3min
As a company leader or marketing manager, there's two questions you might want to ask yourself. One, how much time has passed since you overhauled your website? Two, is your website performing the way it's expected to, such as generating more leads or converting leads into paying customers? Many businesses tend to consider this process every few years resulting in two things.... an outdated website and considerable investment (of time and money) taking you away from running the business. So why not pay as you grow
If your website development was a one time deal. You gave a designer a brief about your organisation and marketing objectives, then months later... new website! Then you may have a problem...
- Your company evolves over time and it won't be the same in 2,3 or 4 years.
- You will probably have new products and services, or perhaps your audience has changed.
- Possibly certain things don't work as you'd like.
The Downside With Typical Website Design
Imagine you were making an investment on the stock market, would you pick all your moves for the next 5 years, kick back and keep your fingers crossed? Or, might you begin with "quick wins", observing how they turned out, then dependent on those outcomes, invest a little more and so on...
When you think about it, that's exactly how typical web design endeavours operate. It's impossible to understand everything about your client's user interaction experience with your design and navigation or if they will engage with your content.
What if they don't visit the pages you need them to? What if your competitors' website and marketing is performing better than yours?
Take a look at some of these brain crunching facts about traditional website design
- Almost 55% of companies that used traditional design and web development said the process took at least 6 months to complete—and 80% of these said the process took more than a year Source
- On average, traditionally designed sites are delivered 2 weeks late and only half launch on time Source
- 54% of marketing and IT teams say their traditional design sites are a "bottleneck" for their businesses Source
- The average cost of a traditional website redesign is over £40,000 (hopefully that's not up-front!) Source
Thankfully, there's a much better way, that's known as growth driven design or as we like to call it "Pay As You Grow"
What The Heck Is Growth Driven Design (GDD)?
GDD places genuine marketing data driven insights at the centre of the process. Given that marketing insights are constantly changing, GDD is an iterative strategy. You begin with a foundational website according to what you absolutely understand about your clients, then progressively crank up development according to customer responses and new insights. Subsequently, Growth Driven Design is typically a quicker and more affordable way to build an effective site, therefore, pay as your grow.
How Does Growth Driven Design Work?
The GDD system follows a 3 phase process:
1 Strategy
This is the phase where you determine clear, measurable, digital marketing objectives dependent on genuine data about your buyer personas. You'll also line up those goals with the buyer's journey. Ultimately, at this phase, you decide on your primary design approach, wish list and expected obstacles.
This phase is around 2 weeks.
2 Launch Pad
View the launch pad website as the foundation for your new website, one that'll allow a methodical approach to iterative developments in the future. Think of this as a superior version of your earlier site, but not the "final article". However, one that will have the capacity to gather customer data, SEO stats, visitors numbers, conversion rates and other metrics. The Launch site is your framework for consequent optimization and continual learning.
This phase usually takes 60-90 days.
3 Continuous Improvement
In GDD, each continuous improvement to your website is called a "sprint". But let's be clear here, that does not mean making modifications according to what you like. It means optimising your site dependent on what your clients like or don't like, based on their behaviour. They truly are the individuals who will establish which content works best or if your CTAs are engaging. Determined by the data you harvest throughout this phase, you will eventually achieve a fully optimised marketing website.
Stop dealing with your website evolution as a task that happens every few years. This critical tool has got to be granted the focus it needs to succeed in its mission; to become your business' top performing sales tool. Give some thought to the advantages of taking a Growth Driven Design and only pay as you grow.
