Growth-Driven Design: A Smarter Way To Build A Website That Wows

How often do you make impactful changes to your website? If you’re like most businesses, your website gets updated once every couple of years—maybe. That used to be the norm - build it, set it, and forget it. The purpose of a website was to be a repository of information, a replacement for the brochure or collateral of ye olden days. The problem is, times, technology, and your audience have changed. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. 

This is both a blessing and a curse for small businesses. On one hand, leveraging digital tools and technology helps the Davids compete with the Goliaths of your industry with nimble and cost effective strategies. But on the other hand, small businesses don’t generally have a full team of developers, strategists, designers, copywriters, and experts to be able to keep up with the fast changing landscape of the digital marketplace that allows you to compete with the big budgets of bigger businesses.

The “set it and forget it” mindset positions you as a relic when your prospects knock on your digital door.

Not only is your website (and everything you do!) a preview of what it’s like to work with you, your website is your most valuable employee. Yes, we said what we said. Sure, Tanya from marketing and Alex from sales are team rockstars, but they aren’t on the clock and working for you 24/7 like your website is - or should be. And just like your employees, your website needs to be dynamic and nimble—ready to meet customers exactly where they are to serve up excellent experiences.

This is where growth-driven design (aka GDD), comes into play. GDD is a methodology that uses real user data to make strategic growth decisions that delight customers. By formulating a data-driven strategy on the front end, continuously assessing real-user-data, and addressing opportunities for improvement, your growth-driven design website is a dynamic digital organism that reflects the answers to all your customers’ questions. Very different from your circa 2018 website that still has the wrong business address, or hours, or phone number.

Before we go any further, you should know that growth-driven design is a methodology designed for building a website. But the approach applies to all areas of business. At Sauce, we believe every aspect of your business should evolve based on data and your customers’ needs. That’s why we believe growth-driven design and RevOps Optimization go hand-in-hand.

The difference between traditional website design and growth-driven design

Traditional web design: The traditional approach to web design is based on the mentality, “if you build it, they will come.” Not only is this approach outdated, it’s ineffective for today’s consumers who expect real time information, smart digital interactions, and a cohesive experience at every touchpoint with a business. In our modern digital marketplace, websites have to adapt with consumer’s needs—or risk failure. The solution to keeping up? Growth-driven design.

Growth-driven design: GDD produces websites that create and curate intentional customer experiences. How? By applying real user data to user experience improvements, GDD empowers you to optimize your site for conversion: when we know better, we can do better for our customers and our business.

Businesses that invest in GDD consistently see an increase in revenue and customer retention. Not only that, they're also able to use their tech stack more effectively, making their team more efficient without adding headcount. That's the true definition of successful scalability and increasing profitability.

Growth-driven design helps you and your team just as much as it helps your customer — especially if you’re working to scale your business.

Ready to learn more? Here’s what we’ll cover in this deep dive into growth-driven design: 

1. The problem with traditional web design 
2. The benefits of growth-driven design
3. Is growth-driven design right for you?

The problem with traditional web design

A traditional website redesign is nerve-racking, costly, and risky. Depending on the scope and complexity of the build, a new website built with traditional design methodology costs anywhere from $15,000 to $80,000. Gulp.

Traditional web design says you build a site, launch it, and for the most part, leave it alone for a few years. Then, when enough time passes, do it all over again. That’s a risky proposition. What kind of experience are your prospects having on your website during that time? Is it making your digital marketing efforts less effective? What is it costing you in sales? 

Markets evolve. New opportunities emerge. Customers move on. So do the best websites. Growth-driven design doesn’t change for the sake of change, it changes for the sake of success.

Traditional web design fails to leverage growth opportunities for your business. To achieve conversion rate optimization, your website has to reduce friction between users and the information they seek. With GDD, instead of setting and forgetting, you assess and address. Instead of questions, you have answers. GDD is the best website design methodology available for long-lasting, positive returns on your business.

The benefits of growth-driven design

The real magic of growth-driven design is the active improvement of your website based on the changing needs and wants of an ideal customer. By breaking the development cycle into small chunks, both business and designer can make data-backed decisions based on real user data. GDD puts the user front and center at every step of the design process. When you know what your customers want, you can use GDD to meet their needs faster, cheaper, and better than traditional design methods.

The data behind growth-driven design

GDD offers a quicker time to value than traditional web design methods. 

• On average, GDD yields a new website in just 60 days
• Traditional web design can take up to 108 days from start to finish

Longer development time means lost leads and less return on investment.

The sustainable spike

Traffic and leads spike with every new website launch, but what happens when the competition catches up with your aging site? Traditional design says you stand firm, wait, and plan improvements a few years later. But in the meantime, leads drop off your website and your company loses growth opportunities. When traffic and leads slow down, resources are usually deployed to try to counter those issues - add another sales person. Invest in digital ads. Buy new lead lists. Stand on the corner in a fish suit with a sign (we’ve seen some interesting things happen to try to counter stagnant leads and traffic).

Enter the sustainable spike. GDD pulls active, user-driven data to change your website for the better. If you know what your customers want, GDD helps you deliver and delight. Instead of an isolated spike in traffic or leads, GDD brings consistent, sustainable growth and customers to your business. Instead of huge peaks and troughs, think more consistent, upward trajectory. And no fish suit.

With GDD, businesses report 16.9% more leads, 14.1% more traffic, and 11.2% more revenue after just six months after implementation. The results speak for themselves.

Growth-driven design is about more than just building a website; it’s about providing an unforgettable experience for your customers in the digital world.

Is growth-driven design right for you?

GDD is right for your website redesign if you’re looking for more leads, steady engagement, and higher revenue. Be mindful of your existing business, its strengths, areas of improvement, and where you want to go. Just like any great strategy, GDD provides tools and perspective on unique problems facing your business. And unlike the lengthy and tedious project of launching an entirely new website every few years, making smaller, incremental improvements doesn't drain your resources and gives you more opportunities to test and tune vs making big and expensive guesses.

Team Sauce is here to help you use Growth Driven Design to solve these (and other) problems:

• Problem: Your website is beautiful, but your sales pipeline is running dry
• GDD Solution: You’ve put in the time, money, and effort to build the website of your dreams, but your ideal customers aren’t biting. What gives? Businesses who utilized GDD saw 6.9% more leads after 6-months because GDD pokes holes in your current website to make a solid version later.
  
  
• Problem: You want to spread out the cost of your website redesign
• GDD Solution: We know you need to minimize risk yet still see results. A growth-driven design website minimizes risk by producing a better website faster while introducing collaborative steps to identify and solve emerging problems as they happen. That’s more money in your pocket.
  
  
• Problem: It’s time to grow and expand
• GDD Solution: Growth isn’t usually a problem, but if your business isn’t prepared to scale, you’ll face serious challenges on your journey. GDD scales proactive growth methods to any business size and budget. You’ll have a clear, manageable strategy from the start to best understand not just why you’re growing, but where to grow.
  
  
• Problem: Your website isn’t visitor-focused
• GDD Solution: If you want your website to work like a dictionary or phonebook, GDD isn’t for you. But if your goal is to take your visitors on a purposeful journey, learn more about them, and convert them into loyal customers, Growth-Driven Design is the answer.
  
  
• Problem: You don’t have data to understand your customer
• GDD Solution: The most important aspect of most web designs is how it affects your bottom line. What’s the return on investment? User-driven metrics guide GDD through your business goals so you can track progress and see firsthand how active change and focus improves the return on investment.
  

Sauce Agency is Your Growth-Driven Design Partner to Build A Website That Wows

At Sauce, we believe your website should be your most influential marketing asset and most diligent salesperson. A compliment to your entire business, culture, and team. That’s why we practice and perfect our client’s growth-driven design websites so they can crush their growth goals and delight their customers.

If you’re tired of stagnate sales pipelines, overspending on websites that peak and plummet, and uncertain marketing strategy, let’s talk. We’re here to build thoughtful, data-backed strategies to revolutionize your revenue stream. Schedule a discovery call with a certified growth guide today!

PS. If you made it all the way to the bottom, congratulations! And if you're keeping count at home, we said Growth Driven Design 21 times. You're welcome.