Whenever you decide to have a website created for your business, you are faced with a number of technical decisions that need to be made beforehand: where to store your website, how is it going to look, where to get a particular domain and, more importantly, who is going to build it. How could you tell if this was all new to you?

“It seems that there are lots of different professions involved in creating a website.  Isn’t it just one person doing it all?” you might say. But as the Internet has grown and websites are required to be both functional and appealing, the process of setting them up and making them look a certain way and do certain things has grown more complex and specialized fields have been developed.

So who exactly do you need to hire to get a functional, appealing and innovative website?

First, you need a web designer. Web design is responsible of coming up with the look and feel of a website and its usability.  A web designer specializes in using different layouts to configure and alter the visual elements of a website. They are responsible for making sure all sections of a website are presented in a harmonious fashion and things are easy to find, and that the way the site is displayed looks consistent and balanced.

A web developer, on the other hand, receives the designer’s work and molds it to make sure they are functional. In a way, the web designer paints a picture that the web developer will build. They break up each component of the designer’s proposal into individual elements; will identify what needs to be done in order for them to do what they are meant to. They take that picture the designer drew and the developer makes it move. Isn’t that cool?

Designers and developers, while familiar with each other’s field, have very specific areas of expertise. Think of their relationship like the one an architect has with an engineer: the former wants to make things look a certain way, the latter will make sure they set the ground work and infrastructure needed to make sure the design is cohesive, functional and operational.

While there are several web professionals who are familiar enough with the other fields so that they can take care of both web design and web development, their level of expertise will hardly ever be the same in both areas. Your safest bet is to hire the services of a company that employs professionals from each field so there’s a team, and not a person, working on creating or redesigning a website. Clicks & Mortar Websites is one of those companies. Give us a call!