I recently gave a presentation explaining what a web developer like me does. The short answer is that your web developer either makes or saves you money. But how?
The key is to make each site dynamic, easy to change, reliable, and simple to use.
Think of how you use the web when looking for something. You search in Google (finding stage), open a couple of sites and decide which ones you like (shortlisting stage), and then you start reading/looking to decide what you will do next (confirming stage). Each step in that process is a specialised field and it is rare that an expert in one is an expert in the others. For example, the same creative thinking that goes into design is very different to the logical thinking required for programming or setting up a database. All need to work together, though, to get good results.
Here is a simple example. When I recently set up the new design for Jobo Design's website they sent me the look they wanted as images.
Some designers will provide their work to me as PDF's, images, HTML, PSD files, or however they like to work. It does vary. The next step is to work out what parts of the design need to be dynamic. These will come out of a database or off the filesystem.
The reason for this is to make the site easy to update. More complex sites require more work. The more of the site that can be made dynamic, the more time and money the site owner saves by being able to make the changes themselves.
Next, everything needs to be chopped up. Even when a site is already chopped up by the designer, there will still be some work required. At minimum, the menus have to be re-created in a way that they can be automatically generated from a database. More complex or stylish menus provide more of a challenge.
The three panels at the bottom of this image are screenshots of a Content Management System. The menus (navigation) of the site are stored in a database and made as required, the front-page scroller gets it's images from a pool that the user can add to, and the sample sites are managed inside the CMS as well.
The kind of information that can be put into a CMS and generated automatically is not limited to text and images. In the above picture you can see that the banners shown on the Distinctive Albums website are made from a pool of smaller images that the owner of the site can change. When a banner is shown, the software grabs some images, resizes them, sticks them together, and then sends them to the web browser. That means DA have a virtually unlimited amount of banner images without having to go back to a designer and get new ones made.
A web developer will also set up extra features that require special software or web server setup.
For example, bulk email. In this case the image shows one of mine and how it is edited and sent.
Or shopping. In this example, the online and Facebook stores for Aero Plus. Each one running off the same database so updates are only required once.
This is just scratching the surface. As you can see, a web developer plays an important role in the success of a website. The web developer makes sure the site does everything it should, and makes the graphic designer's life a lot easier.
It is a lot like how building a house requires an architect, builder, bricklayer, electrician, plumber and so on. Your web developer is a key component in making a successful website. A web developer is not a web designer and a web designer is not a web developer.
By setting your website up properly, a good web developer will save you a lot of money. By making it easy to use, reliable, and by adding the features your customers expect to see, a good web developer could make you money as well.
