In the world of digital marketing, your best salesperson is your website. It’s your biggest marketing asset, the centerpiece of all your marketing efforts, and the first place clients and prospects go for information about your products or services. It is present in every stage of the buyer’s journey.
our website is your hardest-working marketing asset. It’s your first impression, your digital storefront, and often the deciding factor between gaining or losing a lead. It needs to be fast, functional, and continuously evolving to meet the needs of your audience.
Yet, traditional web design is outdated the moment it launches.
Long timelines, siloed teams, and websites that remain untouched for years simply don’t work in today’s fast-paced digital world. You can’t afford to treat your website as a static project. That’s why more businesses are turning to Growth-Driven Design—a smarter, more strategic approach to website design and development.
What is Growth-Driven Design?
Growth-Driven Design (GDD), developed by our partners at HubSpot, is a methodology that transforms the way websites are built and maintained. Instead of a “set-it-and-forget-it” approach, GDD delivers a launch-ready site quickly and then optimizes it continuously based on real user data.
This agile, iterative model integrates your website into your broader marketing and sales strategy—ensuring it’s always working, always improving, and always aligned with your goals.
THE 3 Pillars of Growth-Driven Design
MINIMIZE RISK
By launching a solid but streamlined version of your website first (called a Launch Pad), you minimize the risks of lengthy build times and expensive delays. From there, data guides all future updates.
OPTIMIZE THROUGH USER RESEARCH
GDD puts your audience at the center of everything. You’ll learn from their behavior and feedback, then apply those insights to optimize site performance and user experience.
CROSS-TEAM COLLABORATION
Teamwork is the center of Growth-Driven Design. Teams are led in agile strategy sessions, user research processes, and sprint workshops, effectively breaking down silos.
HOW DO EXECUTE THE Growth-Driven Design Process?
STEP 1: Strategy
The Growth-Driven Design process solves web design problems by considering prospects, customers, and their buying cycle. So, the very first step is to create detailed buyer’s personas. By understanding your prospect’s needs, pain points, and objectives, you can outline an effective roadmap for their journey across the website. Growth-Driven Design is centered around the user, so it’s critical to establish persona profiles at the beginning. Establishing your buyer’s personas also creates a solid foundation for building your website’s SMART goals.
Now it’s time for a quantitative audit of your existing website—delve into the data and analyze your current website to identify where it can improve. Combine your audit, your SMART goals, and your buyer’s personas to develop a strategy for your website holistically, as well as page-by-page.
Using this information, it’s time for a team brainstorming sesh. Think of every possible idea you could implement to create a ‘wish list’ for step 2.
STEP 2: Launch Pad
The traditional website design methodology launches a website at the finish line. Growth-Driven Design launches “Launch Pad” websites right away. This Launch Pad is the foundation for continuous design activities and improvements based on user data. Your Launch Pad should contain essential elements based on your audit, SMART goals, and buyer’s personas. Prioritize implementing elements that have the greatest impact on your user.
The ideal timeframe for developing a Launch Pad website is between 30 and 90 days. HubSpot recommends creating your Launch Pad in sprint workshops to eliminate silos. This way, content creation and wireframe building can happen simultaneously and inform each other, eliminating the long development cycle of traditional website design.
To launch your initial Launch Pad website, perform an 80/20 analysis on your wish list from step one—identify 20% of items that will produce 80% of the impact. What features are a must have and what is nice to have?
STEP 3: CONTINOUS Improvement Cycle
Now, your Launch Pad website is live and collecting user data. It’s not perfect, but it is the perfect foundation to continuous improvement. As users interact with your website, you’ll learn more about their interests and needs, allowing you to adjust your website to meet those needs more efficiently. This is where the monthly improvement planning begins. Determine monthly action items based on this 4-stage optimization cycle:
1 Plan
Taking the user data from your Launch Pad into account, identify the most impactful items from your wish list you can either optimize or add to your website. Plan to prioritize those items into the current cycle.
2 Develop
Now it’s time for the team to come together to implement your top action items. This is an excellent time for creativity and experimentation. Consider developing a marketing campaign to drive traffic to the new areas of the site so you can capture more data from your users.
3 Learn
Review the data from your development stage. Use this information to reprioritize your wish list and inform the next phase of the optimization cycle.
4 Transfer
Use the information from step three and transfer what you’ve learned to other parts of your business. What patterns did you identify from your users? Brainstorm tactical ways to implement this data into your sales and marketing strategies with your team.
The cycle is now complete and ready to begin again! The optimization cycles repeat, again and again, each time creating a better result for you and your users. The more cycles you can complete, the more impactful your website will be.
STOP REDESIGNING. START GROWING.
Your website shouldn’t be a one-time project—it should be a powerful growth engine. If you’re ready to elevate your website’s performance and create a more agile, data-driven experience for your users, let’s talk.
Get started with a complimentary web assessment today. We’ll review your current site and identify opportunities to improve performance, UX, and conversions.