You need to hire someone to help with your website and/or online marketing. You’ve Google-searched, and you run into all three of these terms. Who to call? These titles are all different, but they get used interchangeably enough that the distinctions might seem to not matter. But they describe both different skill sets and scopes of work. Knowing what each one does will make it a lot easier to find the right fit for what you’re trying to accomplish.
What a Web Designer Does
A web designer’s primary focus is how a website looks and how people get around on it. Design, layout, typography, color, and the way a page feels to navigate are the core of the work. A good web designer thinks about the experience a visitor will have from the moment they land on your homepage and then builds the site in a way to support whatever you want them to do, whether that’s make a phone call, buy a product, or book a service.
Most web designers today work inside a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix which handles the underlying structure of the site. Because of this, the line between design and simple website development has gotten a bit blurry over time. A designer working in Elementor on WordPress is doing more than just picking colors and fonts, but their primary focus will still be based on the visual and user experience.
Take for example a therapist whose website was built some years ago and is starting to show its age. The colors on the site are dated, the images haven’t changed to reflect the practice’s current focus, and the page layout makes it hard for a visitor to quickly understand who the therapist works with and how to contact them. That’s a design problem, and a good web designer will rebuild the look and flow of the site, reorganize the content hierarchy in a way that is logical, and make the experience of using the site feel warm, clear, and professional.
What a Web Developer Does
A web developer builds the technical infrastructure of a site. On simpler tasks, that means customizing how a platform like WordPress behaves by writing code that makes a plugin work the way the client needs, building a custom feature that a theme doesn’t support on its own, or integrating the site with a third-party tool the client needs. On the more complex side, it could mean building entire web applications from scratch, handling databases, and writing backend code that runs on a server.
A fully custom developed website is more than most small businesses need, but often enough some basic development work is needed on a site build. If a designer can’t do it themselves, they’ll have to bring someone in who can.
Going back to our friendly neighborhood therapist’s website. She wants new clients to be able to book a consultation directly from her website, and she wants the booking system to sync automatically with her calendar and send appointment reminders without her having to do anything manually. That’s a development issue. A designer will design the look of the button and make sure a user understands what it’s for, but getting that integration to work, handle the data correctly, and make sure it doesn’t break when the website updates needs someone who knows what’s happening under the hood.
What a Digital Marketing Agency Does
A digital marketing agency’s scope is broader than either of the other two titles in this blog. The website is an important part of the picture, but the work extends beyond that into everything that drives traffic to it and converts it into customers. This includes SEO, paid advertising, social media, email marketing, content strategy, Google Business Profile management and more.
Some agencies have designers and developers on staff or contract freelancers for those needs, but what defines the agency relationship is that they manage an ongoing marketing effort on your behalf, coordinating it across multiple channels and measuring the results to continually improve their efforts.
Our therapist has a beautiful, functional website now. The problem is that nobody is finding it. She shows up on page three of Google for the search terms her potential clients are using, her Google Business Profile is incomplete, and she hasn’t posted on social media in eight months. Getting consistent new clients from her web presence is going to require more than a one-time website project. And that’s where an agency comes in.
Where the Lines Blur
In practice, a lot of freelancers and small design businesses do more than just one of these things. A designer who also does basic SEO and writes blog content is doing agency-level work even if they don’t call themselves an “agency.” Many small agencies do their own design and website development in-house. The titles are less important than understanding what a particular person or company can do for you.
Which One Do You Need?
If your main need is a simple website that looks professional and works well, a web designer is a great starting point. If the site needs custom functionality that a platform can’t handle out of the box, you’ll need someone with development skills, either as part of the designer’s job or someone who is brought in specifically for that functionality.
If you need the website and the ongoing marketing work that makes it perform, you’re looking for either a full-service agency or a smaller shop that covers the same ground. The difference between the two is usually the scale and budget.
At Wild Iris Marketing, we can cover website design and development, and the full range of digital marketing services, from SEO and content to social media and email. If you’re trying to figure out what your business needs and who you should hire to do it, we’d love the opportunity to talk with you about it.
