For business owners, having a website for your company is a huge advantage. Aside from the fact that almost everyone spends most of their time online, a website has far greater reach than traditional marketing and advertising, like commercials and print-ads. It also gives you access to potential consumers from any market all over the world.
However, not everyone is capable of creating and developing a website. That's why there are online postings – especially in the Philippines – looking for website developers. Unfortunately, most people think website development automatically includes, or is synonymous with, website design. This isn't the case. A Filipino web developer might know a little about designing a website, but that doesn't automatically make him a website designer.
To further illustrate, allow me to break down some parts seen on a website.
1. Banner/Header
A designer creates the banner/header using programs like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. A developer uploads or encodes the banner onto the site and decides if it should float, be click-able, turn opaque, or do other fancy stuff when a user hovers over it.
2. Buttons
A designer creates uniform buttons for the different tabs and pages, still using image editing and vectorization programs. A developer makes sure that those buttons will actually lead the user to the right page once clicked. A developer can also make the button do optional animations, like jump or change color, once hovered or clicked.
3. Background and Color Scheme
A designer decides the color scheme of the website and designs the background, and other graphics or images, accordingly. A designer typically knows what color text will stand out best on the background and what font style would fit the feel of the site. A developer applies the chosen font color and font style to the textual content.
4. Layout
A designer decides where to put each element to achieve the most aesthetically pleasing look over-all.
A developer simply follows the layout given by the web designer.
Basically, a website designer is a graphic artist able to tap into his/her creativity and design the overall layout and look for a given website. For a website designer, a website is basically one big graphic or picture that he/she will layout in the most aesthetic way.
A website developer is the one that makes that graphic functional and interactive. A website developer knows coding and programming languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Instead of choosing between one or the other, also always bear in mind that web designers and web developers work better with each other. Web designers may know a bit of programming, and web developers may have the basic concept of aesthetic layout, but it's not enough.
If you want a truly sensation website, consider an outsourcing company. A typical Philippine SEO company usually has a team of website designers and developers, so you'll end up getting a lot more services for a lot less.
