What is the Difference between Web Design and Web Development?

In the early days, when the digital world was still in its nascent stages, if you asked someone what is the difference between web design and web development? You would probably get a reply saying that web designers design and development is all about coding. In reality, it is not completely true. Web design is much more than only designing and web development is not only coding. Both Web design and Web Development have their specified roles and are not completely interchangeable. Nowadays many web companies, are using these terms alternately to describe the services they provide. However the fact is that both these terms refer to two fundamentally different aspects, important for building a website. Successful website building requires using both unique skill sets. It is very important that you know the difference between web design and web development, if you are planning to build your website. Let us help you understand the difference: 

What is Website Design? 

Web designing involves transforming an idea or a story, into a visually alluring design. This design layout is then used for building the user experience for the website. Web design involves creating and designing the website’s look and feel. Similar to an architect who designs and draws a plan of the house before building it, a  web designer also designs a model layout of the website before a web developer starts coding and developing it. 

Web designing is not simple, it is very difficult to integrate the various aspects of the website and create a welcoming, user friendly environment. Web design involves writing a plan to develop a usable interface design. The role of a web designer is as important as the developer, as without an appealing interface and wonderful user experience, the development cannot be well experienced and appreciated by the end user. 

A perfect website cannot be created immediately after reading or understanding the specifications defined. Web designers need to first understand the scope, the purpose of the website. They will then roughly visualize the designs and draft or sketch the design. From draft sketching they move to wireframes, mock-ups, and then arriving at the final design. Some of the areas covered under web design are:  

• Graphic designing  
• Logo designing  
• Web layout designing  
• Placement of call-to-action buttons on the website  
• Branding  
• Working on Wireframes, mock-ups, and storyboards  
• Deciding the Color palettes  
• Typography 

Web design designs the face of the website, it designs and work on what the user will see on their computer screen or mobile device. With a balanced use of colours, images, typography, layouts etc. web design helps in bringing a digital experience to life. 

What is Web Development? 

If web designers are responsible for designing what the users get to see on their screen, then web developers are the ones who are responsible in turning these designs into a live fully functional website. Web development involves using various web languages and software tools for developing and building a website.  

There are 2 types of web development, front-end and back end.  Front-end developers are the bridge between the web designers and back-end developers They work on three main development languages; Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript (JS). These languages help in developing a full-fledged website, right from designing the main layout, to inserting images and videos, using different types of typography and fonts, form interfaces, and more. 

Back-end development involves controlling the data and requests from the server. If a website contains dynamic data, it will require full fledge back-end services. For example websites which require users to submit their personal data for creating an account, need to save this data and make it accessible for a later stage. Hence the website also requires a database connection. These database connections can be directly connected to the server itself. Back-end development involves using server languages like PHP or ASP.NET. It also involves writing database queries by using languages like SQL or MySQL. 

Now that we have a clearer understanding of the difference between web design and web development, we know that both play an important role in web building, and that one cannot exist without the other. To sum up, the web designers need to understand the design principles and creatively come up with unique layouts and web developers need to focus more on logic-based thinking and understand coding and how the technology works.

  

Velocity Consultancy is a professional Web Designing and Development Company providing comprehensive and cost effective web solutions for a wide range of website design & development services. We are dedicated in assisting small to medium sized businesses establish an online presence. We help our clients in harnessing the wide reach of the Internet by designing and developing web solutions which will help them in marketing their products to a larger audience. 

Visit www.velocityconsultancy.com for more information and details.

10 Ways your Website is Driving Customers Away

The main purpose and need for building a website is to generate web traffic. Once the traffic is generated, the next thing is ensuring that the visitors stay on the website, browse through it and eventually make a purchase or sign up for a service. The primary objective of a website is to attract visitors and drive business. However due to some reasons, if your website is driving customer away, then it is important that you understand the reasons and get the issues rectified. There are a  large number of websites which are well optimized and attract lot of traffic, however they are unable to retain the customers on the website, they are unable to make them stay on it and browse. There are many reasons which can be responsible for driving customers away. Below mentioned are 10 ways in which your website may be driving customers away.  

1. Slow Loading time: Internet browsers are very well accustomed to browsing fast loading websites. While visiting websites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc, people don’t have to wait even for few seconds for the page to load. The attention span of viewers is shrinking and most viewers are not ready to wait more than two to five seconds for the website to load. If your website has a slow loading time, the visitors will close the tab and move on to the next website.   

2. Mobile Responsiveness: Today people are spending more and more time on their mobile devices, right from watching content, searching for products, shopping for them, making transactions, everything is done on mobile devices. Therefore if you fail to develop a mobile responsive website, then you are losing onto a large chunk of your customers. In today’s world, building a mobile friendly, mobile responsible website is a must, if you want to garner viewership and want to increase your sales. Make sure your website is responsive across all types of devices and for all sizes of screens, this will help you from not alienating away your potential customers.   

3. Poor Navigation: If your website users will see too many options in the main navigation, they will get confused. While planning a website, it is important that you determine what links need to be promoted on the home page and what can be displayed on the inside pages. Too many options to click will make the page look sloppy and will confuse the new visitors. If your visitors find it difficult to search for what they want, they will exit browsing and move to another website. The navigation should be planned in such a way that a customer should be able to easily notice where to click to find what they are searching. Use simple terms in the menu, which everyone can understand. Use of headings like ‘shop’, ‘basket’, ‘cart’, ‘sale’ etc., are easy to notice and understand.    

4. Automatic Music or Video: Use of unwanted and disruptive music is a big no-no. It can ruin your visitor’s complete viewing experience. Loud music or unwanted videos playing on the page, can spoil the mood of the visitors and instigate them to leave the website. Viewers should have the liberty to choose to play the media on the website.  It should not be forced on them. People maybe browsing while at work or when they are travelling in public transport, sudden playing on loud music can embarrass them and they will exit your website.  

5. Call to Actions: Visitors visiting the website are unlikely to browse it well if there are no clear call to action on your page. A visitor may be directed to your website and they may be looking for some specific information, if you do not have clear call to actions, they would not know how to find the required content. Unable to find they were searching for, they will leave the website and move on to the next website. It is important that your website provides a clear path of action to the visitors.  

6. Pop-ups: When a visitor visits your website, he should not be welcomed with unnecessary Pop-ups. They are the last thing your visitor is interested in dealing. Unnecessary pop-ups may restrict the viewer from reading the content they are interested in. A few Pop-ups as CTAs can be useful in driving the viewers to the required pages, but nothing in excess is welcome. Pop-ups are annoying and complete put off.  

7. Backgrounds: Avoid opting for website backgrounds in black or grey shade. Such backgrounds make it difficult to read the text and can hurt the viewer’s eyes. Choose background colours which are soft on the eyes and also make the content readable.   

8. Sign-up process: People don’t like going through lengthy signup processes. They do not like spending time on signing up to your website for making a purchase or transaction. No one likes answering numerous questions and inputting never ending information just to buy something. Keep your sign-up process simple and short. Take the customer to the final purchase page as soon as possible without wasting much time, before they lose interest in buying the product.    

9. Content: Today people browse through websites and search online to make a decision before buying something. If your website has poor content, the customers will not get the required information for them to make the decision to buy your product or service. Lack of blogs or creative content or product demos on your website can push your prospective customers away. Being Transparent and helpful will help you earn the trust of the visitors and eventually convert them into customers. If your website has content which only promotes your company and its products, and doesn’t post content for educating the buyers, then they you won’t be able to gain their trust and they will move to other websites which are informative and can  solve their queries too.    

10. Contact Information: If your website does not display contact information, then you are in real trouble. Displaying contact information instils trust in the minds of the viewers. Even if they do not plan to contact, it builds the credibility of the company. The contact information should be posted in such a way that it is clearly visible. All information like phone number, email address, location address of the company should be mentioned.   

Velocity Consultancy is a web development and design company, our team of experienced website developers and designers are ready to help you build a website which will take your business to the next level! We provide comprehensive and cost effective web solutions for a wide range of website design & development services. 

Visit www.velocityconsultancy.com for more information and details.