Understanding Differences Between Web Designer and Web Programmer

When working with web professionals, we often encounter web designers and web programmers. It is important to know that we shouldn’t use these terms interchangeably, because they have different roles.

So, what’s a web designer? In this case, a web designer is related to different visual aspects of our website. These people understand what page layouts, images, fonts and colors they should use. It means that our website should be pleasing aesthetically. Web designers are known for their artistic merits and experience. They have the ability to make an attractive website. In this case, web designers understand how to enhance their website visually. In this case, visually pleasing website can become the most stable and efficient way of communicating our message. However, no web designer is able to work properly without the help of a web developer.

Web developers are responsible for those invisible codes and other back-end details of our website. The unseen coding aspect is essential for the overall inner-working of our website. It means that web developers have the responsibility in making the website function efficient, quickly and with the best stability. This is an essential factor that we should know. Web developers are aware of how to create the backbone of a website and how to make things function properly. Many of these codes are not visible to average website visitors, but all the features used in our website require the proper coding to work properly.

As an example, web developers should be able to dramatically reduce loading times by optimizing their codes. Users are already using fast Internet access and poor codes could actually cause sluggish server performance, resulting in a long loading time. If web developers are able to deliver things that properly, the website should load very quickly without problems. Web developers are responsible for things like complex e-commerce transactions, database and server-side applications. We should make sure that everything is done in a sensible and accessible fashion.

These things can be achieved when codes are created efficiently. Web developers usually work with various server-side programming languages, such as JSP, PHP, .NET and ASP. It is important to make sure that web developer is able to master at least a single server-side programming platform. It means that the developer is able to provide anything from the simplest contact page to the most complicated e-commerce solutions. It is acceptable to choose web developer that’s proficient only a single web programming language, as long as the person is able to deliver comprehensive solutions.

When working with a web professional, we should check their previous portfolio to make sure that we are working with good professionals. This is an essential thing to do when we are working with web developers. It is not a good idea to trust web professionals when they only show pictures of their works without offering a real glimpse of their actual works. It is also a good idea for us to ask for any kind of references, especially from previous and current clients.