Guide to web design and development

Great website experiences like these don’t just happen by chance; instead, great websites result from experienced and expert web designers and developers collaborating to create magic. This guide will explore web design and development and give you insight into how to build unique websites.

What is web design and development?

Web design and development is the combined process of planning, designing, building and maintaining a website. It involves collaborative efforts from web design and web development. Web design refers to a website’s overall look and feel, while web development focuses on the website’s technical side and how it works.

What is the difference between web designer and web developer?

A web designer will work on the look and feel of the website, ensuring it is aesthetically pleasing and the business CI guidelines are followed and represented in the design. A web designer will typically render a mock-up to give an idea of what the website will look like, build a wireframe (the website’s structure) with UX/UI in mind, then handed over to the developers to code.

A web developer builds and maintains a website and focuses on the technical requirements of the website. The web developer will code the mock-up and wireframe received from the designer and bring the design to life.

Examples of Web Design and Development Projects

When considering a web design and development service offering, make sure to look at the company’s portfolio work to gauge whether or not they will be able to meet your website needs. Scopic’s web design and development portfolio is available on our website to showcase work we have done across various industries.

The Scope of Web Development and Design

At the start of the project, the scope for web design will include; creating the website layout and designing graphics and visuals from a web design perspective.

A web developer’s scope will include writing code and scripts, building databases and server-side scripts, and ensuring the website is responsive, accessible, and optimized for search engines.

All scope activities contribute to building and launching a high-performing website.

To ensure that the web design and web development end product will suit your business needs, you will need to be able to identify the purpose and goals of the website, and you need to know your intended use. Will it be a content Hub, or will it be used for eCommerce? Furthermore, integrating your website’s purpose with a comprehensive web development and digital marketing strategy can enhance its effectiveness and reach.

Who is the target audience, and what do they need to do? Do they need to complete forms for lead generations, or will they need to purchase something for sales?

If you still need to get the above info, you will likely need to conduct market research to understand what your target audience is looking for. Remember, you are essentially building a website for your clients (new and existing), so keep their preferences and needs in mind when designing and developing the site.

It would help if you also looked at your competitors’ websites and assess your point of difference regarding what you offer on your website. Also, consider industry trends and gap analyses to gauge what your website can offer.

Professional web design and development will include creating a sitemap and wireframes to give an overview of the website’s functionality and overall look and feel.

By following these crucial steps, website planners and designers can ensure their website is well-researched, organized, user-friendly, and designed to achieve its intended purpose and goals.

Web design requires details such as a design style or theme. What colors to use on the site (and assuring the design team follows CI guidelines) is as detailed as ensuring the correct font and size are used and consistent throughout the website.

The web designer will also work on the UX/UI of the website, keeping the target audience in mind. UX/UI considerations will include deciding whether the menu should be a top navigation bar to make the site’s internal pages more visible or a hamburger dropdown navigation on the side to avoid overwhelming the audience with too many options at once.

They will also create a wireframe of the website; this is a blueprint that shows the structure and functionality of a website. The web designer will then create a mock-up designed to give the website an overall look and feel. A mock-up needs to be done for both desktop and mobile, ensuring the website will display correctly and be user-friendly on the preferred device the visitor wants to use to access the website.

Front-end development takes the web design and converts it into code using programming languages. These languages are not the language we know; they are developer code languages for web applications, such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Each of these coding languages plays an integral part in the website build.

• HTML the structure of the website and pages and adds content, including text, images, videos, hyperlinks, and other media, to a web page.
• CSS, also known as Cascading Style Sheets, is a styling language used for fonts, colors, spacing, and layout of the website
• JavaScript relates to the interactivity functionality of the website, such as menus, forms, and buttons that allow users to interact with the website or application.

Thankfully, the front-end developers would not have to guess the code, as pre-written code is in place for developers as a set of structured rules and guidelines to follow when building the site, known as frameworks.

The developers will also have libraries in place with pre-written code that provides specific functionality that they can use.

Back-end development focuses on the programming and development of the website, including developing server-side code that handles data processing, database management, and server-side scripting.

Programming languages commonly used in back-end development include Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby, to name a few. The back-end developers also use frameworks such as Node.js, Django, Ruby on Rails, and Laravel.

Back-end development is critical to the functioning of a website or web application, as it enables the server to communicate with the front end of the website and deliver the content and functionality that users interact with. With back-end development, a website can store or retrieve data from databases.

During this stage, the back-end development team will also implement content management systems (CRM for short) software that manages customer interactions, whether it is for sales automation (capturing leads), customer services (answering inquiries or resolving issues), or even capturing data and analytics for reporting, helping you decide.

During the testing stage, the web developer team will look at and fix bugs, testing the site’s functionality, compatibility, security, and general performance.

In the deployment stage, the website will typically be moved from a local environment to a live server, followed by DNS records that need to be set up or updated. Once all this has been checked, the website goes live.

Regular updates and maintenance reduce the threat of hacking or malware, ensuring optimal website performance, keeping the website modern and relevant, keeping all plug-ins up to date, and avoiding any downtime the website might experience.

Maintenance and updates from a security vulnerability are crucial as you never know if your site is the target of the next cyber-attack. An attack could affect data stored on your site and can even mess up your website functionality.

The above should be enough reason to back up data and files; in the likelihood of an attack or hardware failures, you can use the backed-up files to restore the website with minimal loss. It’s also handy when someone accidentally deletes something on the website.

Regular content and design updates are also important, whether it is a product or service that you are adding, removing or updating, or updating images of the team in the about us section, should a new employee start, or someone leave the company.

And let’s face it, if you had to land on a website that reminds you of MS-DOS, would you want to stick around?

How to Choose a Web Design and Development Company?

If you want others to marvel at how great your website is, then make sure to choose a professional web design and development company to bring your vision to life. The right company will provide expert service, offer you a portfolio of their work, and a team that gets your idea and can advise you on best practices.

Conclusion

This guide provided an overview of web design and development, detailing what it is, why it’s important, what the role is for each service offering, and reviewing the overall workings of a website that both web design and development need to build a successful website. For further insights into selecting a partner that meets your needs, explore our article on how to choose a web development company. This next step is crucial for bringing your vision to life with a website that not only looks great but functions seamlessly.