Last Updated on: September 2, 2022
"A Venture without a Website is like a car without wheels."
In 2022, almost three fourth of the world is on the web. Be it you, your purpose or your business, the most significant medium to be seen is the internet. If we look at the websites, people can be on either side, One who is consuming or getting benefited by its existence known as receivers, and the other who is creating it known as senders.
Has the idea of designing a website enthralled you ever? Have you ever hovered over the graphics and dynamics of a website and it has fascinated you about how it all works.? Yes, I get your excitement there. If you are a newbie yet to explore the whats and hows of website developing, let me get you there.
Let’s Unweb the Web.!
Table of Contents
Why should you take up web development as a career?
Web development has become an emerging career opportunity nowadays, which requires a combination of skills altogether. If you are someone who has a balanced sight of creativity and interest in technicalities simultaneously, you should definitely think about this career perspective. Web development is a cumulative opportunity to land you into a good-paying job at the end of the day. You can consider the roles to be flexible, unlike stringent IT job roles where the regularity ends up being monotonous. Here you get to explore every day a new perspective, a new design, a new approach of designing, a new strategy to code.
You can go for a full-time job, it enables you to put it on the side seat too where you can freelance, sit at home and earn lots of money.
Is web development a good career path? The answer is yes, if you are willing to enhance your skills continuously and work to fulfil the client or project expectation. Here are some benefits of choosing web development as a career:
Flexibility
The main advantage of a web development career is that you have the flexibility of choosing to work full-time or part-time. You can take up web development jobs along with any other job and earn some extra income. Web development jobs can also be taken up on a freelance basis, along with your studies or any other courses that you may wish to pursue.
Learn and Upskill at Your Own Pace
The area of web development offers a lot of jobs for freshers with limited skills. You can always start as a freelancer and upgrade your skills alongside. GeekLurn’s Full Stack Web Developer program offers interactive live sessions, training by experienced corporates, and real-time industrial teaching to help students build a good web development career. The course includes placement assistance to help you kickstart your career as a web developer.
Opportunities to Upskill
While the knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS is a must for every web developer, there are several opportunities to upskill. Additional courses and certifications in AngularJS, Ajax, Ruby, and PHP can play an important role in the advancement of your career and salary appraisals.
High Job Satisfaction
The ability to create something useful is highly satisfying. Web developers get great satisfaction by using their knowledge to improve the user experience. The addition of new features or the completion of new tasks provides a great sense of accomplishment.
Ample Job Opportunities
The growth of online businesses means the demand for creating new websites or modifying existing ones is likely to remain strong, offering interesting job opportunities.
Web Developer Salary in India
Web developers are responsible for ensuring that a website works smoothly. That’s why their salaries are determined by the kind of skills they possess. Another factor that decides a web developer’s remuneration is the ability to keep oneself updated with the latest in web development. While the average base salary of a web developer is around Rs. 3 lakhs per annum, it can go up to Rs. 8 lakhs per annum or even higher, depending on the years of experience, skills, certifications, and employer company. Freshers in this field may earn a salary of around Rs.1.5 lakhs per annum but are eligible for raises as they acquire more skills, like HTML, jQuery, MySQL, CSS, PHP, and WordPress. Certifications play a major role in a web developer career path as well.
Another key factor determining the salary of a web developer is the location of work. Web developers in Hyderabad, Bangalore, New Delhi, and Mumbai generally earn more than those placed in other cities or towns in India.
What exactly happens in web development?
Before we step into this, let me clear the air first. Web development is not equal to web designing and vice versa. Web development is a cumulative procedure which accumulates all the aspects of it, and web design is one such aspect only.
Web Developer Key Hard Skills
Hard skills refer to the specific knowledge and abilities to perform a web developer’s job. Coding is the main skill required to become a web developer. Coding requires excellent knowledge of some of the major programming languages like:
- HTML5 – This markup language is used to provide structure to the content on the web. It is used to define the fundamental role of web pages, including the specifications of content formatting as paragraphs, headers, lists, links, or other types of elements.
- PHP – This server-side scripting language is primarily used to determine a website’s response to user actions. This language functions within web content management systems, HTML code, web frameworks, and web template systems.
- CSS – Cascading Style Sheets are used by web developers to control the appearance and layout of elements across the pages of a website. The use of CSS influences the presentation of the font faces, colours, spacing among elements, and size of elements on a page.
- JavaScript – An important tool for programming interactive webpages, JavaScript is used by web developers to build engagement and bring webpages to life. JavaScript controls behaviours like dynamic loading, besides determining an element’s response to user clicks.
- ASP.NET – This open-source, server-side web application framework was developed by Microsoft to provide tools and resources to help web developers. This framework is a popular option to build dynamic websites, applications, and services and, thus, an important skill for advancing in web development as a career.
- Angula.js – Maintained by Google and its user community, this open-source, industry-standard application framework is used to adjust the front end of a website.
In addition to these skills, web developers can learn additional programming languages like Python, Java, and Ruby besides being well-versed with applications like Photoshop and WordPress.
Web Developer Key Soft Skills
In addition to hard skills and knowledge of important programming languages, web developers need to build several soft skills that help them in completing their work efficiently. Some essential soft skills that a web developer should have or develop are:
- Multitasking – An essential skill for any job, multi-tasking refers to the ability to attend to several jobs that are simultaneously in progress. This not only boosts efficiency, but also allows a web developer to work on several projects at one time and meet deadlines.
- Self-Motivation – The ability to motivate oneself is important for completing projects on time and meeting the set deadlines.
- Organisational Skills – Since a web developer needs to keep track of several projects and tasks at the same time, having organisational skills is important. This helps in planning budgets, workflow planning, setting deadlines, checking progress, and delivering the final output.
- Ability to Pay Attention to Detail – Since web development is an intricate task, web developers need to pay attention to each detail. This helps achieve the best output with the desired features.
Who is a Web Developer?
In the simplest term, a Web developer can be defined as a person who converts a design into a line of codes. When a client demands a website, It is first put into a structural layout where website designers create the aesthetics of the page. Designers fall into two categories;
- UI designers: UI(User interface) designers decide the visual appearance of the website. The graphics, the images, the typography and colours.
- UX designers: UX(User experience) designers decide the functionality of the website. They look into the prototype, wireframes, design interaction, navigation and deal with user research scenarios.
After the integration of all designing parameters, there comes the part of a Web developer who translates the designing aspect into the line of codes. They build the interface between the machine and the client.
With the help of various coding languages like HTML, CSS, javascript, the intertwining of design is done by codes. If you ask me what exactly Webs developers do, the answer is constricted in just one line. Let’s categorise the role into three segments.
1. FRONT- END DEVELOPER:
Front end developer is the interface between the design and the user. They are responsible for generating the view of the website through encrypting layouts in terms of the images and graphics and map them into codes. How a website will look at the end of the day can only get fruitful when it gets coded into. Front end developers need to be efficient in at least three languages, HTML, CSS and Javascript.
HTML(Hypertext markup language) is the markup language which configures the content part of the website. It codes the framework and decides the structure in terms of heading, tables and paragraphs.
CSS (cascading style sheet) is a style sheet language which helps in the presentation of the document written in HTML. It develops style into image, colour, graphic formats.
JavaScript combines the elements and decides the dynamism of websites like push buttons, forms, form validations, sliders and more.
2. BACK -END DEVELOPER:
While front end developers deal with the look and feel of the website and convey it to the users, Back end developers do the interfacing between website and server. They build codes which back website server and database systems.
Their role is very crucial and is rooted since the whole reliability of the website depends on them. Imagine you are trying to reach a website, and it shows “404 error”. Yes, that’s what!. This is how crucial it gets when it comes to the back-end. Basically, these developers use coding languages like Java, Python, Ruby and PHP for the purpose.
3. FULL-STACK WEB DEVELOPERS:
Full-stack is closest to the wholesome development of the website. One who is the jack of all trades. One should always look up to become a full-stack developer. A full-stack developer is one who takes on all the aspects, designing, front end and back end at the same time. Generally, one getting into this field often starts with the front end. After harnessing years of experience, and encompassing all the skills, one step up to become a full-stack developer.
As a full-stack developer, though the responsibility increases, it becomes easier to connect all the designing dots and convenient to relate the fragments when you do it by yourself all together.
So, yes, getting into the shoes of full-stack does not come easy, but it’s worth it as it enhances your employability, garlanding your job value in the market. You just need to focus on your goal and make a start. It comes conveniently nowadays with various full-stack web development certified programs across various learning platforms to help you kickstart in the first place. We will cover the tools and job opportunities for web development in the next blog.
Web Development Career Path
The web development career path offers two different options for people having excellent programming skills. They can choose to work on a freelance or independent contracting basis or get a stable, salaried position.
The full-time work option is highly suitable for people who like to work in a team and prefer a stable source of income. This option involves working closely with programmers, designers, and many others associated with the process of web development. The quality and efficiency of your performance in this role can help you grow fast and earn higher salaries.
The option to work independently is for the ones who like flexibility. It is also preferred by people who love to work with new clients and challenge themselves with newer projects. These situations require good marketing skills to get new projects and organisational skills to manage and complete them on time. The level of satisfaction will depend on the kind and the extent of work assigned.Several years of experience in the web development field can lead to a career in consultancy, wherein you help clients build new websites and apps. But the core requirement for a good web development career is having excellent programming skills and strong work ethics.
Monica Swain
Monica is a senior marketing executive. Her skillsets consist of digital marketing and strategy, SEO, marketing analysis and more. She also has her expertise in writing various copies, including web, newsletters, e-books, social media, etc. But, it does not stop here. Her love for writing goes as far as doing poetry connecting science and life.
