What is GDD?
GDD means Growth Driven Design. It is a better approach to creating and maintaining websites. It takes less initial investment and more measured demand for further investment. GDD makes it possible for a website to be dynamic part of a marketing campaign.
This aligns with the goal of growth. It recognizes the fact that a static website can hardly contribute if at all to your business. Dynamic customer, the market, the environment, the technology
Besides looking pretty, websites are even better at generating traffic and nurturing qualified leads. And when you get the hang of GDD, your websites can deliver more value not only to your buyers but even to your other internal teams.
The Website 2 step.
Traditional web design is a grand event. It musters manpower, creative, financial resources around a strategy that relies on a lot of assumption. It takes around 6 months to get it "perfect". The business then hopes the assumptions are correct and people make use of what's available on the site. Ready? Step 1: set it.
1 to 2 years pass before a new site is created because of all the effort and resources that went into making the last website. Impactful changes take time despite the critical role a website can take in a business. In the meantime, things change and what you created just doesn't work anymore.
When novelty wears off no one appreciates the site because it doesn't improve, and it does not deliver. It cannot. Step 2: forget it.
GDD Time
With GDD website you can keep up with change. A GDD website is a more agile approach to improving AND operating a website. GDD helps breaks out of the perfectionist trap. It allows for a regular assessment of where resources are invested which is validated by fresh if not live data.
The approach starts the same, with strategy based on a few fundamental assumptions. Immediately a launchpad website is made.
For the next 3 months, assumptions around a particular theme are validated with results from regular experiments involving a few, impactful website improvements. As often as every 2 weeks hypotheses are tested, website tweaks are made, and data is gathered. From lessons learned, the next hypotheses are formulated, and the next tweaks added to a wish list of improvements.
The first theme is focused on establishing the basics. It involves keeping what already works and engaging your core audience and delivering your core value.
Once the foundation is set, you build on top of that through continuous cycles of improvement. Work around the optimize theme involve making usability better, getting better conversion rate numbers, and personalization.
Since times change, people change, technology changes, more often than annually or every 2 years, optimization for business growth will always be an ongoing concern.
There's more?
As soon as optimization becomes a comfortable habit, the website can expand and generate more value. This can come in the following sequence:
- new content and digital "products" on the website that buyers can use to help them in their buyer's journey
- better engagement through other touchpoints along the customer journey such as sales or customer success
- helping other teams in the organization like recruitment or purchasing
You can do this
GDD websites help you scale your marketing at the very least. When you do it right, it can help your business across the board. Mobile apps are already like this. Ever wondered why they keep on updating? The people behind apps plan, build, learn, and transfer insight for the next update. There are also websites are like this.
Your website is the next best thing to talking to the latest best version of you. You keep on improving. You can say you are growth driven. Your website should do the same.
Learn more about GDD? Download our FREE GDD ebook.
Need something more basic. Read up on What is a website?