When I say, “website redesign,” you probably don’t jump up and down with sheer joy. Over the years, website redesigns have gotten a reputation of being slow, arduous, expensive, resource intensive projects that ultimately have caused some pretty strong feelings.
I remember talking to one CEO that said, “you can do marketing for us, just don’t redesign our website.” For him, the process was so painful that it absolutely was a deal breaker.
You may feel the same way. One-third of marketers were not satisfied with their last website redesign, and only 49% of website redesign projects finish and launch on time (source: HubSpot’s “The Science of Website Redesign”). And because companies redesign their websites every 2-3 years, it's no wonder marketers and execs alike have strong feelings.
So why in the world would you get excited by a website redesign if you weren’t happy with your last one? Or if it took so much longer than you thought to complete it?
Enter “Growth Driven Design,” an approach that takes half the time, is data driven, and cost effective.
What is Growth Driven Design?
Growth Driven Design is an approach to website redesign that…
- Takes the guesswork out of the design process
- Offers continual improvement of the website
- Gets the website up in half the time of a traditional website redesign
- Requires less of your team’s time
Here’s how it works.
Rather than redesigning your website all at once (we call that the “big bang” approach), imagine an incremental approach that allows you to bite off just as much as you can chew.
Based on the idea of iterative website design, Growth Driven Design enables regular improvements to your website help to improve the performance of the website month after month, helping you to get more visitors, more leads and more sales ready opportunities.
In practical terms, imagine changing the “look” of your website in just a few weeks, then working to replace stale content on the website with up-to-date marketing and sales messages. Imagine adding features one or two at a time, where you can think them through much more clearly. Imagine adding, testing and optimizing new features on pages that help educate customers. Imagine knowing exactly what should go on your homepage and other pages to get the most sales opportunities.
Benefits of Growth Driven Design
1. Launch your new website in just 8 weeks.
Most enterprise website redesigns take 3-4 months to re-launch, and that’s if everything goes to plan and there are no delays. Because a traditional website redesign is an “all hands on deck” exercise for your marketing person or team (and can add responsibilities for other people at your company, too), shortening the duration and shrinking the scope is easier on your staff.
So what gets changed in the first 8 weeks? The first step is customer research and a thorough website audit to identify potential areas of improvement. Next, the homepage gets a complete overhaul, as does the graphic design of the entire website. You’ll also get the benefits of a responsive website, content management system and robust web analytics.
2. Get continual, data driven improvement beyond the launch date.
Almost 4 in 10 companies that have done a website redesign in the last 18 months did not measure any metrics. So how do they know the website performing as well as it could?
The best website designers in the world occasionally make incorrect assumptions about how a company’s target audience will use a website. Growth Driven Design removes the guesswork because you’re constantly measuring, making a hypothesis, making a change and testing the impact on your business.
After the first 8 weeks of the project, the idea is to revisit services pages, about pages, industry pages, case studies, your blog and more and re-write, test, refine and improve them one or two at a time. This scientific approach will maximize the lead flow on your website.
3. Makes your website a powerful sales asset.
Because there’s a focus on measuring metrics that generate real business results, the Growth Driven design approach moves your website from brochure to powerful sales engine. Google values fresh content, and adding new content and features to your website every month helps keep the website fresh for Google and useful for your prospective customers.
As pages are changed and new things are added, they are tested to see how people use them. Things that customers don’t find valuable are pruned and information and features that customers want take their place. Adding new conversion opportunities means more leads and sales opportunities for your business.
4. Break the cost of a website redesign into budget friendly, manageable chunks.
A traditional corporate website redesign will cost from $15,000 - $100,000, and that comes out of your budget in 3-4 months’ time. That can be tough on your company from a cash flow perspective.
A Growth Driven Design is typically between $2,500 - $5,000 per month, and is much easier to budget for. Because the monthly fee is all-inclusive, it includes hosting, updates, backups, maintenance, and of course adding new features over time.
5. It’s a perfect fit with inbound marketing.
Pair Growth Driven Design and inbound marketing together and you’ve got a formula for success. This type of web design plus inbound marketing means you’ll be attracting more visitors to a website that is increasingly more adept converting visitors to leads. Your cost per lead drops over time because your website will be increasingly more efficient at getting visitors to become leads.
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If your company is budgeting for a website redesign, you should look at the potential that a Growth Driven Design could have. If your company would like to make your company website a true sales engine that attracts and converts new customers, this approach is uniquely set up to do just that.
