At White Canvas we are proud to offer all of our web development and web design services in-house. This means we are able to have our team of creative designers and talented developers work together and collaborate on any project that comes our way.
Our Development and Design departments are trained in different areas of website creation that work together closely throughout the entire process. This is important as they are both specialized and essential skill sets to the website creation process. If an individual claims to be both, don’t walk, run! It’s not that it’s not possible, but think of it like a Chiropractor and a Physiotherapist. Or a chef and a bartender mixologist. Each works together in the same industry, even in the same experience, but have very different education and training backgrounds.
So who does what and why?
Website Designers:
Website designers (also called UX/UI designers) take care of all user experience and design decisions for a site including things like the navigation menu, button colours, the sitemap, colours, and fonts. Designers make sure that the site makes sense for the user and is engaging enough to achieve the goals of your website. It’s the designer’s job to consider the purpose of the site, what each page needs to accomplish, and the best design to achieve this purpose. Designing for these key calls-to-action include things like educating on a client’s service offering, signing up for a newsletter, making an online purchase or lead generation.
Designers use an industry leading prototype tool, such as Adobe XD, to show you how your site will look and connect before it is submitted to development. Once approved, the design team sends all of the information and assets to the Dev team to work their magic!
Website Developers:
If web designers are the architects and interior designers, web developers are the builders and engineers during a website project. Front-End Developers take the prototype from the design team and turn them into clean, functional coding language. They make the design functional and truly bring it to life with animations and interactivivity.
For custom WordPress websites, the Dev team uses a combination of PHP and HTML for the content output, CSS for styling and Javascript for utilities like carousels and tabs. They are experts in ensuring all content, links, navigation, and animations are fully functional and stick to the design while also making sure the back-end of the site is clean and easy for anyone to update and use, even for individuals with no WordPress experience.
The development team is also responsible for user testing, debugging, making the website responsive across mobile devices and special functionality integrations. They also manage the transfer of files to publish your site and make it live, optimize the site for best organic SEO practices and provide training on how to make content and imagery updates post-launch.
Why having in-house developers and designers is unique
Having in-house web designers and developers is best for collaboration throughout the whole project. While both teams’ jobs are very different, they are equally important in ensuring the success of any project. Both teams are checking in with each other during their part of the process to make sure everything is working according to plan, sticking closely to the approved design, and making your website perform as well as possible in all areas post-launch. In many agency models one or both of these roles are oftentimes outsourced overseas or contracted out, so it’s an imperative question to ask during your due diligence process when sourcing a website team to ensure they live and work in your community and understand your business.