It can be tempting to think of hiring a web designer as your one-way ticket to a fully-fledged website, but it’s not that clean cut. There are some parts of website creation that are beyond the scope of what you’d hire a web designer for. Specifically, there are two parts to keep in mind: Web designers aren’t web developers, and they’re also not brand strategists!
Web design and web development often go hand-in-hand, but they’re not actually the same job. While a designer is focused on the visual aspects of a website, a developer is more focused on the technical elements in the back end of a website. In other words, a web developer’s job is to take the blueprints that a designer creates, and bring them to life by coding the site.
Brand strategy is also not a web designer’s job. This is something you can outsource to a branding agency, or you can do it yourself. By “brand strategy,” we mean the task of crafting the unique identity you want your business/portfolio/side hustle to have. Your website is the first tool in your arsenal when it comes to building a brand online, so it’s easy to think that a web designer can take care of this for you – but ultimately, a website is a tool that helps communicate your brand to viewers. It’s not the driving force behind the brand itself (that’s you!).