Web Design vs. Web Development: What’s the Difference?

In the process of having a website created, you will run into terms like web design and web development. These are not interchangeable terms! If you’re going through this process, it could get frustrating when you’re presented with terms that are completely unfamiliar to you. So, in this post we’ll break down the difference between web design and web development.

Web design is exactly what it sounds like – design. If your website was a house, the web design portion would be like the interior decorating or the blueprint of how the home should be laid out. How you want the site to look, feel, and function aesthetically is what the design portion will be about. Designers think about the balance, contrast, and consistency of the site and take into account the typography, color scheme, images, and placement of content. This is the first step in the whole process because you have to have a design to work from – an image of what the site will look like.

Web development is where your design becomes usable and fully functional on the web. This is the technical portion of the building process, and is like the building materials, plumbing, electricity, and everything else that makes a house functional. The design is the blueprint and the image of how you want it to look, whereas development is the actual building process to make that image and blueprint a useable reality. Developers, sometimes called programmers, use highly technical programming “languages” like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and others that break the site up into functioning components based on the blueprint of the design.

Combining the creative and technical aspects of every website is something that Fusion Group USA specializes in – we hire talented, creative, and detail-oriented designers and developers that consistently put out great websites for an array of businesses. If you want to check out some of our work, visit our Website Portfolio. We have done sites for businesses in Colorado and Arizona and we are gaining national notoriety because of our solid, fresh, professional designs. Our sites are functional and user-friendly, demonstrating our understanding of web development. If you’re curious about the design and development process, give us a call!

Leave a Reply