In the website building industry the customers often took same meaning of the website design and website development, but in reality both are entirely different areas. Mostly when customers need a website they often come across the two terms, ‘website design’ and ‘website development’. Almost 90% of the customers don’t understand the difference between the two and often interchange the both terminologies. Actually the main factor that cause this confusion among the non-technical people is that the ‘design’ and ‘development’ words if come next to the website are only referred to the website building and nothing else. But both have entirely different meaning from the website building prospective. In fact the two terms ‘design’and ‘development’ are entirely different from each other and even when used generally people perceive them as two different terms. However when it comes to the websites they both got mixed up. In this blog we will elaborate the differences of the website design and website development along with the areas where both intersected each other.
Website Designing
The website designing is a process of creating the website layout and user interface. Everything from the color scheme and fonts to images and content is arranged in a structure to form a website design. This process is called website designing. These days the website designing is a very complex and lengthy process. With the increase of smartphones and social media, mostly people are spending their time on the smartphones. Which raise the importance of the web design and user interaction. The online company presence can also generate a huge chunk of sales and revenue which makes it extremely important to have a business oriented design approach in which the user interaction, user experience and customer journey is designed with extreme care to boost online sales.
The website designing requires certain skills and tools such as:
- Graphic Designer
- UI/UX Designer
- Photoshop, Illustrator
The website designing process includes the following steps:
1. Requirement Gathering
This is the very first step of any website designing and website development project. The website designer or web design agency will have to sit with the customer to discuss their needs and objectives. This step mostly include multiple discussions and brain storming.The objective is to form a scope of the work for the website.
2. Sitemap
Once the requirement gathering is done and a scope is formed the next step is to create a sitemap of the website. The sitemap is a list of all the pages, categories, sub-categories and the entire blueprint of the website. The sitemap is used to enlist the content/pages of the website and it also dictates the navigational structure of the website design.
3. Wireframe
The wireframe is a basic visual representation of the website layout and different elements. It also provides a visual representation of the website design. The wireframe is in fact the very first stage of the actual website design. Usually the website wireframe are made as geometrical shapes such as boxes and rectangles or as such. These wireframe provide a better understanding of what a customer should expect from the final website design.
4. Mockup Design
The mockup design is the first actual website design that is being presented to the customer. The mockup is a fully designed webpage. The very first page that is designed is the homepage of the website. Once the homepage is designed a basic structure and frame of the entire website is set. The header, footer, theme, color scheme, structure, etc all should be followed for the internal pages as well. After the homepage all of the internal pages are designed.
Website Development
Once the website designing process is complete then the next phase is the website development. The web design is just an image it doesn’t have any functionality or interaction yet. The website design is like a car without engine, the website development will put that engine inside the car to let it run. The website development is basically programing and is entirely consists of the source code and the processes that are invisible from the website visitors. These processes are running behind the scene and are responsible for the user interaction. The programing will decide which area is clickable and which is not, which image will move or which will not, etc. It is basically all the movements and clicks that we can see or do in the website which form our interaction and experience with the website.
The website development requires certain skills and tools:
- Website Frontend Programmer
- Website Backend Programmer
- HTML, CSS, Java Script Code, PHP and MySQL
- Dreamviewer
The website development process includes the following steps:
1. Requirement Gathering
The requirement gathering for the website development is not like the requirement gathering for the website designing. In fact this time the requirement gathering is being done with the internal team between the programmer who will be doing the frontend and backend programing of the website and the design team and project manager or team lead. At this stage the objective of requirement gathering is to understand how different sections of the website should work and respond to the users.
2. Slicing
This is the very first step of the website development phase. Once a web design is ready, it is being transferred to the website developer team and the very first thing that is done is called “Slicing” during this step the web design is converted into different design elements and small pieces like a jigsaw puzzle to be later controlled by the source code to form the user interaction and user experience.
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3. HTML, CSS and Frontend
HTML is the programing language that is being used to control and form the layout of the website is the web browser. The HTML is a frontend development method and it not only includes the HTML but it also includes CSS and Java Script. These two are also programming languages and used to aid the HTML for visual and graphics effects and various interactions. Collectively all three the HTML, CSS and the Java Script are called the frontend programing of the website or the websitefrontend development.
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4. PHP, MySQL and Backend
The PHP and MySQL both are programming languages and are being used on the website server. These languages build a software or program which will executed at the server and generate results according to the inputs taken from the users through a web browser via the frontend of the website. These days most of the websites are dynamic. It means there is a CMS (content management system) to update the website information and content. The programing used to develop these all features is called website backend development.
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Website Designing VS Website Development
Website designing and website development both are equally important and are necessary for website building. The website designing basically lay down the base and the structure of the website navigation. It means how the information will be presented to the user/visitor and how the visitor can access to the information from and through various sections and pages. The website design is extremely important in online sales and revenue generation. Each and every single color pattern or design element whether it is an image, a box, a button or the fonts is very important in forming the customer journey at the website.
However the website development is purely based on computer programing and is completely invisible to the visitors. The website development build necessary source code which allow users to perform certain action by any click or movement on the website. For example if a user click on the logo from the contact us page, it is the programing that decides that the homepage should be loaded. Or let say a user clicks on a Whatsapp icon on the website to start the whatsapp chat, it is the programing that opens up your whatsapp and start the chat. Although at front you can only see a single button but behind that button pages of source code are running to enable that functionality.
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Why People Think Website Designing and Website Development are the same?
In Dubai, UAE and local markets most customer think that the website designing and the website development both are the same. As I have mentioned above, these two are completely different from the website building prospective. However, still so many people think both are the same. The main reason is that in past (a few years ago) generally local markets were flooded with the static websites, which were only the HTML based websites and doesn’t have any backend or CMS software. At that time when a company or business needs to develop a website they were provided with a website designer or team of the designers who were also familiar with the website frontend development and can single handedly deliver a website. This made up a mentality among the masses, even today if we check the search engine statistics we will find that the search term “web design Dubai” has huge number of searches comparing to the search term “website development Dubai”. This is the reason people still confuse one with another and often interchange both terminologies.
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Conclusion
The website designing and website development both are different. The website designing majorly includes the website structure, the theme, colors, fonts, patterns and each and everything a user can see in the web browser is done and planned during the website designing. However the website development is the source code and programing that runs behind the scene to let the computer execute commands and return the results. For example how a button will look like is done during the website designing phase and what that button will do is part of the website development phase. The website designing requires a completely different set of skills and it involves totally different tools and technology. The website designing mainly require a professional graphic designer and artist who utilize graphic designing tools to build a layout or design of the website. Whereas the website development requires a website programmer who needs programming tools to build the source code for the website. However in Dubai, UAE people more often consider them the same and usually interchange both terminologies expecting the same meaning from both of them which is website building.
At RSI Concepts we have a professional and experienced website building teams consisting of skilled website designers and experienced website developers. If you need a website for your business or organization or if you are interested in revamping your website, feel free to reach us out through our Contact Us page or leave us a comment in the comment box below.
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