In the online age, your website essentially acts as your business card, your opportunity to present your business to the public. For almost all businesses nowadays, the first place your clients will find you is by through your website, which gives them all of the information they need about your business. In the not so recent past, an appealing web page was considered to be optional. However, today’s business climate mandates that businesses have a website that is attractive, functional and 100% up-to-date.
These days, growth-driven web design (GDD) is proving to be an increasingly popular option over more traditional approaches to web design. GDD is a more practical option for web design allowing businesses to have a website that can easily be modified to adapt to changing needs. Ultimately, GDD promises web designers and businesses a cost-effective, efficient way to build their website and maintain them to ensure that they keep up with popular trends, changes in the market and best practices.
Continue reading to learn more about GDD and what you need to know to implement this model for your business.
What Is GDD Exactly?
GDD is a method of building and maintaining websites, which allows them to be fluid as the demands for business change. Through adopting a GDD website, businesses elect to modify the website on a continuous basis, as opposed to being overhauled every few years when the company needs to adapt to changing business interests, trends and developments in the marketplace. And, because the process of building a growth-driven website requires consistent updates, the risk of designing a website that does not produce results is reduced as both design elements and functionality can be fine-tuned as the site is developed.
What’s Involved In Implementing A Growth-Driven Design?
The model is broken up into three main stages. First of all, a strategy is put in place by analysing your current website and how your current visitors interact with your site. Armed with this information, you can set realistic goals and prioritise which areas of your website need to be developed first and where the web designers energies should be put.
Once you have a game plan in place, development can start and your website will begin to take shape. Unlike a traditional design process, where your website will not be launched until it is complete, the growth-driven approach means your website is always evolving and therefore never considered to be fully complete. In the second stage, a ‘launchpad is built’ which, to the user, is a fully operational website but for the business owner, this is just the beginning. The ‘launchpad’ acts as the foundation for your website to grow and evolve from.
The third stage in implementing a growth-driven design is continuous improvement. This is the stage your website will remain in for the rest of the time it exists online. Data about user interactions will be collected so that your designer can make improvements to your website in the right areas. With constant improvements, you can ensure that your site delivers the best possible user experience, is always ahead of the curve, up-to-date with the latest trends and gives you the best possible return on your investment.
What Are The Benefits Of Using The GDD Model?
Among its cost-effective benefits, the GDD model allows businesses to track customer behaviour and make modifications routinely, as opposed to waiting to completely change the site. This makes it much more efficient than traditional web design models because the site is routinely maintained and modified and changes are made incrementally. Also, the sites are generally created much quicker than traditional websites allowing you to get your website online quickly without compromising on quality.
For marketing and public relations purposes, there are a few other benefits as well. Through the design process, each decision is influenced through data analysis and test results that occur through several iterations. In addition, marketing and sales tactics are continuously revised to increase conversion rates by enhancing key elements on the site such as CTAs and Landing Pages.
GDD Essentials
In a business landscape that increasingly relies on the virtual terrain for business, designers and businesses, alike, are having to create ways to maximise their online presence in this global economy. One of the most cost-effective and efficient ways to do this is with a growth-driven website design. GDD allows businesses to easily modify their website on a routine basis to adapt to the needs of their changing client base and find new opportunities in the process. In a business world that is always changing, it’s crucial that you remain adaptable and GDD allows you to do just that.
