There are two sides to the creation of every successful website: the development side and the design side. Even though the user only sees the finished product, it’s essential that web development experts work closely with web designers to achieve all site-related goals. They may be two separate and very different jobs within the same process; however, they overlap enough in final goals to make some collaboration and shared knowledge essential.
What Do Web Designers Do?
Web designers deal with visuals and how a website looks to its users. They work to create the most appealing site that encourages users to take a look and then stay a while based on the preferences and emotions that target audiences are seeking. Designers handle content creation and presentation, as well as all the little details that make a website attractive for its intended purpose, all factors that help to promote functionality and user-friendliness. Without a functional, developed site, designers would be unable to complete those goals.
What Do Web Developers Do?
Web development is the behind-the-scenes part of website creation that mostly deals with building the site structure and providing the right functionality. It’s more about interfaces and navigation than it is about the look of the site, as developers work to build important usability into the site to encourage target audiences to actually use it. Development starts before the visual process takes over, giving designers the base to work with and improve according to overall goals and user needs; however, the base website alone cannot achieve development goals.
Same Goals Through Different Approaches
Although website development and design each have their own individual goals, the combined goals are the same. Both strive to create a site that is functional to target audiences. In this sense, web designers must consider the essential structures and functionality as well as how they affect the design process, while web development experts must look at how design requirements affect site building needs. So even though these areas are separate steps in the site building process, they co-exist to a point.
The Challenge of Working Together
Even when the need for collaboration between designers and developers is obvious, it definitely brings its challenges. Each specialist naturally does not have as thorough of an understanding of the other’s needs nor how their specialty can affect both sides of the equation. Coming to the most favorable agreements on both development and design require specialists to explain completely, learn as much as possible, and work together to reach goals in a way that achieves the most while working within the limitations of both side of the equation.
Simply stated, a well-developed website with poor visual design will not function as well as it could based on overall user preference and need. Similarly, great design alone will not provide the deeper usability that produces highest levels of website effectiveness. Taking all this into consideration, it is essential that web designers and web development specialists work closely as they each work toward meeting their own goals and those of the entire site.