Many businesses don’t spot the difference between website design and website development. For them it is all about having their stuff put online. Often the two are treated as one and the same thing, no confusions in it. However, a professional website is completed when both web designer and web developer works on it. Take out one from the picture and you won’t see the site hosted online.

So why should you care for it?

It is important to know the basic difference when you are buying something. Even for the small stuff that we buy from the retail shops we spot the differences, don’t we? Although the terms website designing and website development are used interchangeably, they are not the same always. Website design is what you see in the front-end, i.e. the look and feel of the site, and website development is the programming that takes care of the site’s functioning.

What is website designing?

One thing which comes to the layman’s mind is website designing is the pagination, i.e. layout all the text and graphics in an order to make it look attractive. This is only partly correct as full designing involves a lot more into it. Designing involves customizing for your customers, as per their needs.

Full design services for website may include the following:

Building the brand: To establish your brand identity in the marketplace (residential services, commercial services, fun services, or other services) to the voice and toning of your messaging including printed communications.
Logo: It is the first thing that outside world notices. Developing a completely original logo which can be trademarked across platforms will pay rich dividends. The costs can vary between USD 500 to USD 5000 depending on how involved is the entire process.
Fonts: This important aspect builds your website and establishes your business. Fonts should be attractive for printed material, logos, headings and body of the website.
Colour palette: Usually a complementary set of colours with one colour being dominant which represents the brand of your company.
Custom artwork and photography.
Custom icons which are used on the website.
Printed collaterals including business cards, letterheads and direct mail pieces.

So website designing involves putting in lot more features than just having a plain text and some pictures in a pattern on the web. It involves a whole lot of process in developing a brand and is tied closely with your marketing.

With the specialization involved website designing tends to be costly at times. For the full design of your brand including your website you may have to keep aside a budget of somewhere around USD 5000.

Website development involves what then?

Website development often involves things such as developing the back end applications of website such as payment gateway system or adding a shopping cart tool to the website. Website maintenance, content management, search engine optimization and marketing are other things involved. Strictly speaking web development process involves everything connected to the back end of the website.

For those interested in look and appearance website development is boring stuff. It involves all the coding that takes place behind the scenes including programming through HTML, PHP and CSS. It is the technical aspects of a website work. For example, when submitting a form it sends you an email with customer query details or resizing correctly on a small screen such as your smartphone, tablet or PC.

Web development has simplified over the years, however, the more features you require, the more work the developer needs to carry out to meet your needs. This decides the costing as well. For businesses an everyday website development may cost around USD 300. If you have other out of the box requirements then get ready to shell out more.

Another way of saving costs in designing is to work on templates which can be tweaked and fine tuned according to client requirements and budget. But for those with bigger budget it is advisable to work with dedicated designers who provide full design service.

To conclude it is the visitors’ tastes that matters at the end no matter what you think otherwise. More often than not visitors prefer something simple, easy to access and get the information that they want, and this needs to be kept in mind while doing your design and development.

Officially we are witnessing “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in front of us with technology creating an entire new generation of web applications. These are richer in content and making these demand constant changes on the front-end. Firms are in search of resources to shift gears and streamline their work and increase productivity on a day-to-day basis.

Developers spend quite some time researching for design blogs and browsing through various websites for tools to garner an easier flow for their work. The following 5 cool front-end tools could come handy for your everyday business output.

Edge Code

adobe.com/edge/code

Formerly christened as Brackets, Code has been built by Adobe Systems to enhance the capabilities of other applications, for example, Dreamweaver. Adobe Edge Code is a lightweight text editor for web developers and designers. It gels well with HTML, CSS and Java Script Code comes in-built with all functionalities of the erstwhile Brackets and additional extensions that integrate with other Adobe products such as Edge Inspect, Edge Web Fonts, and Adobe Kuler. This gives you access to a world of fonts and color palettes that you could use in your development Endeavour.

For those having Apple ID, Code comes free. It is well worth a try since it speeds up development time through display of code changes directly on screen.

Snipping Tool

Pressing print screen button and copying the image on screen is a shortcut to show someone what is on screen. This is exactly what a snipping tool does. Snipping tool is a screen shot tool. Select the area and in the editor highlight or encircle the areas for review, save them and send across or use for future reference. You can capture a free-form snip (drawing a free-form shape around an object), rectangular snip (dragging the cursor around an object to form a rectangle), window snip (selecting a browser window or dialog box that you want to capture), and full-screen snip (capture the entire home screen).

For Windows 10, open Start button and type snipping tool in the search box and select snipping tool from the list. You can after saving the snap shot email your client for further action.

Codepen.io

codepen.io

Codepen is the handiwork of CSS wizard Chris Coyier and his friends Alex Vazquez and Tim Sabat. Codepen is a social development tool for front-end designers and developers. A unique feature of the tool is that it allows users to experiment with code in the browser itself turning it into a virtual playground. Want additional features, get on to their paid account, it will be a virtual treat.

Breakpoint Tester

breakpointtester.com

To easily test the responsiveness of websites at various breakpoints when creating something responsive is a challenge. Breakpoint Tester solves this issue and helps you scan sites’ style sheets for defined breakpoints and display them tiled in your browser. Breakpoint Tester is a handy tool for getting an overall view of how a project stacks down.

Last Pass

Lastpass.com

Last Pass is your password manager and password generator that locks your passwords and personal information in a secure vault. In the process it keeps you protected. Since it keeps a track of all your account login details you are not required to remember your passwords, key them in or click on the forgot password button. They give a great way of reducing login time and managing accounts between teams. Last Pass has got safe and secure safety features and can be customized as per your needs.

Panda

http://usepanda.com/

Panda is a great chrome extension tool to stay abreast with what is going on in the design industry. You can make the most of Chrome with this extension tool. Panda can replace your default tab. Enjoy the peace and quietness of the lively news feed on the left and beautiful tiled feed on the right.

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Website Design versus Website Development: What’s the Difference?