Why growth-driven website design is important to your brand
Sometimes, the status quo needs an update. Web design began with the internet itself, and while traditional design might prove effective for some...
3 min read
Mark Parent September 6, 2016 11:06:03 AM EDT
What is the single most significant advantage of adopting a growth-driven design (GDD) approach for your website? The answer is easy: You can play with it.
In other (more business-like) words, you can make continual adjustments so that your site is always fresh, engaging, and built for optimization.
This matters because your landing pages and website are the vehicles that drive business growth. Getting them right is the difference between success and failure for your business.
Keep your website up to date on any device by using a growth-driven design approach.
Unlike traditional web design, which is static and becomes outdated within a few years, GDD is dynamic. The GDD process allows you to continuously adapt as you apply lessons learned from website analytics and customer interactions on your site.
To illustrate the importance of keeping your website up to date, Hubspot's "16 Reasons Why People Leave Your Website" relates the results of a study that tested the perceived trustworthiness of a site based on its design. The article states:
"In the study, psychologist and researcher, Dr. Elizabeth Sillence, asked participants to review websites on the subject of hypertension and then rate whether they trusted or distrusted the website. In a surprising turn of events, the study found that 94 percent of wary respondents attributed their uneasiness to the website's design."
The lesson is clear. Web visitors are turned off by outdated designs. Their perception of the trustworthiness of your site can be elevated or diminished according to the freshness of your design.
>> Learn about setting up your own growth-driven design plan: Get your free copy of our Growth-Driven Design Playbook.
Once you embrace the growth-driven design model, what are some specific applications of GDD you can use to build your site? Here are a few to consider:
GDD allows you to easily design a new homepage banner for your site and test its effectiveness against the homepage banner you are currently using. Then, you can make adjustments to the banners as needed as time goes on.
Would you like the feedback of users of your website or perhaps feedback from an anonymous panel about various features of your current web design? GDD enables usability testing, so that information is right at your fingertips.
GDD enables you to map which devices your web visitors are using to interact with your site. This is vital information, as it lets you know where you need to focus your efforts in terms of maximizing the responsiveness of your website for mobile devices or desktops.
Heat map analysis enables you to uncover where people are clicking on your site to determine which elements are converting and which are not. You can use heat map analysis to figure out the best location on your site for CTA buttons, navigation menus, and other content.
As a marketer, you know that personalized content leads to increased conversions. GDD allows you to more intimately personalize your content to your target audience. CMI's "Content Marketing Personalization: When and How to Use It" gives the following advice about personalization:
"When distributing content to your audience, send snippets of content with links to further details. Use your marketing automation tool to monitor what your audience is interested in and personalize further communication based on this. You also can track if your subscribers visit your website and what pages they visit. Then you can automatically trigger personalized emails based on pages they have visited."
Because GDD captures information about how your web visitors use your pages, it can inform your future navigation menu choices. You can simplify or re-arrange your navigation menus to more closely align with what your visitors are actually trying to do when they reach your site.
GDD enables you to quickly use the results of A/B testing to improve your website design features.
With GDD, you can easily run tests on the various features of your site in order to increase conversions. For instance, you can test your landing pages, your blog content, and your CTAs to see where improvement is needed. As Hubspot's "A/B Testing in Action: 3 Real-Life Marketing Experiments" notes:
"Conducting A/B tests of your marketing initiatives is a great way to learn how to drive more traffic to your website and generate more leads from the visits you're getting."
Even better, with GDD, you can implement changes quickly based on the results of your A/B testing, continuously making improvements and optimizing each feature of your site for conversion.
Growth-driven design is exactly as it sounds. It is an agile approach to web design which enables you to keep your site fresh, engaging, and relevant to your target audience on a continual basis. To get more information about how GDD helps you make the most of your website, download our Growth-Driven Design Playbook today.
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