Web designer vs. web developer: whom should you hire?

0 comment Published on July 2nd, 2021

Every business needs a website — a beautiful, convenient, and informative website.

Let’s imagine that you are already a successful bookie in Canada and want to open up more opportunities for yourself by moving some of your services to the Internet. To do this, you need a website that allows people to use the services you provide. What do you need to consider to make your site usable and in-demand? Can it be done by yourself, or is it better to ask a specialist? What kind of specialist is needed for this? Is it easy to find a good specialist to create such a website?

A myriad of questions to which there are no clear answers.

Most people don’t have enough time to follow the development of the industry, and not everyone understands exactly what kind of specialist they need. A web designer and a web developer are both important for building websites, but it is not easy to understand the difference between them.

 

What’s the difference between a web designer and a web developer?

The most obvious difference is that the web designer is in charge of the visual or aesthetic side of the website, while the web developer is responsible for the invisible side: the coding. In other words, a beautiful web interface is created by web designers, and it is the developer’s job to turn a beautiful image into a page that is functioning.

Let’s sum it up before going into details:

  • Web designers make websites look good (design/layout/colors).
  • Web developers make websites work (functionality/features).

 

What does a web designer do?

As we already mentioned, web designers are responsible for visual design. A web designer should have a great sense of aesthetics to make a website look beautiful. What’s more, they have to know how to use web design tools to make the website stand out.

When you visit a website, the first thing that grabs your attention is the general look of the page and its usability — content introduction, buttons, color scheme. These are all the job responsibilities of a web designer.

Yet, a web designer cannot wholly ignore coding. Skilled web designers need to understand at least the basics of coding. Their ultimate goal is to create a website that not only looks stunning but also works, so they have to understand if their ideas can be brought to life. When web designers work closely with web developers, teamwork yields huge results.

Design tools for web designers:

  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Dreamweaver
  • Sketch

Job descriptions of a web designer:

  • Responsible for the website style and visual perception of it by users.
  • Determining how users will interact with the website.
  • Advertising design.
  • Optimizing the website’s structure and navigation for mobile devices.

In general, web designers are responsible for using their aesthetic knowledge with a variety of tools to create a beautiful page. An ideal designer creates the entire style of a company’s product, making a good impression on customers.

 

What does a web developer do?

A web developer is also called a front-end developer. Web development is the process of creating an interface for a web page or application. The primary responsibility of a web developer is to collaborate with designers to create websites based on visual design. Also, they make sure that all the website’s functions work and optimize the website’s performance.

In addition, they need to determine if the UI created by a designer can be implemented using current technology. A skilled web developer must have a certain aesthetic taste and work well with designers.

Web developer tools:

  • Source code management tools: SVN, CVS, Git.
  • IDE: WebStorm, Sublime, VS Code.
  • Front-end development technology: HTML, JavaScript, CSS.
  • Framework: JQuery, React, Bootstrap.

Typical tasks of a web developer:

  • Creating and optimizing websites and landing pages based on the layouts and wireframes provided by web designers.
  • Convert websites to fit and work on mobile platforms.
  • Fixing user interface bugs.
  • Inserting, editing, and removing the user interface elements
  •  (buttons, menus, forms, calendars).
  • Testing, troubleshooting, and maintenance of the created websites.

A web developer should also take part in choosing a hosting for a future website. He knows exactly what technologies he is going to use and what bandwidth will be needed. Reasonable pricing and customer support are also very important.

In recent years, the number of front-end web developers is increasing, so there is always a choice for you. Also, the skill requirements are getting higher and higher. A good web developer always keeps an eye on new technologies.

 

Conclusion

Web designers and web developers usually work together but engaged in completely different tasks. If your business does not yet have a website, you will most likely need both of these specialists.

If you already have a website, and its design looks good, then you can hire a web developer. He will expand the functionality of the website and make sure everything works correctly. To search for good web developers, try Lemon.io. They will make sure that you get to hire only the best ones.

In many cases, hiring a person who can develop the design and code of a small site will be cheaper and less time-consuming than finding an advanced developer specializing in coding. However, if we are talking about large-scale websites and projects, you cannot do without involving a whole team of professionals.

 

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