Benefits of Growth Driven Design Over Traditional Web Design

Hearing more Growth Driven Design (GDD) hype without knowing what the fuss is about might prompt you to shout expletives (drop that middle D and you’re already there). Don’t fret, we are here to help.

You may understand that Growth Driven Design (GDD) is akin to agile development or redesign of a website using a test-driven, incremental process. GDD focuses on a data- and audience-analysis driven site launch or re-design intending to make changes based on ongoing learning about visitors’ needs and lead conversions.

So, what’s the value of the Growth Driven Design approach?

GDD lets you minimize risk. That’s always appealing, right? Well, GDD accomplishes this in several ways.

• Beginning with a Launch Pad site rather than a full-blown “set and forget” site that will remain static for the next 1 – 2 years, its less common to see ideas morphing into something unmanageable.
• At the same time, since your initial strategizing and launch pad site development takes just 30- 45 days, it’s easier to stay on budget and on deadline.
• Since GDD design is cyclical, typically with monthly checks over the next 11 months, the workload is more manageable. This is about ongoing sprints towards site optimization rather an uber-marathon to launching perfection (traditional web design is like an Ironman X 3, folks).

Continuous learning nets better results

GDD's continuous learning also nets better results. Having used the Launch Pad site to learn about user experience (UX), and determine how the site is performing with buyer personas, GDD moves into its continuous development cycle:

• Plan. Taking the data and analysis from the initial or subsequent cycles, determine strengths and weaknesses and efficacy meeting performance goals. Now, consider changes balancing their expected impact and effort required in deciding on an experiment design.
• Develop. Once the changes go live, it’s important to drive traffic there to monitor impact.
• Learning. Now evaluate whether or not the implemented changes are having the desired impact.
• Transfer. This is an essential part of GDD as it invites many, diverse teams to learn from the insights gained during the cycle. Together teams can determine a next plan for nurturing more leads, closing sales, and driving more leads to the site.

An opportunity to continually build momentum

Growth Driven Design’s ongoing process of making data-driven, intentional changes over time provides an opportunity to continually build momentum. Plus, your stakeholders will see progress over time rather than expecting immediate, monumental success.

That same incremental mentality also means dealing with a lot less of the extended downtime that typically occurs during a traditional (inevitably woefully off-track) web design.

Consider this: 1/3 of marketers were not happy with their last website redesign, per Hubspot’s Science of Website redesign. In that context doesn’t the GDD hype make more sense? After all, you’re making your web development process more data-driven and manageable for the team while also minimizing risk and boosting results. Now that seems like something you could actually shout about (expletives or not – that’s up to you).

Related reading:
What is Growth Driven Design?

Resources:

• https://agilemethodology.org/
• https://www.growthdrivendesign.com/