The term web design refers to "building a website" — and a web designer is someone who can design and build a website. And that's all it means.

While this is a vital skill, the problem is that most people assume that anyone who can build a website is also a marketer, someone who knows something about marketing and sales — that is, how to build a successful website. Unfortunately, that isn't a safe assumption for the simple reason that marketing and sales are not taught in web design classes.

Moreover, it's also important not to assume that web design skills include a knowledge of how search engines works, or being able to build a website so that search engines can read it, let alone make your pages appear at the top for your particular search terms. In fact, most web designers are taught that search engines do all this via something called "meta tags" ( which hasn't been true more or less since the turn of the century).

Think of it this way: designing a logo is not the same as creating advertising to gain new customers or sales. And all web design services may not include what is needed to create a successful website.

Most Web companies specialize -- in web design, or graphic design, or getting high search engine rankings or marketing. This requires that you expend the time to learn something about all this, discover what's missing and then hire companies to fill in the gaps — which could mean paying them to rework each other's work.