Growth-Driven Design: A Beginner's Guide

There are a lot of trends, fads, and jargon circulating around the business world. Not only can that get in the way of easy communication and understanding, but it clutters up the space, so it's challenging to see when real game-changers in ways of thinking emerge. Don't let new terminology, confusing acronyms, and noise get in the way of finding valuable innovations. 

At House of Revenue, we think Growth-Driven Design (GDD) is one of the concepts that's built to last and provide organizations with lots of value. 

As defined by HubSpot, Growth-Driven Design is a continuous methodology based on learning and developing your business's systems and tools.

For websites, in particular, Growth-Driven Design minimizes the risks of traditional web design, promotes working in collaboration with sales and marketing teams, prioritizes agility, and gives developers access to feedback throughout the design process. 

Keep reading to learn more about Growth-Driven Design, the unique strengths of this methodology, and how to become a pioneer of Growth-Driven Design in your organization. 

What is Growth-Driven Design?

Growth-Driven Design is a systematic approach to website design based on modern-day technologies, democratic web practices that are transforming the industry, and new insights into conversions and The Buyer's Journey. While Growth-Driven Design can apply to a wide range of concepts and business projects across any organization, it's primarily used to refocus web design. 

Rather than focus on big, sweeping changes and long periods of intermission between improvements, GDD is all about systemizing the development of small, frequent improvements so designs are constantly improving based on insights into the user experience. Small, iterative changes are measurable, supportable, and not overwhelming. Businesses can adopt this process of small improvements to monitor client experiences,  boost revenue and  sales enablement, and continually strengthen their resources. Because it's based on a constant, small cycle of measuring, iterating, and acting, organizations can make it a core part of their business instead of a one-off project or interruption.

Why is the Growth-Driven Design Methodology Critical in Website Projects?

Growth-Driven Design transforms how organizations consider their revenue strategies, and that's one of its strengths. Many B2C and B2B organizations use websites as a critical part of their revenue engine, and GDD allows developers and teams to make frequent, incremental changes that drive revenue and minimize revenue loss. The website can (and should) constantly be tweaked to ensure the company is getting more revenue as efficiently and as quickly as possible. 

Not only is Growth-Driven Design essential for optimizing revenue growth and strengthening your business, but not using the Growth-Driven Design methodology is a severe risk for your business.

Imagine the typical size, scope, and duration of a website revamp. These mega-projects take a long time and are expensive, two factors that push many businesses to put off the project in the first place. They also incorporate a lot of big changes at once. That's jarring for customers and employees. It also means you'll never know which changes were instrumental in growing your revenue and which ones were a waste of time or actively harmful.

Consider These Two Website Development Situations:

1. The Traditional Website Update:

You're massively overhauling your website for a large lump sum of $50,000. Internal teams and third-party services have spent a lot of time designing and building it, and your team and your customers may spend a long time getting used to it. The website is beautiful, and you think it will help drive more revenue. But you don't know for sure, and you won't know the benefits for sure (or see a return on your investment) for months to come.

2. GDD-based Website Design:

You have a launchpad website, and you spend approximately $10,000 on your launchpad (version one) site. You then spend minimal resources making small, measurable changes over time. There's not necessarily an overly flashy transformation, but you have the data backing up which changes pushed what increases in revenue. Your team spends time measuring the results of the changes, but they're intuitive enough that all of your users can navigate and enjoy the website. Now, you still have between $30,000 and $40,000 to:

1. 1. Research buyer and customer insights
   2. Develop meaningful product updates
   3. Invest in testing demand gen channels
   4. Get feedback from users throughout every interaction.

With small, iterative jumps, that second scenario sets the foundation for a revenue engine you can trust and continue to improve over time.

Can the Growth-Driven Design Methodology Be Applied Beyond Websites?

While GDD is receiving a lot of attention in the web-building world, its applications are nearly endless. Focus on small changes that you can quickly implement, get feedback, and either change or build on. Failures are valuable and easy to recover from with this process. You're constantly receiving data that informs future changes and decisions. What project leader, team, or department doesn't want that?

Apply core GDD methodology principles to:

• Content Strategies
• Marketing Campaigns & Channel Expansions
• Pricing Models for New & Signature Products
• Product Roadmaps for New Releases & Product Expansions
• And more

How to Become a Growth-Driven Design Enthusiast in Your Business

Once you know Growth-Driven Design is the right fit for your business, follow these three steps to drive GDD adoption:

1. Say Goodbye to the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Traditional big-investment projects are scary. The cost of failure is high, and sometimes the risk of failure is high, too. Leaders who are on the hook naturally don't want to admit a pricey web upgrade was a mistake, but continually investing time and effort in a failed experiment is bad for business. Your revenue won't grow, your employees will suffer, and you'll be afraid to try again.

With GDD, you're not sinking money into a big risk; you're choosing a process where small blips of failure happen, but the trend line is always going up.

2. Say Hello to Failing Quickly With a Smile

As we mentioned, some changes will be failures. That's okay. A core principle of GDD isn't that you manage to avoid bad ideas or ideas that don't work well enough to hold. It's that you have a framework to try them, see that they're failing, and get rid of them.

3. Focus on Moving From Zero to One

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good! With GDD, no one is under pressure to ramp up revenue from 0 to 100. Not only is that expectation bad for everyone in your organization, it just can't happen. You need data and insights to make good progress, and the way you do that is by moving from zero to one and from one to two. Methodological progress is always better — and more sustainable — than a high-risk leap toward perfection.

Start Using Growth-Driven Design to See Better Results

At the House of Revenue®, our team thinks Growth-Driven Design is the right methodology for any website, digital product, or other tech projects. It can also inform all of your revenue strategies so you stay in control of changes and client experiences.  Contact us today to learn more about how we can work together to implement Growth-Driven Design throughout your business operations.