Growth Driven Design: Stop Redesigning Your Website Every 3 Years!

Josh Ames

Remember when Facebook was fairly new and experiencing lots of growing pains? It seemed like every other month, you’d be complaining about the newest Facebook design. (For a look back, check out Mashable’s evolution of Facebook profiles.)

Whether you think Facebook’s redesigns were warranted, there’s a lesson to take from the social media giant. It’s absolutely unnecessary to give your website a complete makeover year after year — not because your website doesn’t need a new look, but because a complete overhaul is the wrong way to do it.

The Pitfalls of Infrequent Redesigns 

Typically, when a company redesigns its website, it’s a one-time process to make the site look beautiful and functional. When the site’s facelift is done, so is the job of your web designer or developer.

This structure is great for the developer — it means they do the project, get the money, and go. But it’s not good for you and your company for a few reasons:

• You pay a large, one-time cost that doesn’t necessarily cover everything your website needs. It pays for the site’s look and feel, but not much else.
  
• You can’t be sure it’ll meet your goals. If you’re redesigning for the right reasons, goals should be the main driver for the redesign. Traditionally, there’s no guarantee that the new site will help you get there.
  
• It takes a huge amount of time. Depending on the size of the team working on your site and the site’s complexity, the whole process will likely take at least six months — that’s a major time investment.
  
• It rarely gets updated. If you want to make revisions, either big (like adding a new section to your site) or small (like changing the color of a call-to-action button), you might have a hard time making those changes.
  
• You’re stuck with what you get even if the site doesn’t give you the results you want. If the site doesn’t meet your goals…well, too bad — try again next time.

Here’s an analogy for you: Traditional redesigns are like a red light at an intersection. At the red light, you’re stopped for what can sometimes seem like forever; then, when the light changes, you move full-speed-ahead past the intersection and don’t slow down until the next red light you hit.

If it’s starting to sound like a traditional redesign sucks, you’re right. There’s a huge risk involved — a bad redesign could seriously harm your marketing and sales efforts and goals.

So what’s the fix?

The New Approach to Website Redesigns

Instead of redesigning a website every couple of years, companies should be constantly reevaluating their sites. Since a website is your top marketing and sales tool, keeping it performing well should be a priority. This idea is called growth-driven design.

Growth driven design (GDD) starts with what looks, at first, like a traditional redesign — but on steroids. A GDD agency will design you a fresh, new site that’s centered around your specific goals and buyer personas.

But this is where GDD really takes off — your relationship with the growth-driven design agency continues.

A long-term partnership lets the agency continuously measure your site’s performance by looking at marketing and sales numbers. Then, those numbers are compared to your goals and other research to inform future decisions that’ll improve your performance.

So, let’s say your goals was for 20% of all site visitors to sign up for your free trial, but right now, you’re falling short at 10%. By looking at targeted metrics about your traffic sources, landing pages, and other crucial conversion analytics, you can smartly decide how to adjust your web design to solve the problem.

Sounds smart, right? Here are some of the benefits:

• It’s less costly. Rather than a huge one-time fee, you’ll likely pay a Growth Driven Design agency a smaller, ongoing fee, so it doesn’t feel like a huge hit to you accounts. 
  
• It’s results driven. If you didn’t see the results you want, you don’t have to just settle. You’ll keep redesigning and tweaking until the goals are met.
  
• It’s more efficient. Instead of carving out huge chunks of time to devote to website redesigns, you’ll work on it for small bits of time more frequently, and it’ll save you time in the long run.

By comparison, ongoing redesigns are like a stop sign. Rather than stopping and designing for a long period of time, you quickly pause, consider what’s around you, and continue on your way.

Takeaway

The old, traditional website redesign process is outdated — it’s inefficient, expensive, and it doesn’t have your company’s best interests at heart. It’s about time we did something about that.

When you hire a web developer, designer, or agency that focuses on growth-driven design, you won’t just get a new website. You’ll get a high-functioning, beautiful site that will meet your marketing and sales goals. And because GDD is more affordable, efficient, and will meet your goals, you’ll see a higher ROI.

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