Growth-driven design: Choosing a mobile strategy for better data

When you know your business needs an updated website, you have a myriad of decisions to make.

As Internet users increasingly turn to smartphones and other mobile devices for their browsing needs, you need to decide how you can best serve mobile visitors.

Responsive design and mobile optimized websites offer two potential solutions. But, how do you choose between them so you're sure to receive accurate, comprehensive data about your site's visitors?

When selecting an approach to redesign your website, the growth-driven design process offers the most agile, effective strategy for your site, and allows you to build a site that adapts to the needs of mobile users.

For more insight into growth-driven design, be sure to check out our blog article "Growth-driven design or traditional design? What’s the difference?"

Now, let's take a look at the topics you should consider when choosing a website development strategy:

What does your current data show?

Does your data show that more and more of your visitors are coming from mobile sources? Then you might want to adopt a mobile-first approach to your website redesign.

Start by having a look at your website's metrics. If you use Google Analytics or a similar program to track website visitors, you already have this data at your fingertips.

The latest statistics suggest that when people in the United States consume media, they use their mobile devices 51 percent of the time. In other words, mobile is surpassing desktop and laptop computers as the go-to device for accessing the Internet.

If your data reflects this growing trend, you might want to adopt a mobile-first mindset when it comes to growth-driven design. In other words, you want your designer to optimize every facet of your site's operation for mobile users. This could mean using fewer graphic elements to speed up page load times, for instance, since mobile devices aren't as fast. This might necessitate a mobile-optimized design strategy for your website.

How highly do you value consistency?

A responsive website retains its design no matter how it's viewed. 

Growth-driven design is all about improving the user experience and using data to inform its progression. If you value consistency -- or, more importantly, if your prospects value it -- you might want to consider responsive web design instead. It's the most consistent strategy because it uses the same design no matter what devices your prospects use.

If you use a mobile-optimized site and a different site for users on larger screens, you'll not only have two separate designs, but also two sets of data. Reconciling those variables can prove tricky when you're trying to better understand your audience and its needs.

What are your KPIs?

Deciding how to proceed with growth-driven design should boil down to your KPIs (key performance indicators). Your design strategy will directly impact those indicators.

For instance, a recent case study covering MTV web properties demonstrates that switching to responsive web design made a massive impact on several KPIs. The media giant reported 92 percent more mobile visits after the redesign. Even more impressively, page views increased by 55 percent for each visit, and session time (the amount of time each person spent on the site) increased by nearly 300 percent.

If you're hoping to attract more mobile visitors and keep those visitors on your website longer, a responsive web design created with a growth-driven strategy likely represents the best choice. Not only can you achieve those goals, but you'll have consistent, valuable data to help you improve your design further.

To learn how growth-driven and responsive design work together to help you achieve your marketing goals, get your free copy of our Growth-Driven Design Playbook. 

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