In A Better Way to Build a Website – Growth-Driven Design Part 1 we discovered the fundamental differences between Traditional and Growth-Driven Website Design.
Here’s a quick recap:
Traditional Website Design sucks
Growth-Driven Website Design is awesome
The Growth-Driven Design Part 1 blog post goes into a little more detail.
But, seriously, traditional website design is a slow process that – over time – may or may not meet your business goals. Growth-driven design is based completely on data with business goals at front and center. Not only does a growth-driven design site meet goals, but you have targeted data that proves exactly what is happening all of the time. No more guesswork.
Yeah, But What Is Growth-Driven Design? What Does It Look Like?
Let’s provide a basis for comparison; here’s what a traditional website design process looks like:
TRADITIONAL WEBSITE DESIGN
Month 1: The agency meets with your company. You discuss goals, map out the website strategy, and determine what you want the website to ultimately do for your business.
Month 2: The agency works to develop a wireframe. They discuss user experience (UX) and goals. People in your company are working on copy and searching for photos and images that can be used on the website. There may or may not be heated discussions around “I don’t have time for this!” HR is making noise about how they will be positioned on the website.
Month 3: The agency brings the wireframe, or maybe even mockups for discussion and approval. You wonder if this design will represent your company well. You ask the agency for data to show this design will meet your goals. The agency explains they won’t have any data on the site until people start using it. Makes sense. During the meeting, designs are approved and the website is moving forward.
Month 4: The agency is developing the functionality of the website. The design is coming to life in code. You still have people struggling to develop copy and find all of the images that are stored somewhere in the files… HR finally got their voice heard and now the website development is going to need some major changes.
Month 5: The agency went back to the original mockups and did another round to incorporate the elements needed for HR. (Oh, and by the way, since the mockups were already approved, these changes were out of scope. The fee for this site just went up.)
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Month 6: The site is back under development and is almost ready for review.
Month 7: It looks like your latest new product is going to launch before the website does. Changes need to be made to incorporate the new sections of the site for the product launch. The agency goes back to the drawing board to determine how to position this on the site.
Month 8: We know the site doesn’t really have every single thing we need, but we have GOT to get this site launched! Finally, the website is launched. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Immediately, your team is making changes to keep it up to date.
Month 9: How is the website performing? Is it meeting the goals we set 9 months ago? No one really seems to know....
So, maybe your most recent traditional website design process didn’t go exactly like that, but I’ll bet you nodded your head and went, “oh yeah” a few times while reading it. The major drawbacks with traditional design are the sheer length of time it takes to launch and the lack of data to know if it’s truly working.
So, how is a growth-driven design different? Here’s what that process looks like:
GROWTH-DRIVEN WEBSITE DESIGN
Month 1: The agency meets with your company. You discuss personas and goals, map out the website strategy, and determine what you want the website to ultimately do for your business. You develop key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine exactly how you will measure success of the website. You create a “wish list” of everything you want the website to be able to do and the information you want it to have. Together with the agency, you prioritize the wish list and determine your non-negotiables for the initial website launch.
Month 2: The agency launches the initial “launch pad” website. Your website is live! This site doesn’t have everything you will ultimately want on it, but it has all of your non-negotiables and provides a starting point for your ongoing changes and improvements.
Month 3: The agency has 30 days' worth of data to show you what is working and not working for your users and how you are performing in the search engines. This data, along with your initial wish list, drives this month’s changes and updates to the site. At the end of the month, the site is more robust and is better at meeting your user’s needs.
Month 4: The agency now has 60 days' worth of data. The website grows in functionality and design. You are well on your way to meeting your user experience goals, your SEO goals, and your ultimate business goals.
But, wait! A new product, a change from HR. No worries. The agency is easily able to work in these changes as part of the ongoing development of the site. They update and re-prioritize your wish list and keep the site dynamically growing with your company and your end user.
Month 5 through eternity: The agency continues to meet with you once a month to review the data as well as changes that will be incorporated into your site.
The assumptions you made about your users during your initial strategy session are being proven or disproven and the site is adjusted accordingly.
Because hard data is driving decisions around the website user experience, search engine optimization, design, and functionality, you never have to redesign your site again. Your website is now in a continuous growth mode that is flexible and nimble to continually meet the needs of your users as well as your business.
As you can see, the growth-driven design process is dramatically different from a traditional website design process. Your website is launched much more quickly, and you have hard data to drive ongoing improvements to your site. And, best of all, you never have to start the discussion, “We need a new website” ever again.
