It's been a few years since I have been as excited as I am today to share with you a new and (proven) approach to website design.
Those of you who know me know I am quick to adapt when something feels right. That's why over the past year, we've been testing a new service offering called "Growth Driven Design” with a handful of our clients.
For the past 18 years, I have always felt the website redesign process was flawed. Even worse, it's disruptive to internal workings of a company.
Traditional website re-designs are always labor-intensive, emotional projects.
So many companies have outdated websites because a complete redesign is hard. You'll spend between three to twelve months planning and building a website. Critical time will be lost going back-and-forth with design revisions and layout discussions. Marketing ends up frustrated because everyone within the company has an opinion about the website. (Especially Bob in Accounting who suddenly has design experience? WHAT?)
In my experience, it's great that everyone cares enough about their company's website to have an opinion. But this is seriously the number one reason that website redesigns take six months to a year to launch.
And I think it is the reason why so many companies put off updating their website until it's absolutely essential.
The Future of Website Design
A little over a year ago, Media Junction embarked on a new approach to website design with Avella Specialty Pharmacy. Avella wanted to get their website up quickly, look at data and iterate, and add user enhancements on their wishlist later. So that's exactly what we did.
We worked with the Avella team to decide the "must haves" for launch. Everything else was put on a post-launch wish list. As a result, we were able to launch Avella's website in 60 days - a fraction of the time of a traditional custom website design.
Growth Driven Design is Revolutionary
Although I was originally skeptical, I'm now a huge fan of growth driven design (GDD). Over the last year, we've worked with Avella to improve the user experience of their website.
We added a background video that would have delayed the launch of the website had we done a traditional build. We've changed the content of their homepage to zero in on the buyer personas who are proving to be the most valuable. We've updated their website with mobile and tablet design capabilities that weren't available a year ago.
Most importantly, Avella is seeing results—amazing results. Their leads are up 217% year over year, page per visit are up 40.23% and their bounce rate is down 38.34%.
Why Growth Driven Design was Right for Media Junction
I am just going to throw it out there, I dreaded the thought of redesign #12 for the Media Junction website. I was feeling the same anxiety and stress our clients feel. A sidenote the last redesign we did never launched. By the time it was done, we'd decided it wasn't good enough. That's right, we spent months building a site we never launched. Ouch.
Our current website was nearly three years old and no longer accurately represented Media Junction. It was downright embarrassing. We had to do this.
Our Website Design Process
This website redesign started like every redesign we've done. We formed "the team" and then went back and forth, round and round. We agonized, argued, swore, fought over little details. We were losing time, (money) and I was stressed.
Our creative director, Ryan VonBergen suggested GDD, I think this was MJ re-design #5 for him.
We picked a date, and committed ourselves. We re-wrote content, shot new photography and video, developed brand standards, finished our culture code and moved from HTML to the HubSpot COS—63 days later, we launched our website.
What did we learn?
- We had to shift our mindset.
- We had to focus on necessity vs obsess’ity (I know that's not a word, but it should be.)
- We had to detach from our opinion of what we wanted, to what our visitors want.
- Our new site is a foundation and needs to be constantly evolving.
- We will likely be wrong, and the data will tell us that.
Would I do it again? Abso-fricken-lutely! It wasn't easy letting go of perfection, but when we did we had a blast challenging ourselves.
I hope that you enjoy our new site. It's not perfect, but it will be. That's the beauty of growth driven design.
Think GDD is right for you? Let's talk.
