If you've held fast to traditional web design for a long time, you've perhaps only done so because you've known nothing else. Regardless, as business demands become more intense in the contemporary digital space, traditional web design can sometimes start to show its age.
One reason is that with standard web design, you only do redesigns every couple of years. It also works strictly on a hypothesis when designing for a particular demographic.
This kind of guessing game and drawn-out redesign process can lead to more risks. In marketing, it may mean major mistakes made to a point where you're stuck with a design not fully translating what you need for a targeted approach.
On the other hand, growth-driven web design creates an end-product based on strategic research. Then things are continually tweaked over a year's time based on real data. This gives you a significant higher amount of control over not only the utility of your website to your business, but how much money you put toward it.
Merging Marketing with Design Using an Agile Process
If you've ever applied an agile marketing concept, you know how well it works in saving time and money. Through agile marketing, you do more efficient planning of your marketing campaign. Then you fix certain things while the campaign is underway based on metrics, rather than well after you’ve already sunken a lot of resources into guessing.
Growth-driven web design works much the same way. The point is to merge design with marketing in a way that helps you keep up with the changing preferences of your customers. In a fickler consumer market, sticking with the same web design for two years could mean a failed attempt at targeting the people you thought you understood.
Getting started with growth-driven web design is much easier on your budget as a result. Your first phase goes strictly on strategy, which can take some time before the design gets underway.
Honing Strategies and Customer Personas
You basically need to do an audit of your intended website to see what your demographic would want to see. Remember that growth-driven design can work just as well with a redesign of your current site and not just for sites built from scratch.
Look into the pain points of your prospective customers and learn what they'd want to see in your site design. Do they want a lot of information about a product before they buy? Do they need an easy way to communicate with you? Are they looking for a service to make their lives or their jobs easier? Overall, you'll want to know why users would come to your site, the value they receive, plus what devices they use for access.
Creating customer personas is a great way to get started with this design concept so you know exactly what things you'll add.
Your Launchpad Site and Beyond
For those with limited budgets, growth-driven design is a convenience because it requires less money and can get done in quick bursts. Experts call this a launchpad site, where you get your initial strategic ideas out there as soon as possible and then improve things over time.
When redesigning, creating a launchpad site is a good bet since it can implement your inbound marketing strategies immediately. Using continuous improvement cycles afterward, you can keep your website refreshed with new ideas to appease the changing tastes of your customers.
