Web Designer vs Web Developer, Who Does What

A web designer decides how your website looks and how it works for the people who use it, the layout, the type, the colours and what happens when someone taps a button, and a web developer builds that design in code or in a system such as WordPress, then keeps it fast and working. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts both jobs on one page of its Occupational Outlook Handbook, which says that web developers create and maintain websites, while digital designers are responsible for the look and functionality of a website or interface. I design websites in Figma and build them in WordPress, and I think the most useful thing to know as an owner is that the two jobs overlap in the middle, where the design becomes a working page. That middle is where most websites lose time and money.

This post goes through what each one does, where the gap between design and build costs you, and what to ask so that both halves of your website are covered.

What a web designer does

A web designer works out the structure of each page, what goes in which section and in which order, and then how it looks, from the type and colours to the photos and buttons. The handbook lists creating prototypes and mockups among the duties of the job and describes web and digital interface designers as responsible for creating the look and feel of a website, along with its usability and compatibility. In practice the output is mostly a design file, such as a Figma file with every page drawn at desktop size, sometimes at phone size too, with the colours and text styles named so the build can reuse them.

A good designer also decides the parts which nobody sees in a screenshot, such as what a button does when you hover over it, what a form says when an email address is wrong and what someone sees after they send it.

What a web developer does

A web developer turns the design into pages which a browser can show and an owner can edit. The handbook splits the role into front-end developers, who build the layout and the features which you see, back-end developers, who build the technical framework and the way new pages are added, and webmasters, who keep a site updated and check it for problems such as broken links. On a WordPress site that means the theme, the fields or blocks which you use to edit each page, the plugins, the speed of the site and the updates which keep it secure.

The pay figures are the handbook’s medians for the United States and they describe salaried roles, so a freelance or project price works differently.

Where the gap between design and build costs you

Frames drawn in a way the build can’t follow

A website is built in sections which run the full width of the screen, with the content inside each one held in a centred column with a maximum width. A design which draws the page as one fixed picture at 1440 pixels leaves the developer to guess what stretches and what stays put on a wider or narrower screen, so I draw every frame the way it will be built, with the backgrounds and full-width photos edge to edge and the text inside a container.

The same gap appears with outside tools. On a restaurant website the booking form runs on a third-party booking widget, which can only be styled by its colours, a font, sizes, corners and borders, so the labels and the order of the steps stay the widget’s own. A design which changes the steps would have to be built as a custom form, and that decision belongs at the start of the design rather than in the build.

Phone sizes and states which nobody decided

When a design only shows the desktop page, the phone layout is decided by whoever builds it, mostly under time pressure. The web’s accessibility standard expects a page to work at a width equal to 320 CSS pixels without scrolling sideways, as WCAG 2.2’s criterion on reflow sets out, and it asks for tap targets of at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels in its target size criterion. I believe the phone layout and the states of each control, hover, error and success, should be decided by someone who looks at the design and the build together, and my post on success message UX goes into one of those states.

Content which doesn’t fit the layout

A design drawn around placeholder text often breaks when the real words arrive, because a heading is twice as long or a section has five points where the layout had room for three. The developer then either squeezes the text in or asks for a new design, and both cost time. My post on website copy before design explains why I would write the words first.

The two halves drifting apart after launch

Even on a website which one person designed and built, the design and the build can drift once changes start. On this website the blog pages once had their own header, which had grown to 80 pixels tall against the 68 in the design, with links which had lost their styles and a different button. Nothing was broken, so nobody noticed it until the two headers were compared side by side, which is why I would ask who checks the build against the design and when.

What to ask so both halves are covered

Whether you hire one person for both or two people, I would ask these questions before the design starts.

• Who will build the design, and will they review it before it is approved?
• Which pages are designed at phone size, and who decides the rest?
• Are hover, error, empty and success states part of the design?
• Which outside tools, such as booking or payment, does the site use, and what can be changed in each one?
• Who compares the finished pages with the design, and how are the differences fixed?

My post on questions to ask a web designer covers the months after launch, and freelance vs agency web design covers who you hire. You can also read about how I work across design and build.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a web designer and a web developer?

A web designer decides how the website looks and how it works for its visitors, mostly in a design tool such as Figma, and a web developer builds it in code or in a system such as WordPress and keeps it running.

Do I need both a web designer and a web developer?

Your website needs both kinds of work, either from two people or from one person who does both. A template site still has a design, which someone else made, and it still needs someone to set it up and keep it updated.

Who earns more, a web designer or a web developer?

In the United States the Bureau of Labor Statistics lists a median of $104,000 a year for web and digital interface designers and $92,650 for web developers, both for May 2025.

Can one person be a web designer and a web developer?

Yes, and many people work across both, mostly with one side stronger than the other. Ask to see a design frame beside the live page which was built from it, since that comparison shows both halves at once.

Should I hire the designer or the developer first?

I would bring in the person who builds the site before the design is approved, even when the designer starts first, so the build can follow the design without a second round of changes.