Growth-driven design, also known as GDD, can help streamline the process of launching a brand new website or even finalizing a redesign without the hassle. If user experience is a top priority for you when it comes to the development of your website, application, or piece of software, understanding how growth-driven design improves UX can help you to find a solution that is just right for your next project.
What is Growth-Driven Design?
Growth-driven design, or GDD, is the process of developing a design or a user experience over time using incoming data that is received in real-time. GDD implements a solid strategy from the beginning, including:
- Strategy: Without a working strategy in place, using growth-driven design is moot. You will first need to strategize which audiences you intend to reach, what goals and objectives you have in mind, as well as any current or existing user research that is accessible and available. The strategy of GDD can also help with creating fundamental assumptions about the users you intend to target and reach with your website and/or online presence.
- Developing a Launchpad Website: Another major element involved in GDD is the ability to create a launchpad website or application before launching your website live to the world. A launchpad website is essentially a mock website that can be accessed, edited, and updated without impacting the final design and published site that is available live.
- Learning: Testing and collecting data using a launchpad website can help provide valuable insights into the needs of a website or live page before the final version is uploaded and published.
- Reevaluation: With an ongoing process such as growth-driven design, you no longer need to wait months or hire an entirely different development company whenever you want to see changes. Ongoing GDD is useful for those who want to consistently reevaluate the wants and needs of their website or application's users while also maintaining the highest web standards today.
Advantages of GDD
Choosing the route of growth-driven design can feel intimidating if you are new to the process or unfamiliar with how GDD works. However, once you understand some of the most notable advantages of growth-driven design, you can get started while maintaining your peace of mind.
Optimization
If optimization of your website and online presence matters to you, consider growth-driven design solutions. By using a live launchpad website, keep track of popular pages, potential issues, hangups, and slow-loading images to make changes and improvements to your site in real time. Using a launchpad website with GDD can significantly improve the overall optimization of your website in a much shorter timeframe than when working with traditional website developers.
Increased Speed
At times, building a website can feel tedious, especially if your website is extremely slow-loading or laggy. If a visitor is unable to load and view your website's content within a few seconds (sometimes even less time), they are much more likely to look elsewhere for the information or resources they are seeking.
With growth-driven design, developers and designers collaborate in real-time to help replace and optimize lagging graphics, imagery, and pages. GDD experts will also work to implement a working CMS, or content management system to help with increasing the loading speed of your website while optimizing your website's pages.
Note: A website that loads faster is much likelier to have a lower bounce rate. A website's bounce rate is the percentage of users who leave a website immediately after visiting the homepage or landing page they were sent to on the site.
Functionality
If you want to keep your website live and available to the public but you also want to implement continuous updates, you can do so easily with growth-driven design solutions. With GDD, you can take advantage of standard launchpad websites that are visible to online visitors, but can also be updated with edits and improvements within minutes whenever needed.
How Growth-Driven Design Improves UX
Before getting started with growth-driven design, it is important to understand just how GDD helps to improve UX and, ultimately, can drive more customers and revenue to any website or application.
Tending to the Needs of a Specific Audience
When you are first getting started with growth-driven design, you will likely notice the push to learn more about the audience you intend to reach as well as any specific demographics you want to target. Using GDD is one of the best ways to hone in on a particular audience or segmented group of users, especially over time. With growth-driven design, you can use proven tricks, edits, and hacks to help attract the userbase you are interested in reaching, which can result in a larger following, more sales, and ultimately, more opportunities for revenue generation.
Implementing a Strategy Ahead of Time
Setting goals, reviewing timelines, and using a launchpad website are all tools that can help with developing a winning strategy for your website or online application. With growth-driven design, take advantage of the opportunity to implement a strategy before you get started with the design of your project or launchpad site. Identifying actionable items, targeting a specific audience, and defining both short and long-term goals can help when you are just getting started with GDD.
Using a Launchpad Website
Have you ever worked with a design or development company for your website only to require additional improvements, tweaks, and edits? Oftentimes, this can take days, weeks, or even months, leaving your website appearing unprofessional or, in the worst-case scenario, even inaccessible at times. Choosing GDD, or growth-driven design, is a solution that is highly advisable for those who prefer to build and use test websites, or launchpad websites, before going live with their official new redesign or online project.
A launchpad website can be used as a testing site for developers and designers, but it can also work as a fully-functional website for end-users as well, depending on your own project goals and preferences. Launchpad websites provide user tracking and can help developers to learn more about what improvements are needed in real-time, rather than waiting for weeks or months for standard analytics and data.
Ongoing Improvements
With GDD, you never need to worry about your website appearing stale or outdated, especially with ongoing updates and improvements. One of the main facets of growth-driven design is the ability to develop working strategies on the go while developing a website and learning throughout the process. Once your growth-driven design launchpad website is live, developers and designers can then use the launchpad website to identify and pinpoint problem areas or areas that require attention immediately. This helps with continuous updating and minimizing user-end issues, even while a launchpad website is in use.
Some of the areas that are heavily focused on when it comes to ongoing developments with GDD include:
- Boosting the overall conversion rate of a website or an online brand
- Cultivating useful marketing assets
- Customization of a website or application for specific audiences
- Improving the overall user experience
Over time, developers review changes and updates to determine which area(s) of a website requires more improvements and which improvements result in the best outcomes, such as sales or new customers. Once this data is collected and organized, it is then shared with stakeholders to continue to make decisions for the website's future.
Understanding how growth-driven design can improve UX is essential when you want to expand your online reach or optimize your brand online, regardless of the platforms you choose to use. With GDD, ongoing and continuous efforts can help you to maintain a professional online presence while still tending to the wants, needs, and demands of your target audience.
Not sure where to start with growth-driven design? Check out our free website grader to see where your website stacks up with your competition.
Leave A Comment