What Does ‘Web Development’ Mean?

There isn’t any other term, associated with the WWW, as broader as web development. Web development is really a panoptic term, which is used for all departments of developing websites for the World Wide Web or internet. Web development includes web site building, web site designing, web content development, client-side/server-side coding, and web server configuration. So, web development is the term used for a collaborative effort of all departments responsible for developing websites rather than a one single department.

Some web professionals say web development also includes web promotion including web site marketing, online marketing or internet marketing, search engine optimization, etc. But, technically, web development is considered associated with web server configuration, writing web applications and server security. Sometimes web professionals use the term ‘web development’ usually for the non-design aspects of building Web sites, e.g. writing markup and coding. Hence, professionally, web development includes all the areas ranging from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.

Often, large business corporations and organizations have their own teams of web development professionals to handle their web development works. These teams usually include professional web builders, web designers, web content writers, web content managers, etc. But, small business firms or organization, which cannot afford to maintain permanent web development teams, usually depend on companies offered professional web development services.

Web development is one of the most flourish business industries online nowadays. Growing popularity of online business and increasing number of online businesses has greatly contributed to the growth of web development industry. The professionals that do web development tasks are called web developers. There are numerous web developers or web development companies offering their services online. Since the mid-1990's, web development has been one of the quickest growing industries in the United States. There were fewer than 1,000 web development companies in 1995, but their number surged to 30,000 in 2005. The web development industry is expected to grow over 20% by 2010.