Web Design vs Web Development: Key Differences Explained

In 2025, having a website is one of the most important assets any brand can have.

In fact, by 2032, more than 229,000 web developers will be working in the U.S. alone.

This goes to show the importance and growth that website creation has had over the past few years and how it continues to grow year after year.

When searching for website creation, the idea of comparing web design vs web development might have popped up in your head many times.

Both are trying to optimize and make a website better, so why do they have different names?

This is what this article looks to answer for you.

Below you’ll get a detailed comparison of web design vs web development. The last thing you want to do is hire a web developer when you need a web designer, or vice versa.

Trying to get a new website but don’t know what to look for? Let us help.

Comparing Web Design vs Web Development 

Before diving in and comparing web design vs web development, we need to first explain what both are and what their goals are in website creation.

What’s Web Design

Web design is all about aesthetics and the user’s experience (UX) while on the website. Web design is generally the first step of any web creation process.

Ensuring that the page has the correct color palette and the desired mockups that the client wants is a web designer’s priority.

Web designers are the ones responsible for most of the visuals of a website.

That includes calls to action, illustrations, and a whole website’s brand identity. They are the ones making your pages look good and appealing to the masses.

A lot of people often mistake web designers for UI/UX designers, and for good reason. The reality is that both roles overlap in most, if not all, activities.

While some web designers can consider themselves UI/UX designers, it rarely is the other way around. UI/UX designers are mainly focused on mobile app design instead of web design.

Core Components of Web Design:

• User Experience (UX): Improves user engagement and retention by providing users with smooth navigation and functionality.

• Visual Design: Picking the right color palette, font, and layout to create a good-looking website.

• Responsive Designs: Making it a priority to test whether the website runs on PCs and any mobile devices.

• User Interface: Ensuring that the whole site has a good structure and includes important features, such as buttons and menus, for better usability.

What’s Web Development

Web development is generally the second step in any web creation process.

After the web designer creates the whole design and organizes how it should look, it is the web developer’s job to make it work properly.

For the most part, web development is all about making the landing page come to life by following the instructions and ideas of web designers.

From writing code to managing databases, a web developer ensures that everything on the website is working well.

Web development is generally divided into three different sections: front-end, back-end, and full-stack development.

Core components of web development:

• Front-End Development: Uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to bring web designers’ ideas to life. It makes web pages more interactive.

• Back-End Development: Takes care of databases and APIs. It ensures the website functions well.

• Full-Stack Development: This mixes both front-end and back-end development, fully covering both sides of web development at the same time.

• Content Management System (CMS) Integration: Helps manage and develop platforms using custom frameworks or popular CMSs, such as WordPress and Magento.

• Performance Optimization: Enhances the speed, efficiency, and security of a website.

Web Design vs Web Development: Main Differences

While on the surface it might seem like the comparison of web design vs web development is a bit complicated, in reality it’s straightforward.

Both web design and web development overlap in some areas, and there are a lot of web design professionals proficient in web development and vice versa.

The reality is that you can’t have one without the other. Both need to work together in order to deliver exceptional websites.

When thinking about noticeable differences, these come to mind:

Web Design Focuses on UI/UX While Web Development Focuses on Making it Work

If you’re still a bit confused about what both web development and web design do, remember that design is all about what the user can see, while development is all about keeping the website running.

Web design is all about creating a website that looks good and is enjoyable to navigate. While Web development grabs a web design idea and brings it to life while also making sure the website, in general, runs smoothly.

Web Developers Have Nothing to do with any Creative Process

By far, the biggest difference when comparing web design vs web development is that web developers don’t create mockups or designs at all.

They will grab said mockups made by a website designer and translate them into code such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Think of web designers as the ones drawing everything on a piece of paper and web developers as the ones creating the design from that mockup.

Know exactly what you want for your website but don’t know how to explain it? We can help.

Web Designers Don’t Have to Code at all

Considering our last difference, this one should make sense.

Web designers don’t have to code anything. Web developers are the ones doing all the coding for the website they are working on.

That being said, most web designers have some sort of coding knowledge, generally CSS or HTML. Both HTML and CSS are great coding languages for web designers since they can easily modify websites with little work involved.

This doesn’t mean that you can expect a web designer to create a website design and code it all by themselves. Those are generally known as full-stack developers.

There are exceptions to this, though. Some agencies and freelancers use website builders that require zero coding knowledge.

While they are more restrictive overall, these website builders make it easy for just about anyone to create a website.

Web Design vs Web Development: Main Similarity

The main similarity between web design and web development is that they both need each other to function.

You can’t do anything with a well-made mockup if you have no web developer to code it and make sure it works.

Same as you can’t ask a web developer to create a website with no mockup or design at all.

Both need each other to provide a complete website.

Get a Custom Built Website that Converts With Blacksmith

Finding the right web designer and the right web developer who can make the website that you want can take weeks, if not months. But this doesn’t have to be your only option.

With Blacksmith, you’ll get a completely new custom-built website made by our group of web designers and web developers.

They’ve been working together for years and know what each needs to do to provide you with an exceptional website.

With our expert website design services, you’ll be able to see how they:

• Create a mockup
• Explain what makes it work
• And show you the step-by-step process of it being made.

Still unsure if we’re the right fit for your needs? Let’s set up a call so we can explain why getting a new website is the best choice for 2025.