Sit back, get comfy, and let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a small marketing department who were tasked with updating the company’s website…
Oh, you know this one? You've heard this story before? You’ve lived it? Then you know the fear and loathing that quickly follow the elation of having conquered the digital beast that is a website redesign.
Congratulations! You redesigned the company’s website. Finally — after countless meetings and hours spent reviewing layouts, pushing designs through the chain of command for approval, and color tweaks — the content is honed in perfectly, the images are in place, and the colors fit elegantly within your company’s brand standard. You give the okay to launch the new site. It’s magnificent! There’s a buzz around the office, the analytics are humming, glasses are lifted, there is cheering, and for a few months, you’re the company hero.
But now here you are. The euphoria surrounding the once-shiny site has faded. Where are the bounty of new leads, new sales, new business? The higher-ups want to know why the new site isn’t living up to its promise. Sound familiar? So what happened? Well, a few things — the natural progression of technology and change, the ever-moving target of Google search results, the fickle nature of human interest . . . all of these (and myriad other variables) come into play once your site goes live.
If we think about your web presence as an investment in a digital tool to connect, nurture and mature leads, bring in sales, and ultimately make you money, then how do you build a better tool — one that will enable marketing to deliver actionable results?
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We see this all the time. The same scenario plays out in companies day in and day out all year long. There’s a giant outlay of capital followed by a huge push of effort and time to rip up the old and put in the new. Its treated just like any other project, meaning treated as if it has a beginning and an end. A year passes and the site becomes old, irrelevant. It took months — maybe even the year — to build, and now it isn’t working for you anymore. In less time than it takes to get a new version of your newest tech gadget, you’ll need to do it all over again. In the meantime, what have you gotten in return for all of your effort and capital? You might have a pretty site, but has it resulted in a return on that large investment? That was the goal after all wasn’t it, or at least the idea?
If we think about your web presence as an investment in a digital tool to connect, nurture and mature leads, bring in sales, and ultimately make you money, then how do you build a better tool — one that will enable marketing to deliver actionable results?
The answer is growth-driven design. Growth-driven design (GDD) is a new methodology shift focus from internal to external look at your customers. It's lloking at their site activity, studying the good, and the bad, and then shaping the site each and every month based on the hypothesis drawn by studying your customers. GDD minimizes the risks of a traditional website redesign by shortening times to launch, focusing on real impact, continuously learning, and making improvements that enhance your digital marketing success. Short bursts and shorter timeframes aren’t just less risky and less costly; they allow you to learn what happens next, making you agile and adaptive. Strategies can be tested and revamped and tactics can be improved quickly and efficiently.
This method allows for a shorter lead time to launch. When you design your site in this manner, creating and re-evaluating what works and what doesn’t, you have a product that will be relevant and useful for far longer with less time and money spent to get there.
If your site is your company’s ultimate handshake, if it encapsulates your company’s branding and beliefs, if it’s your first line of contact with your potential customers then it should also speak to everyone you want to reach and influence, continually, as they want to be spoken to. Even if those audiences change. A good site delights, engages and incites action. In turn, these actions allow you to learn what a visitor to your site needs and wants. You start to become the place where users turn for their information, entertainment, products, and needs. Your website can, and should, be smarter and more organic — able to bend, change, and grow as the web grows in order to be better, faster, and more useful to your business.
Want to learn more? Yeah you do!
Stay tuned for Part 2 : How Inbound Marketing Effects your Bottom Line