Everyone knows that a business needs a website, right? After all, it is the 21st century. For so many businesses, it’s a box they check off. They go to Weebly, Wix, or another DIY service, throw something together, and call it a day. As long as they have something online, they don’t think they need anything else. Sadly, this approach is all too common. When business owners adopt this method, they miss a huge opportunity. If more of them realized the benefits of growth driven website design, they’d see their websites as important tools to advance their goals.

The Goal Based Approach

Most websites serve as an online brochure, of sorts. You can visit them, learn a little bit about an organization, and possibly submit a contact form. But does that kind of site really advance your goals? At GuppyFish Web Design, we have a different approach. Your website never goes to sleep, gets sick, or takes a vacation, so it should be your most valuable employee. Since we’ve always built websites with that in mind, the concept of growth driven website design seemed like a natural fit.

According to the website on the subject, the traditional way of designing (or redesigning) a website is broken. Businesses undertake a huge design project, work forever to get it ready, launch it, then leave it unattended for years until they realize they need to do it again. To be honest, they usually don’t even know whether that website really helps their business.

The Growth Driven Website Design Process

The growth driven design process has three steps: Strategy, Launch Pad, and Continuous Improvement. Let’s take a look at each one.

Strategy

During the strategy stage, everyone involved in the project meets to discuss the organization’s goals. What do you want to accomplish? More subscribers? More software trials? Do you want those trials to become paying customers? Clearly define those goals, because they will drive everything you do toward the website’s design. What will drive your customers to complete the desired task(s)?

Launch Pad

The launch pad stage is one of the main processes that sets growth driven website design apart from the traditional method. Whereas a normal site can take many weeks to launch, growth driven design actually has you launch an unfinished product. The launch pad website is one that’s better than the current site but is not the final product. You get this up as quickly as possible, and then you add to it as you have other parts completed.

Continuous Improvement

This is my favorite. I’ve always said that you should never consider your website a finished product, and this goes hand in hand with that concept. During the continuous improvement stage, you gather data from your launch pad site and adjust accordingly. Which pages have the most traffic? Are people doing what you wanted them to? Use analytics and data to drive your improvements. Sometimes, even moving a button or call to action can change those metrics. Instead of leaving a website sitting and wondering why it doesn’t perform, continuous improvement uses goals and data to drive website improvements.

Benefits of Growth Driven Website Design

What makes this method of creating websites better than the traditional way? There are so many reasons, but let’s focus on a few:

1. Faster results – Instead of the months it takes to launch a new website when you tackle the entire project at once, growth driven design allows you to have something up and running within a few weeks.
2. SEO – With this method of web design, you regularly add content. Google loves this!! When it sees fresh content, it will index your site more frequently, kind of like when you blog.
3. Measurable results – With growth driven website design, you use data to drive design decisions. Instead of parking a website and forgetting it, you analyze specific metrics to see the effectiveness of your site.

Growth Driven Design and GuppyFish

With the GuppyFish approach of using a website to directly advance goals, this methodology already went hand in hand with what we do. To that end, I went ahead and got certified in it! If you’d like to learn more, we should talk. Otherwise, keep swimming along!