Web Development, Design and Programming
In Part One of the series of posts – What Is A Digital Agency we wrote an overview of the services NBM offers and here in Part Two we’ll look in a little more detail at Web Development.
Web development at NBM involves:
“The World Wide Web has become a major delivery platform for web development which is a variety of complex and sophisticated enterprise applications in several domains. In addition to their inherent multifaceted functionality, these web applications exhibit complex behaviour…”
Wait, wait, wait…I’m just kidding.
If you wanted to read the Wikipeadia explanation of web development you’d have gone to Wikipedia right? But I’m sure you do want to know…
The difference between the Web Designer, the Web Developer and the Web Programmer.
Many people use the term ‘web designer’ as a catchall term for a person or a company that is involved in the creation of a website however there is a difference between what a web designer, a web developer, and a web programmer does. Most reputable digital agencies have designers, developers, and programmers to cover all aspects of a client’s web development needs.
In the simplest terms:
- The Web Designer: designs the look and feel of the web pages and is concerned with the user interface such as the layout, images and graphics that will be used
- The Web Developer: writes the code for the web pages (i.e. HTML, CSS, PHP etc.) so that among other things they work as they are intended and are displayed as designed
- The Web Programmer: writes code in server languages, (i.e. ASP, PHP, Ruby, etc.) & connects the website with the database to create the logic for an application or software.
As the term suggests, a web designer is involved in the design of a website. A web designer is primarily concerned with the customer-facing aspect of a site. They also need to consider usability issues and designs a site that visitors will want to visit and be able to easily navigate and that will turn these customers into leads or sales. A web designer will use graphics programs like Adobe Photoshop to create representations or concepts of what the site will look like.
The web developer then brings these flat concepts to life & turns them into fully functioning websites with elegant animations & effects. Web developers use such scripting languages as HTML, CSS, Javascript & PHP.
The term ‘web programmer’ is often used interchangeably with web developer, however here at NBM, the term web developer is reserved for our specialists who develop web based applications using the fundamentals of rich media and server-side scripting while the term web programmer is reserved for our specialists who deal with the functionality and database of the website. Programmersare capable of coding custom web applications that need to be created from scratch like booking and ordering systems, membership portals and store locators, the developer integrates the front end styling and makes sure these interact with the rest of the site as they should while the web designer makes sure everything looks appealing and fits in with the overall website design.
Hopefully this has helped resolve some of the confusion surrounding web design and development, and while it’s not something everyone needs to spend time reflecting on, it is particularly important to those considering what kinds of services will be needed to build the custom website they have in mind. Keep an eye out for Part 3 in our Series: Digital Marketing – coming soon.
