse moves over an image,, links changing their colors, etc. JavaScript works in the user’s computer web browser rather than on the web server.

There are also other  backend applications that are not visible to any website visitor such as form processing, content management system also called CMS and other administration programs that make it possible for non programmers to maintain some aspects of the website’s data.

All of these programs have to be integrated into the HTML code to be used on the webpage.

Usability

Usability is the users view and hence will play a very important role in boosting your sales. Its testing involves things like

Does the look and feel of the website are actually portraying proper image?
Is the navigation of website user friendly?
Does the navigation shows a virtual path to visitor?
Does the site load quickly?
Do the applications work properly?


Web design Versus website Development

There is lot of work involved when the website design is complete and its time to integrate the backend with the front end. Unfortunately, there is a lot of overlap and integration needed between web design and web development. When you include in content creation and usability testing, it becomes a real messy job.

Can a single person handling this project do all these things at a very cheap cost?  or can you handle all of these things keeping up with your other business commitments? There are very few  people who can do all of these things but most people only do one or two of the tasks.

Web design usually involves content creation and look and feel on the other hand web development involves creating the functionality and testing the usability of a website.

Web designers need to be good with graphic design tools like adobe Photoshop. Most of the web designers also know HTML so they can implement their designs with the help of a developer. However, using animation on the website and designing a layout for the site’s content are also part of the web designer’s responsibility.

Many website owners provide the content by themselves but a web designer might sometime need to edit and even rewrite the content if required. Web designers also normally do the website usability testing for the navigation and website loading speed.

Web development programmers are responsible for creating the functionality for the website, but all of that functionality has to be integrated with the front end design which has to be integrated with HTML pages on the site. Alternatively, the HTML content could also be integrated into the program. Web developers can also do usability testing on the site. In my opinion leave the testing to a website developer and he would be the one who could improve the usability better then a designer would do. So the programmer also needs to have some HTML knowledge as well.

In either case the web designer and web development programmer need to work together to confirm that the website does what the owner has requested it to do.

In short you can spend millions of dollars to get every thing done from a separate specialist  person which only  large companies can afford. In most other cases, the web designer and web development programmer are two different people who must work together to create a successful website for your business