Web Consultants, Developers and Designers

When business owners and individuals decide to create a website they are often lead in circles between a web consultant, a web developer or a web designer. In most case scenarios leaving them confused as to who does what due to the fact that these three entities naturally have overlapping roles. For instance, the consultant who by nature of profession should play the role of advising the business owner about what is needed on the website in order to make it effective and meet business objectives.

This means that the consultant would be also be ‘heavily’ influencing the work of the developer and the designer not to mention all aspects of digital marketing leaving the question if the consultant would also act as the digital marketer! Now if at all, the business owner decides to enlist the help of the web developer, the same overlapping redundancies are thought to occur as the developer would be providing ideas and strategies about how to go about building a site that is functional, effective in driving traffic and finally meet the objectives of the business.

The same happens when business owners ‘hook up’ with web designers. Well, the truth of the matter is that, the landscape of website establishment and how it functions has changed dramatically over the last few years as the consultant, the developer and the designer are required to do not just the functions of each other, but also contend with a 4^th element which is digital marketing.

Having said that and to summarise the topic, it is critical that the person who is about to be hired by the business to develop and maintain the website is an ‘all-rounder’ meaning that the particular candidate must be competent with the services of a consultant and be able to provide good advice on what is needed and what is not, be competent with website related programming language, have a knack for attractive designs and also have sufficient knowledge about digital marketing.

If at all the candidate lacks any of the above, the possibility of the website becoming ineffective is highly probable. These days experienced web developers who use codes instead of templates are also highly aware of search engine algorithm elements which unfortunately a pure consultant ‘only’ or a digital marketer ‘only’ or a designer ‘only’ would have very little inclination of. Thus, to overcome this situation, the best bet would be to hire a developer (who uses codes instead of templates) and is savvy with design and knows enough about digital marketing and how to get the website ranked well.

The most important thing to remember is that page ranking counts above everything else and good web developers will know how to get it up in time. Hiring a consultant, who in turn hires a developer and subsequently a designer just so that he or she remains in control of the construction of the website (divide and conquer policy) would be a cost ‘ineffective endeavour’ as a good web developer would be able to do all this and more for a fraction of the cost.