UI/UX Design & Development Services: What’s the Difference?

The ecommerce market is booming, and this means that there is far more competition out there.

So your website has to be customer-friendly. No one wants to spend hours just trying to purchase a product on a site.

A long and complex checkout and registration processes on the landing page make potential customers abandon the shopping carts midway. That is why the UI or user interface and UX aka user experience designs are important.

So by creating a simple website that is easy to navigate and mobile-friendly, you will help your customers get to the end of the purchasing journey with ease.

People who are responsible for creating the UI/UX of a website are designers and web developers. While these may seem interchangeable at first, these areas are very different.

So what is the difference between UI UX design and development services? Let’s find out what these areas mean and what the main difference is between them.

Defining the main differences

Today’s technologies include all types of digital and development services. To build a successful business or begin your own startup, you’ll face SEO, PPC, social media marketing, UI/UX design, web development and other IT areas.

Innovative UI/UX design and development services that help to take your company to the next level is one of the main priorities of managers and teams while working on a website that looks great and works even better.

Most of the outsourcing companies or agencies like D/Workz offer highlighted services that include projects counseling, web solutions, including the UI/UX design and development services.

But before jumping into the differences, it would be helpful to understand the difference between UI and UX.

Connecting users with the products and services

The user interface is focused on the customer. It is what the customer sees when they interact with your website or app. This includes the screen, light and sounds.

The user experience is what a customer gets after going through your website. After navigating a website or a mobile app, a user will have a certain experience.

The experts working on the UX work with the marketing team to understand the kind of experience that users expect when browsing through a web page.

The target is to make sure users get an experience that will cause them to purchase a product. When hiring a team to create the UI/UX design, it may be tricky to choose who should do it.

The skills that each has are similar. However, the goals that developers and designers are trying to achieve differ. Let's now look at the differences between the UI/UX designer and developers.

UI/UX design services

Designers focus on improving customer satisfaction. By working on the interface, customers will have a better experience on a webpage or app.

User interface designers are more focused on creating a pleasing visual webpage. This includes using appropriate colors, text and images. The designer is responsible for selecting these features. 

Another important task is how to combine everything on a webpage to convey a certain message. Other responsibilities of a designer include:

• Determine what habits users have
• Creating creative and engaging designs
• Creating interactive designs
• Design interface features such as a call to action and menus
• Test user interface
• Troubleshooting user interface problems
• Collaborate with marketing teams to come up with an appropriate web page or app design

So designers are charged with creating the visual aspect of the UI/UX design. Therefore they should be competent in certain skills such as Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, and Invision. Aside from these, designers should also be conversant with coding languages like JavaScript.

Skills designers are always up to date with the latest trends in technology. This will mean your website or application will be modern, and thus appeal more to users. Working with the latest tools is equally important when trying to achieve set goals.

UI/UX development services

There are three main types of developers, frontend, backend, and those that do both. Back-end developers make sure that a website keeps running. They work on constantly updating a server as a way of keeping a website running.

Frontend developers on the other hand are interested in making a website appealing. Therefore they work hand in hand with UI/UX Designers to create visuals for a website. So the designer will create the visuals while the developers work to ensure that each element functions smoothly.

Some key responsibilities for developers include:

• Understand the potential customers
• Researching about product a business provides
• Create buyer personas for potential customers
• Make and test prototypes of a website
• Improve prototypes as new data is collected

Developers need to have in-depth knowledge of at least one coding language including JavaScript, CSS, Ajax, Java and Ruby. Other skills required include Photoshop. An understanding of SEO and content management is also important.

UI/UX is one of the most important things which no one should neglect while creating a product or service solution site for their customers. Businesses and especially startups have to be sure that their sites are presented with an intuitive design.

Basically, the UI/UX development services are focused on creating interfaces that make every digital interaction an enjoyable user experience.

Final thoughts

The UI and UX of your website are important. A great design is something that will attract customers in the first place.

Having a site that is difficult to use will discourage a lot of users from interacting with or purchasing your products. For you to create appealing designs, you'll need a designer or a developer.

While they might seem similar these two professionals are different. Designers will create the visuals on a website, making sure it is in line with the user.

Developers make sure that the visuals on a website run smoothly as a user is navigating. So which of the two should you pick?

When making a decision take a look at their skills and match them with your goals. That allows you to provide customer satisfaction as they navigate your website.