Growth Driven Design
Real business value in a fraction of the time.
Have you stopped feeling the love for the traditional approach to web design? Are the significant time and resource commitments and the challenges they create giving you headaches?
Then it’s time for you to try a new approach to web design. It’s time to switch to Growth Driven Design.
What is Growth Driven Design?
Growth Driven Design or GDD revolves around always learning and improving; making small changes, based on data and user feedback, to a website whenever the need arises. Rather than doing a massive redesign every 1.5-2 years as you do with what’s considered traditional web design, the Growth Driven Design process has 2 phases and monthly launches over the course of a year.
The graph below illustrates the difference between a traditional and a GDD project over 6 months. With the traditional approach, you’re not seeing results from your investment until 6 months in. With GDD, you are learning and making adjustments monthly. Besides the gratification for your efforts, it also increases the likelihood of achieving your annual web marketing performance goals (ie more leads, more sales, and/or more profit).
Phase 1 | Refined Website, Research & Strategy (30-60 days)
The first phase of Growth Driven Design is about a month or two of taking your existing content and structure and giving them a new, updated look. This gets your new look and feel out the door quickly, meanwhile your marketing team can begin work on the research and strategy.
The research consists of defining your goals for the website then analyzing your buyer personas and current analytics. A wishlist is made of ALL the items you would like to see on your new website. You should then create action items out of the top ~20% of the items on your wishlist that will produce the biggest value and impact.
The action items are intended to produce a refined website experience that’s measurable. This deliverable is sometimes referred to as a Launch Pad Website.
Phase 2 | Continuous Improvement (30 day sprints)
Now that the refined website is up and running, you move into the continuous improvement phase known as the Growth Driven Design Cycle. This cycle is intended to take about a month to complete, but is repeated on a monthly basis (or as quickly as possible) for a specified amount of time (typically 12 months).
4 Steps of the Growth Driven Design Cycle
Step 1 | Plan based on important action items. Some parts in the planning phase include:
- Determine if the refined website performance is meeting your goals set in Phase 1
- Gather additional data or conduct additional research based on the findings of your website analysis
- Get input from your marketing and sales teams about any changes they have noticed during the last cycle
Step 2 | Develop and schedule a marketing campaign to drive traffic to the updated parts of your refined website.
Step 3 | Review your data and learn from your changes.
- Were the action items you implemented successful?
- How can they be further improved?
Step 4 | Transfer all the important information you have learned to other parts of your organization
Then…REPEAT. Start over at Phase 2, Step 1 to continue your learning and growth.
Benefits of Growth Driven Design
Your website is a living marketing asset that should connect with your audience through remarkable and engaging content, staying fresh by leveraging the latest trends that improve the user experience to make it easier for your audience to achieve their goals. By utilizing the Growth Driven Design process, you’re able to meet the needs of both your audience and your organization.
To learn more about Growth Driven Design, explore our website or download our FREE ebook!
We enjoy supporting our artist friends at the Noun Project. The original artwork at the top of this page was created by Richard Slater.
