Creating a web site involves both design and development. It is essential to understand the difference between the two in order to speed up the creation process. Also, being aware about the differences between the two will help you connect better with the people involved in the creation of your web site.
Web design defines the way a web site looks, whereas web development involves the functional aspects of the site. Let us understand the difference between the two through an example.
You want to create a web site. You Web Design Calgary consult a web design firm. The firm asks about your business model, theme, clients, and budget. These questions will help the firm to define your concept, based on which they will create some web site prototypes. Each web site prototype has a different look and feel. Select the prototype that stands out and is memorable. The color, font, and style of the site should make it look professional, aesthetic, and appealing. The information on the site should be easy to locate, browse, and read. Remember that the best web sites are usually simple and straightforward.
After you finalize the design of your web site, the firm starts coding and programming the site to make it functional. This is the web development part. It may include items such as analytics programs that allow you to monitor the flow of traffic to your site and content management systems that give you control over the text elements of the site or it include creating shopping cart and contact us pages for your website. This is a very important functional element as sites that take too much time to load often lose visitors. Also, it is important that the site loads quickly even on slow Internet connections, as most of your customers may not have ideal bandwidth. Good web development will help the site to load smoothly without much delay.
If you haven an ecommerce website, you really need web development, for that you need to hire a good web programming. Creating product pages, maintaining id, user information, payment processors all require a good web development. Without web development you can’t run an ecommerce business.
Going for web programmers for your website is not an uphill task, most web design firms offer web development along with web design. In fact it is cheaper than going for web design alone. If you are very low in budget, you can hire a freelancer by posting your project request in freelancing sites or social networking sites like Face book.