In the first part of our Minneapolis Web Design series we compared Growth-Driven Design (GDD) and the Traditional Web Design methodologies and why GDD is the future of the Minneapolis web design space. If you want to maximize your website's potential and turn your website into a lead generating machine then GDD is the right methodology for you.
In the second part of our Minneapolis Web Design series, we will overview Phase 1 of the GDD process. Please feel free to join the conversation by commenting on this blog post below or by subscribing to our blog at the bottom of the page.
growth-driven design process
phase 1: Strategy, wish list, launch pad website
strategy Stage
The GDD process is broken up into two major phases. Much like the traditional website design process, the first stage of GDD is the strategy stage. In this stage, we develop a rock solid foundation that we build our GDD process upon using the follow steps:
Goals: What are the performance goals that we are trying to achieve with our website? How have we historically performed, where would we like to improve and how will this impact the overall marketing department's goal?- Personas: A persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. You can create different groups of personas based on common characteristics your audience shares. This could be a point of pain, industry, job title, etc.
- Quantitative Research - Website & Analytics Audit: Perform a quantitative audit of how the existing website is performing, reviewing what is and what is not performing well, where users are dropping off, etc. This is where you identify where there is opportunity for improvements for your future web work.
- Qualitative Research - User Research: This step involves proactively reaching out to your existing users to learn more about them, gain a better understanding of who they are and find ways to improve.
- Fundamental Assumptions: Using what you've learned in all of the previous steps, you can now start forming some fundamental assumptions about your users. Fundamental assumptions will help you explain the behavior and motivations of your users.
- Global & Page Strategy: The last step in the strategy stage is to develop both a global strategy for the website as a whole and a specific page-by-page strategy for each major page on the site.
The strategy stage is essential to building a strong foundation for a website that is a lead generating machine. Although one key element of GDD is to shorten the time to launch, it is imperative to make sure that you spend enough time and complete each step in the strategy stage. If you don't spend enough time setting goals and learning more about your users, you will have more ground to make up in Phase 2.
your wish list
Taking what you have learned in the strategy stage of Phase 1, it is time to get your team together and brainstorm every impactful, creative and innovative idea that you'd like to include on your new website. Go into your brainstorming session with a "clean slate" and don't get hung up on the existing website. What items do you need on your list to achieve your goals? Answer this disregarding this issues of money, time , and development skill. Include brainstorming ideas such as:
- Design elements
- Key impactful website sections and pages
- Marketing assets, tools and resources
- Specific features, modules and functionality
- Changes in experience based on devices
Your wish list will be used to determine the initial action items to implement on the new site, but is also an agile and flexible list that you will continuously be adding to and subtracting from as you are re-prioritizing action items over time.
Launch Pad Website
In the traditional web design process we think of the launching of the website as the final stage. In GDD, it is the complete opposite. In this stage we will be building and launching what we call a "Launch Pad Website". This website is the starting point on which all of your other GDD activities and improvements start from.
The launch pad website should be launched quickly and will not be perfect. We want to avoid getting stuck on analysis, features or content while building our launch pad website. It may not be perfect when we launch it, but no website is. It will be a big improvement from your current website and give a starting point for which you can continuously improve from.
Conclusion
As you can see Growth-Driven Design is a systematic approach to web design that follows a specific set of processes that is a prototype with proven success and Phase 1 is just half of it. In the third installment of our Minneapolis Web Design series, we will focus on Phase 2 of the Growth-Driven Design process.
As always, thank for taking the time for reading this blog post! If you are looking for more information on GDD, check out our blog post "Minneapolis Web Design: Growth-Driven Design vs. Traditional Design" for an overview of both methodologies and why you should consider GDD for your next website redesign.
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