Ever wondered what’s the difference between a good hire and a great hire these days?
Nobody wants to brag about writing messy code and delivering sites that don’t work.
It’s bigger than that. Businesses are starting to realise there’s an even more important skill missing from a lot of teams. Candidates who understand how to build something — from scratch — that converts.
Design isn’t just for designers anymore. And here’s why.
Table of Contents
- Why Design Skills Are Booming In Demand
- What Web Developer Career Training Entails Today
- The Skills That Will (Actually) Get You Hired
- How Great Design Converts to Business Success
- Why Businesses Are Focusing On This Right Now
Why Design Skills Are Booming In Demand
Let’s start with the basics.
Pretty much every business these days has some kind of online presence. Whether that’s a website, an app, both, or something else entirely. What almost all of them have is a customer-facing digital experience that either makes or breaks their conversions.
Design is the glue that holds it all together.
Whether you realise it or not, almost every department at a modern company needs designers — even if they’re not in the design department. Marketing needs them. Product teams need them. Sales teams need them too. Anyone who builds a customer-facing digital experience needs designers.
The professionals who blend development ability with design know-how are in high demand. Because companies know they’re twice as valuable as someone who can only do one or the other.
Paid employment in creative occupations is expected to grow 17% from 2023 to 2033, much faster than average for all occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What Web Developer Career Training Entails Today
The numbers don’t lie — so take a look at how someone actually enters this industry today.
Web developer career training used to mean learning HTML, sprinkle in some CSS, and call it a day. The idea that a professional could be done learning after gaining familiarity with those three skills is almost unrecognisable by today’s standards.
Programs like an online web design degree teach everything from front-end development to design theory to user experience (UX) best practices. Candidates coming out of web developer career training now have the skills not just to build something — they have the skills to build something that works for users and their unique business needs.
UX and design basics are required knowledge for web developers because clients and customers expect nothing less.
After all, why would a business hire a developer who only builds things if they can hire someone who knows their product will convert before they even start testing? It doesn’t make sense. Clients and businesses can see that. And that’s why design skills are in higher demand than ever.
BLS reports that the median annual wage for web designers hit $98,090 in May 2024, higher than the median annual wage for all professions.
The Skills That Will (Actually) Get You Hired
Care to guess what today’s hiring managers are looking for?
- User experience and UI fundamentals — how people interact with digital interfaces
- Prototyping and wireframing — how to build, test, and iterate quickly
- Design principles — colour theory, typography, layout, visual hierarchy
- Front-end web development — brings it all together
- Conversion rate optimisation — what makes users take action
All of the above. And notice how half of those skills are design-focused.
The good news? These skills aren’t black and white. Programmers and developers who take the time to learn UI/UX and web design principles can become just as proficient as anyone who started there. As long as a web developer career training plan includes design — which most do these days — the path toward building that skillset is already underway.
Knowing how to design won’t just help land a job. In a world where developers are expected to know design (and probably some marketing too) it will keep professionals ahead of the curve once hired.
How Great Design Converts to Business Success
Which brings us to a key point…
Nobody talks enough about how design literally makes or breaks the customer experience. Want to double a conversion rate on a product page? Spend more time designing that page than coding it.
Hard to believe? Fair enough. But think about how many steps are eliminated when a developer can look at the work they produce and ask, “Why doesn’t this convert?” rather than passing it off to someone who will.
More than ever before, businesses are looking to hire people who can handle every aspect of building an online presence. Outsourcing design is an option — but building in-house expertise is consistently cheaper, faster, and more sustainable.
Especially when that in-house expertise can take a product from concept to conversion faster than ever before.
Why Businesses Are Focusing On This Right Now
Honestly? Competition.
Businesses have always needed to keep up. But there was far less at stake when a competitor was located across town. Digital spaces have changed everything. A user dropping off a website because it took too long to load isn’t an inconvenience anymore — it’s a rejected sale.
Who cares about having the best product if no one can find the store online? Every industry has decided it’s had enough of poorly designed experiences. Everyone needs to hire designers. Everyone needs developers who speak design.
…and it all goes back to where this started.
The modern business world isn’t just about who can code the fastest. It’s about who can build a product concept into a conversion priority from the get-go. Design skills have officially stopped being a bonus on a resume. They require knowledge. And anyone who doubts that only needs to look around to see what skills businesses want now.
From Design Skills to Web Developer: Takeaways
Here’s what really matters.
- Every company is trying to improve their online conversions
- Candidates with both development and design skills are in high demand
- Design skills include UX/UI principles, prototyping, and visual design theory
- Great design helps companies save money building better digital experiences in-house
- Every industry needs designers — competitors will hire them first
Whether just getting started with web development or building sites for decades, design is where the real edge is. Businesses can’t afford to hire people who don’t understand the full journey from concept to conversion. Learning design skills is the move that future-proofs a career — and sets any candidate apart from the crowd.
