The Days of Just Needing a Website Are Over

Remember the good old days of Internet commerce?

If you owned a website for your business, you automatically found yourself ahead of the curve. People discovered your website easily because it had so little competition online.

That meant rapidly climbing profits with minimal effort on your marketing team's part.

Times have changed.

Simply having a website doesn't elevate your business to superior status anymore.

Even if your site looks great and has all the necessary components, it might never produce a single dollar of value. Why? Because now you need a data-driven website that actually works for you to generate revenue.

To compete in today's market, you have to shine a light under your website's hood and start optimizing it for continuous growth.

Good Looks Don't Cut It Anymore

Data and analytics are the horsepower and torque of the website world. 

Imagine that you're planning to buy a new vehicle. Maybe you want a muscle car, or perhaps you're more interested in the sporty variety. Whatever the case, you want the vehicle to make an impression when you pull into the parking lot at work or when you pass other motorists on the highway. You're hoping to attract attention.

But what do you do when you press the accelerator on your new car and nothing happens?

It looked great on the showroom floor, but you find out later that its engine leaves something to be desired. Now you're stuck with a car that fails to deliver on its promise when you hit the open road.

That's the problem you'll face with a lackluster website.

No matter how many shiny icons or beautiful background images you decorate it with, the site won't help you achieve your goals unless it has muscle under the hood.

Think of data and analytics as the horsepower and torque of the website world.

The Hub senior editor Omar Akhtar shares an infographic that demonstrates why data has become integral to one specific aspect of web design: loading speed.

According to the infographic, 40 percent of web users will abandon a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. If you don't know how quickly your website loads on various devices, you could lose potential customers without them ever seeing your content.

Additionally, businesses see a 150 percent increase in bounce rates on a page that takes eight seconds or longer to load. Prospects bounce away from the content because they're frustrated by the wait time, which causes you to lose the sale.

Just as consumers like fast cars that respond instantly to the slightest pressure on the gas pedal, they expect lightning-fast websites that don't force them to tap the screen in irritation.

This is just the beginning when it comes to web design and analytics. Data can inform you of errors, introduce you to new opportunities, and change the way you approach design entirely.

If you think your website might lack speed or other important quality components, it's time to look beyond its appearance. Slick graphics and even quality copy won't yield the results you need to compete.

Instead, you need data to back up your decisions about design and functionality, especially if you've experienced poor conversion rates, high bounce rates, or dwindling sales.

Data-Driven Design: The Key to Fast and Efficient Websites

Data provides the fuel that powers online commerce. 

When you shop for a car, your eye drifts almost automatically to the fact sheet plastered to the passenger-side window. Your gaze drifts over the EPA estimates, the amount of horsepower, the safety ratings — and, of course, the price. Consumers have become obsessed with data because it's so readily available.

If you want your website to perform effectively as a marketing machine, you have to turn that innate curiosity toward your site. What information can you extract from user behavior records and other data points to inform your future design choices?

For instance, A/B testing allows you to test a very specific component of your website, such as a landing page, a call-to-action (CTA), or a web form. You push both components live and drive traffic to each, then compare engagement, conversion rates, and other data points related specifically to that component.

From there, you can break down the testing even further.

Perhaps a CTA works well on one landing page, but not another. The more granular you get, the more powerful your website becomes.

You can also solicit traffic from different external sites and funnel them to separate pages on your own website.

You could send social media traffic to one page and advertising traffic to another. This allows you to compare different promotional tools, but you're collecting your own data through the website.

Over time, that data will influence your design, copywriting, advertising, and even product copy decisions.

Each element of your website relates to the others, but you must break down the different components to understand how they work together.

But how do you create a solid foundation for data-driven design? You need a website that can collect data as well as software that can analyze the information you amass. Finally, you must know how to interpret the data so you can apply it to your decision-making process.

If you don't have the tools and structure in-house, you can partner with a digital marketing agency that specializes in data-driven design. Instead of making guesses about your website's layout, navigation, and other features, you gain a powerful partner who can help guide your decisions and provide you with insightful information about the industry and your audience's expectations.

Businesses rely on copious amounts of data to create effective websites, but it doesn't always start with the site itself. How well do you know your target consumer?

Have you created buyer personas for the different types of prospects who might express interest in your products or services? Are you prepared to handle a sudden influx of consumer interest?

This information allows you to design a data-driven website that takes into consideration your specific market.

If your target audience changes, your site needs to evolve with it. Otherwise, you'll drive prospects away instead of attracting them like a magnet.

Automation Has Become Key to Web Design Success

Ditch the heavy lifting. Data-driven design takes over some of the leg work. 

Have you ever tried to push a stalled car out of a busy roadway?

Even if you manage to accomplish the task, you're left sweaty, irritable, and sore. We depend on cars to get us from point A to point B with minimal exertion, but a car with a blown engine can't accommodate that need.

Your website should get your customers from point A (their first point of contact with your business) to point B (the check-out process) with minimal effort, too. Unless you've implemented automation tools and software on your website, that heavy lifting will fall to you and your staff, instead.

Think of all the ways in which automation has simplified our daily lives.

Your vehicle probably has an automatic transmission. You don't have to shift gears manually; the car handles it for you.

Recently, automation has become even more integral to automotive manufacturing. Advanced features like lane-departure warning systems, back-up cameras that sound hazard alerts, tire pressure monitoring functionality, and adaptive cruise control all take some of the heavy lifting out of your morning commute. Automakers are now even working on ways to make self-driving cars a large-scale reality, which would fully embrace automation for the good of drivers.

Your website needs automation to function at its highest level, as well.

You can use scripts embedded in your website's code to automatically send a welcome email to a prospect who signs up for your mailing list. Another snippet of code might score your leads, reach out to consumers who abandon their online shopping carts, or retarget advertising to specific prospects.

Without automation, you would either have to perform each of these tasks manually or neglect them altogether. Both alternatives leave money on the table and waste valuable resources.

Websites Must Keep Growing

In traditional web design, experts recommend completing an entire redesign every one-and-a-half to two years. That means stripping down your website completely and rebuilding it from the ground up. If you've ever suffered through a complete redesign, you know that it's like tearing your house down to the studs and rebuilding it on a new foundation. It's a long, time-consuming, expensive, and crazy-making process.

Plus, by the time you redesign your website, the industry standards have changed so much that your existing design has already become obsolete. You're missing out on key opportunities to convert prospects and close sales.

That's why growth-driven and data-driven design have fundamentally changed the way savvy business owners and marketers approach web design. They understand that websites need to continually grow and evolve if they're to remain relevant.

With this approach to web design, you drop the one-and-done mentality. Your designer creates a bare-bones starting point and pushes it live. No unnecessary down time or other frustrations. Then, as prospects use your site, you collect data to inform changes to the site.

Making the Most of Your Website

Do you have the need for speed? Without data-driven design, you're
going nowhere fast. With it, you're flying down the highway. 

Like a beautifully built car, an effective website is more than the sum of its parts. Each component works with the others seamlessly to create an elegant user experience (UX) that surprises, delights, and engages your audience.

As already mentioned, data-driven design doesn't start with a fully fleshed-out website. Instead, we create a launch pad design that will jump-start data collection and allows us to fine-tune every last line of code.

There's no end game with this approach to design because it's constantly changing in response to user behavior.

After months of testing, we might find that your prospects react negatively to one of your landing pages. Perhaps the wording is off or the graphics don't endear themselves to your buyer persona. However, we would never have known without the constant testing mentioned above.

This approach also allows you to respond immediately to changes in the economy, your target market, the technological landscape, or the industry as a whole. If a new technology comes out and your competitor has capitalized on it, you can adjust your messaging to take full advantage of your USP (unique selling proposition) so you don't lose valuable customers to the competition.

It can have a tremendous impact on customer retention, regardless of economic climate or industry changes. Nurturing customers long after they hit the "buy" button can ensure consistent revenue for years to come

By targeting buyers who might need your products or services again down the road, you're increasing customer lifetime value (CLV) without substantially increasing your investment.

Yes, aesthetic appeal matters. You don't want to send away prospective customers because of garish colors or unappealing graphics. However, you must combine attractive design with efficient programming under the hood.

Partnering With a Professional

Data-driven design is simply explained, but it's wildly complex in execution. You need the talent on your team to leverage the tools as well as the software, hardware, and design know-how to pull off the finished product. Then you must monitor your site's performance, analyze the data, and implement data-driven changes.

Hiring a full-scale design team for your business rarely proves cost-effective. A better solution lies in a digital marketing agency. You gain all the expertise, experience, and resources of a professional firm without having to manage all these issues in-house.

We understand that it's sometimes difficult to switch gears and embrace a new approach to marketing and web design. To gain a better understanding of our methodology and to visualize how these innovative strategies can turn your website into a massive marketing machine, download our Growth-Driven Design Playbook. It's packed with useful data and information to help you make an informed choice about your web design needs.

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