I\'m a fairly experienced web-developer working in a small startup, as the devel

Question

I'm a fairly experienced web-developer working in a small startup, as the developer of an e-commerce website. The other three people involved are the Director, the Designer and the Marketing guy.

The plan as I understood it, was for the Designer to make the logos and page mockups, me to turn them into a functional website, the marketer to oversee any messaging/blurbs/social-media, the Director to manage the business and oversee everything else.

Recently, the Marketing guy asked about our plans for a RWD (responsive web design). I told him that due to our tight schedule and that I'm writing both the front-end and back-end code, I'd only be targeting the most popular mobile devices until we had a functional website, after which I'd focus on a more comprehensive responsive design to target everything.

He didn't want to accept this and asked me why we couldn't just buy a WordPress template to handle the responsive aspect. Because the template requires WordPress, some e-commerce plugin for WP and modification of the template itself to match our design anyway, I replied that it wasn't a good idea and would probably only add extra development overhead at this point. His last response seemed to only reiterate his points without addressing mine.

Rather than having some back and forth pissing match, I'm looking for a solution that will work best for the project as a whole, while avoiding any animosity if possible. Any ideas (technical, management or otherwise)?

Explanation / Answer

Consider it positive to have marketing with reasonable web knowledge.

The designers and marketing people I work with are from a print background (20 years+ and set in their ways) and really can't grasp designing for online, let alone RWD!

RWD can be retro-fit though it might take longer. It depends on your target market etc but remind him how its possible to implement improvements over time and a site doesn't necessarily have to launch with all the bells and whistles from day 1.

Maybe show your priority list, features etc and unless he has a good argument to push his request up at the expense of knocking something just as important off release then...

Also, again depending on the audience, online sales for e-commerce can still be relatively low and not warrant high priority mobile customisation. Some people also fall in to the belief that a site is completely unviewable without RWD or that people really curse having to zoom and pan (that is probably used as a sales tactic to get clients to get a new site or pay for upgrades so can't complain about that too much!)

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse I
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.