What the hell is Growth-Driven Design?
by Caitlin Sellers
Over the past ten years of my career websites have changed dramatically. The purpose of them, the tools used, the way information is served up, how search engines perceive websites, and all of the channels that point back to your website is still adding up. The buyer journey has changed, inbound marketing is paving the way, and interruptive tactics are no longer acceptable.
Growth driven design revolves around learning and improving; making small changes along the way, based on data and user feedback. Ultimately being okay with experimentation is where you’ll have to come to terms with yourself. This is a slow process. Consider it a marathon.
Website redesigns are frustrating. The old way of creating websites is no longer working for companies aiming to use their website as a business development machine.
According to Luke Summerfield with GrowthDrivenDesign.com:
“The headaches, challenges, unreliable and inconsistent results we experience during a website redesign are the product of an outdated and broken playbook.”
The New Playbook: Growth Driven Design (GDD)
Growth-Driven Design is a smarter approach to web design that eliminates all of the issues and drives the best data-driven results.
Traditional Website Design v. Growth Driven Design
Invest in the growth of your business
Growth-Driven Design is an investment that produces reliable month-over-month growth.
Your website becomes stronger as you continue to measure, iterate and act.
How it works
Growth-Driven Design is built on-top of the SCRUM agile process and weaves together various concepts into a comprehensive and highly effective web design methodology.
How do you build a GDD mindset?
learn more about the GDD mindset in this video
The GDD Methodology has three major stages
Start with a focused growth strategy
Advice from Luke Summerfield on meetings:
“Don’t pack too much into one meeting – Think depth vs. breath… especially with core strategy items such as goals, personas, fundamental assumptions and journey mapping.
Highlight the “CRITICAL TO COMPLETE” vs. “NICE TO COMPLETE” items or topics required to move forward… remember, you can always collect more information and ask more questions later down the road.”
- Set SMART goals
- Understand user behavior
- Solve design problems
- Connect with customers
- Make it about your audience not about you.
The launch pad
The goal of the launch pad website is to quickly build a website that looks and performs better than what you have today, but is not your final product.
Your Launch Pad is the foundation from which you collect real-user data and optimize.
The goal
Launch a high conversion website in 60-90 days
Traditional website v launch pad comparison
Sprint this way with your launch pad website process
- Page Plans
- Rapid Prototypes
- Design Sprint
- Finish Sprint
- Quality Over Speed
- Page Migrations
Continuous improvement
Peak performing websites are not built overnight. Optimal performance comes through data-driven optimizations.
The traditional ‘launch it & leave it’ website builds can never ascend to the level of performance of a Growth-Driven Design website because refinement is where performance is achieved.
4-Step AGILE optimization process
Key Considerations when it comes to GDD
- Most brands are not building their website like a billboard or a business card
- The purpose of your website in this day and age is to have a 24/7 lead generation machine
- Treated your website as a sales person can be more affordable than actually hiring a sales person.
- This is not a do it yourself kind of project. You will need someone or a team to strategize, implement and manage your website to be consistent across all channels as well as ensure premium performance. This is where a digital marketing agency can be helpful. Make sure you are on the same page in terms of approach and vision. Get samples of their work.
- GDD is easier to pivot with platforms like the HubSpot and WordPress CMS
- Build a solid foundation with strategy and use a launchpad website to get things up and running as quickly as possible. Then, iterate based on behavior and data
- Focus on completion over perfection
- Websites are never truly finished – they are a living breathing thing
***This blog post sourced information from GrowthDrivenDesign.com and the HubSpot blog
