The traditional web design process is broken in many ways. First and foremost, it’s very risky as there’s an upfront cost and the project usually takes a long time. Secondly, the traditional web design process often fails to produce optimal results because it doesn’t allow for change, adjustment or reaction.
Introduced by HubSpot, Growth-Driven Design is a streamlined process that not only produces better results, but also helps your business to grow. To sum up, “Growth-Driven Design” is a smarter way to design websites because it:
Growth-Driven Design methodology can transform the business in three phases:
Let’s take a look at the three phases one by one.
In the strategy phase, we aim to gain an empathetic understanding of our users and learn how to best fit the website into their lives. We conduct user research and formalise a journey map to take a look at where the user goes and what his or her life looks like before, during, and after interaction with the website. To guide your understanding, you may start by asking questions like “What challenges are your audience facing?”, “What are their goals?”, “Who are they? And where does the website weave in as a part of that?”
There are six steps to develop a Growth-Driven Design strategy:
Once we have a strong wish list from the strategy phase, we move onto the second phase of the Growth-Driven Design Methodology - the launch pad website. The launch pad website is a site that is built with the core value-driving elements. The goal is to launch a site quickly so we can make more informed decisions based on real user data and ensure it has a quicker impact on the business.
There are three guidelines for building a launch pad website:
In traditional web design, site launching is the end of the process. For Growth-Driven Design, the launch pad is actually just the beginning. We launch something quickly and then it's the starting point for all of our continuous improvement efforts. There are two connected parts to the continuous improvement phase. The first is the continuous improvement cycle and the second is the website hierarchy.
The continuous improvement cycle involves the plan, build, learn, and transfer steps. This is the step-by-step process your team follows while at each step of the website hierarchy.
The goal of the website hierarchy is to help give a road map to follow while building an optimum performing website. The steps of the website hierarchy include audience, value, usability, conversion rate optimisation, stickiness, personalisation, assets, and promoters.
To recap, unlike the traditional web design process, Growth-Driven Design is a holistic system that builds on a deep understanding of the users and continuously improves based on real-time feedback and actual user data. Because of this, Growth-Driven Design allows us to put ourselves in the shoes of our prospects and ensure the growth of the business.