You don’t need a website redesign, you need this instead

I’m not sure I should be telling you this but I’m going to. It’s an important snippet that explains where we’re at in our business and where we’re heading.

Towards the end of 2016 I was ready to ditch the web design part of our business.

Why?

I was finding it incredibly frustrating.

For as long as websites have been a thing business websites have been treated as static brochures. However, launching a website is the beginning. It’s once a new website has gone live that the hard work should begin.

Are you giving your website the respect it deserves?

A website has the potential to be the biggest marketing asset for any business yet I see this fact being overlooked time and again. I was feeling frustrated by this but we didn’t have the right internal process in place to properly address the transition from website to online marketing management with our clients.

Web design clients were baulking at online marketing services and clients who wanted online marketing were often unwilling to address deficits with their websites.

On top of that, several times a week I pulled up next to a sandwich board offering websites for 10% of our entry level price. It made me want to poke myself in the eye with a stick, or take to the sandwich board with a baseball bat. A cheap, poorly executed website is a waste of cash. There’s so much a client never sees that goes into one of our web builds.

Take SEO for example. Two of our largest clients from late last year are ranking on page one for numerous, relevant, regularly searched terms in their industries. That hasn’t taken any additional SEO work over and above the stuff we did as standard in their build. You don’t get that with a cheap website build. Search engine visibility is what they’ll turn around and charge you for to make up the difference.

I was ready to chuck in the towel on Web Design in favour of only offering digital marketing services. I was sick of competing with the bullshit and industry noise.

Thankfully, a trusted advisor introduced me to the concept of Growth Driven Design.

We’ve picked up that ball and run with it.

We’ve developed a build process that isn’t going to leave our clients frustrated in 2-3 years’ time because they need a website redesign. The need for a redesign has nothing to do with us (or any other web design agency). Reality is, how people navigate the digital space is rapidly changing and static, project based web design isn’t the best solution for businesses.

Growth Driven Design isn’t for everyone.

If you’re happy tootling along where you’re at, don’t plan on ever selling your business and your current lead generation strategies are working just fine then this isn’t for you. If I’m 100% honest I question the need for a business like that to maintain a website at all. Websites date quickly and a dated site paints your business in a worse light than having none at all.

This process is for businesses who are:

• Focused on achieving great, big, balls-to-the-wall, business growth…with the added bonus of measurable control.
• Paying for leads from other sources and would like to replace that spend and generate their own leads.
• Forward planning an exit strategy where a proven, relationship independent lead generation system makes the business more valuable.

This begs the question…

What is Growth Driven Design?

Growth driven design is a smart, agile and data driven approach to website design. It minimises the risks associated with traditional website design process. Rather than building out one, single website we work in an iterative way to achieve the best possible outcomes for our clients, over time.

The traditional web design process relies on assumptions and industry best practices that are current at the time of building. These assumptions are rarely tested and validated after the site has been launched. In turn this means areas of the website, which don’t perform as intended, are never revisited.

When a website is launched it won’t perform at its peak.

Less than peak performance of a website post launch is not anybody’s fault (unless it was a shitty build in the first place). The problem lies with all the decisions that have been made along the way. Little decisions about what we think will perform well based on things we know from previous experience.

Growth driven design allows us to test these assumptions over time and implement continuous improvement. GDD has cles links to your marketing and sales processes so it doesn’t work in isolation from them. Instead it takes knowledge from these areas to better inform website design and, in turn, feeds learnings from website user analysis back to sales and marketing.

How does Growth Driven Design work?

Even before we were introduced to Growth Driven Design he first conversation we had with a client was about their business goals. The first conversations in the GDD process are the same, we start by gaining an understanding of:

• Business goals
• Ideal clients for the business
• Buyer journey from awareness through consideration to decision making phase

From this we develop a website strategy and work with the client to create a wish list of all their desired website elements. The wish list includes big ticket items like home, about and work with us pages right down to individual elements, features and functions.

You’ve heard of the 80/20 rule and website design is no exception. 20% of your wishlist will have 80% of the impact so for starters we identify and build those parts of the website. This Launchpad website will look and perform better than what you’ve got already but we’ll continue to work and improve on it once it’s gone live.

Working like this cuts down on initial development cost and spreads your cost (and risk). It also enables us to start tracking website performance and implementing continuous improvement processes as quickly as possible.

How does the continuous improvement phase work?

Once your new website is live we embark on the website continuous improvement process. At the same time we continue to add and evaluate remaining wish list items based on expected impact.

There are eight defined website elements that are assessed on an ongoing basis. We focus on one at a time by first evaluating current performance then brainstorming possible improvements. For each cycle of continuous improvement, the action items expected to have the greatest impact are implemented and assessed.

Having addressed one of the eight areas we then move on to the next and then the next. Cycling through all eight areas in an ongoing cycle of continuous improvement.

Two years down the track you’ll have a high performing website that’s closely aligned with your business goals. Far better than an outdated place on the internet that doesn’t truly reflect your business.

Starting your website over, from scratch with a big, lump sum investment every 2-3 years becomes a thing of the past. Instead you’ll have a marketing tool that delivers leads consistently and reduces your sales cycle times.

What next?

If this has piqued your interest then get in contact and lets have a chat about how a growth driven website redesign could help you grow your business.