Web Designers vs. Web Developers
Yes there is a difference between a Web Designer and a Web Developer.
A web designer is the guy who can make your site look WOW with a lot of animation and flash and colors.
A web designer is the guy who can create that button that looks so real you can see it bulging out of your computer screen.
A web designer is also likely a graphics designer.
A web designer might talk about Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash.
A web developer is the guy who writes the cryptic code that does all the difficult stuff that needs done when you click the button.
A web developer also goes by web programmer.
A web developer might talk about PHP, MySQL, databases, XML, XHTML, Ajax, jQuery .NET etc.
I am a web developer.
Most big sites require web developers.
A site like Facebook,for instance, hires only a handful of web designers and quite a lot of web developers.
99% of Facebook technical work is handled by the web developers.
So who should you hire for your website?
If you want a site to to look visually stunning then get a web designer.
I am a web developer and am actually against making a site overly visually stunning.
I personally preach clean and professional looking over aggressive animation.
If you want an e-commerce site or a social networking site or any site that requires things like filling out forms, memberships, forums, blogs and custom programming, then get a web developer.
If you are getting a website for the first time, you are very likely to be super focused on the visual aspects of your website.
Unfortunately (yes unfortunately) your primary concerns are going to be the logo, the logo color, the background color, the font type and everything you can see on your site.
I hate to break the news, but you can change your logo a thousand times and pay $10,000 to the world's best logo designer....your business is not going to do any better. In fact if you make your logo and backgrounds etc too colorful, you are likely to loose your visitor's attention.
Think the simplicity of Google and Apple products.
Here is a funny infographics on Web Designers vs. Web Developers.
