Web design and web development: the differences, what each includes and what your business needs

What is web design? In short, it is deciding what people will find and what they will do when they land on your site: how the information is organised, what they see first, how they get around on a mobile and what everything looks like. Web development is building all of that so it actually works: the code, the content management system, the forms, the payments, the connections with other tools, the speed and the security.

A website that brings in customers needs both. What changes is how much of each: a landing page for a garage in La Orotava relies mainly on design and content; an online shop or a booking platform, on development. Understanding that difference lets you read what you are being quoted for and spot what is missing.

What web design is and what it is for

When people ask what web design is, they usually think of colours and nice photos. That is only the visible layer. Web design is deciding what the website will be like before it is built, so that visitors quickly understand what you offer and do what you want them to do: call, book, request a quote or buy. It includes the following parts.

User experience (UX)

User experience goes beyond the screen. Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen defined it as all aspects of the end user's interaction with the company, its services and its products (Nielsen Norman Group's definition of user experience). On a website, it means understanding who arrives, what they are looking for and what holds them back: if a patient of a dental clinic in Santa Cruz wants to know whether you accept their insurance, they should not have to read five paragraphs to find out.

Interface (UI)

The interface is what the user sees and touches: buttons, menus, forms, font sizes, contrast. A good interface makes everything feel obvious; a bad one makes people stop and think.

Content architecture

This is the skeleton: which pages there are, how they are grouped, what goes in the menu and which heading opens each section. This is where you decide, for example, whether a hotel in Adeje has one page per room type or a single page with everything mixed together. It is the least eye-catching part and one of the decisions that carries most weight for SEO: a website organised by topic, with a clear page for each service, makes it easier for Google and AI assistants to understand what you offer and where.

Applied visual identity

Design carries your logo, colours and typefaces over to the screen in a meaningful way: what colour the call-to-action buttons are, how photos are treated. If you do not have a defined identity, say so before you start: improvising one along the way drags the project out.

Accessibility from the first sketch

According to the W3C introduction to web accessibility, an accessible website is one that is designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use it. Contrast, legible text, reasonably sized buttons and forms with clear labels are decided at the design stage; leaving them until the end is expensive.

So what is web design for? To make the website achieve a business goal: a beautiful website that nobody understands is just decoration.

What web development is: programming web pages, explained without jargon

Web development turns the design into a website that works in any browser and on any device. It has four components.

Front end: what happens on your screen

This is the code the browser downloads and displays: layout, adaptation to mobile, menus, form validation. Since Google uses the mobile version of pages to index and rank them, and recommends responsive design as the easiest to maintain (Google's documentation on mobile-first indexing), a front end that fails on mobile is a business problem, not an aesthetic one.

Back end: what happens on the server

What you do not see: the database of products, orders or bookings, sending emails, user accounts and payments. A landing page barely needs it; an online shop needs a great deal of it.

Content management system (CMS)

This is the dashboard from which you change text, photos, prices or blog posts without touching any code: WordPress, Shopify or Wix, for example. Setting it up properly (structure, permissions, backups) is also development.

Integrations

Connecting the website with other tools: payment gateway, booking engine, invoicing, CRM, email or Google Analytics. In holiday rentals and the restaurant trade, this is usually where most of the hours go.

The difference between web design and web development at a glance

Design answers “what should it be, and what should it be like?”; development answers “how do we build it so that it works?”. This table sums up the difference between web design and web development in terms of what affects you as a client.

To see how design work is done in practice, our Figma guide explains one of the most widely used tools for sketches and prototypes.

Who does what: common roles and where they overlap

These are the roles you will come across in a quote:

• UX/UI designer: researches, organises content, draws wireframes and designs the interface. On small projects this is usually the same person.
• Web designer: a broad term. Sometimes they only design; sometimes they design and also build the website in a CMS using a visual page builder.
• Front-end developer or coder: turns the design into code that looks good on every device.
• Back-end developer: server, database, business logic, integrations.
• Full-stack developer: covers both front end and back end. Common in small teams.
• Copywriter and SEO specialist: neither design nor development, but they shape both: which pages are needed, what they are called and what text they carry.

Overlaps are a good thing: a designer who knows how things are built does not propose the impossible, and a developer who understands design does not “approximate” sizes. The problem comes when nobody takes charge of what falls in between: copy, accessibility, speed or SEO. Ask who is responsible for each thing.

The technologies, explained for non-programmers

HTML, CSS and JavaScript

These are the three building blocks of any page. According to MDN's documentation on HTML, HTML defines the meaning and structure of content, CSS describes its appearance and JavaScript adds functionality and behaviour. Whatever tool is used to build it, the browser receives these three things, and well-structured HTML (orderly headings, links that make sense) matters a great deal for SEO and accessibility.

Content management systems: WordPress and co.

WordPress is by far the most widely used CMS: according to W3Techs' content management system statistics as of 15 October 2026, it is used by 39.7% of all websites and 58.5% of those using an identified CMS. It is followed by Shopify (5.3% of all websites) and Wix (4.2%). Being the most used does not make it the best for everything, but it does guarantee that plenty of professionals know how to work with it.

Frameworks and bespoke development

A framework is a set of programming tools (React, Next.js, Laravel, Astro...) for building websites or applications without starting from scratch. It gives more control over performance and features, in exchange for every significant change having to go through a developer.

How to choose without dogma

Be wary of anyone who tells you there is only one good technology. Ask yourself four questions:

• Who will update the content and how often?
• Does the website need special features, or are pages, a blog and forms enough?
• Could another professional maintain it if you change provider tomorrow?
• How much does it cost to maintain each year (licences, plugins, hosting, updates)?

What a “bespoke website” really is and when it pays off

“Bespoke” is used for very different things, and the quote should state which of these it means:

1. Adapted template: a theme is bought or chosen and its colours, text and photos are changed. Fast and cheap; the result looks like other websites and usually loads code you do not use.
2. Bespoke design on a CMS: the structure and look are designed for your business and built in WordPress, Shopify or another system. This is what most SMEs need.
3. Bespoke development: features are programmed that do not exist in any standard system: a quote configurator, a platform with user accounts, a complex integration with your management software.

Bespoke development pays off when the website is part of the product or the sales process and a standard tool would force you to work less effectively: an excursion company with places per boat and per day and its own rules, or a professional firm with a private area for documents. If you need to explain what you do and receive enquiries, a good bespoke design on a CMS is enough, and it is cheaper to maintain.

The phases of a real web project and what you should receive at each one

The names vary from provider to provider, but a serious project goes through these phases. If any of them is missing from your quote, ask who is doing it.

1. Kick-off meeting and brief. Goals, audience, features, budget and deadlines. Deliverable: a scope document.
2. Research and architecture. Which pages are needed and how they are organised, taking into account what people search for on Google. Deliverable: sitemap.
3. Wireframes. Grey sketches, with no colours or photos, to decide the order of the information. Deliverable: sketches of each page type.
4. Visual design and prototype. The final look, on desktop and on mobile. Deliverable: a design approved by you, ideally a clickable prototype.
5. Content. Text, photos and translations; this is the phase that delays projects the most. Deliverable: final copy.
6. Development. Building in a staging environment you have access to. Deliverable: a link to the staging site.
7. Testing. Mobile, browsers, forms, speed and accessibility. Google's benchmarks for a good experience are an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less, an INP of 200 milliseconds or less and a CLS of 0.1 or less (Core Web Vitals on web.dev). Deliverable: a list of checks passed.
8. Launch. Going live, redirects from the old URLs if it is a redesign, analytics, Search Console and legal pages. Deliverable: access in your name (domain, hosting, CMS, analytics).
9. Maintenance. Updates, backups, security and small changes. Deliverable: a contract stating what is and is not included.

On SEO, Google itself says in its guide Do you need an SEO? that a good time to hire these services is when you are planning a redesign or about to launch a new site, and that the sooner, the better. It makes sense: the architecture, URLs and headings are decided in phases 2 to 4, and changing them afterwards is expensive.

What your business needs: landing page, corporate website, online shop or application

Find your case and see where the bulk of the work will lie (illustrative examples):

Two legal points that affect development. Spain's Law 34/2002 on information society services (Article 10) requires the website to display, permanently and free of charge, details such as your name or company name, address, contact email and tax ID (NIF). And Law 11/2023, which transposes the European accessibility directive, has imposed accessibility requirements on certain services since 28 June 2025, including e-commerce aimed at consumers; micro-enterprises that provide services (fewer than 10 people and no more than €2 million in turnover or balance sheet total) are exempt. If your shop is not run by a micro-enterprise, accessibility has to be part of the brief.

If your question is more about aesthetics, take a look at our web design trends.

Your own website, or are social media and platforms enough?

Many businesses in the Canary Islands run for years on nothing but Instagram, their Google Business Profile and booking platforms. It works, but with two risks: someone else sets the rules (algorithm, commissions) and your customers' data is not yours. The sensible approach is for social media and platforms to send traffic to a website of your own, where you control the message, measure what happens and receive direct bookings or orders.

How to write a good brief for your website

A brief does not have to be long. With one or two pages that answer the following, any professional will be able to give you a comparable quote:

• Main goal: what has to happen for the website to be a success (calls, direct bookings, sales, quote requests).
• Audience: who your customers are, where they come from (residents, tourists, businesses) and which languages they speak.
• Planned pages: a rough list (home, services, about us, contact, blog...).
• Features: bookings, payments, private area, multiple languages, integration with your management software.
• Content: what you already have (text, photos, logo) and what needs to be created.
• References: two or three websites you like and why.
• Who will update it and how often.
• Budget and timeline: a rough range and whether there is a date that cannot move (high season, an opening).
• Current situation: whether you already have a website, domain, hosting or email, and who holds the access details.

Giving a budget range does not work against you: without one, one provider will propose something oversized and another something that falls short, and you will not be able to compare them.

Common mistakes when commissioning a website

The same problems keep cropping up in the websites we review, almost always because of things that were not discussed at the start:

• Comparing prices without comparing scope. Ask for each quote to set out the pages, features, text and photos included.
• Not knowing who owns the domain and hosting. They should be in your name, with your own access, even if the provider manages them.
• Forgetting the old URLs in a redesign. Without redirects, the rankings you have built up are lost.
• Not getting maintenance in writing. A website without updates or backups is a risk.
• Approving the design on desktop only. Check it on your phone: it is the version Google uses for indexing and, depending on your sector, where a large share of your visits come from (your analytics will tell you how much).

Next steps to request and compare web design and development quotes

1. Write your brief using the list above, even if it is only one page long.
2. Use the table to decide what kind of website you need and where the bulk of the work will lie.
3. Ask for two or three quotes based on the same brief and compare them phase by phase: who writes the copy? Are there wireframes? What testing is done? What does maintenance include?
4. Check that the domain, hosting and access details will be in your name.
5. Before signing, use our article on how much a website costs in Tenerife to check whether the price matches what is included.

If you would like to run your brief past a web design and development team in Tenerife, our web design in Tenerife page explains how we work; as a guide, a landing page starts at €337, a corporate website at €779 and an online shop at €1,169, with maintenance at €22/month.