Growth-driven design (GDD) is, in my humble opinion, the best way to develop and maintain websites today. Traditional methods of website development and project management often produce lackluster results, or worse, failed projects. Traditional website-development projects are usually sad tales of missed deadlines and cost overruns, and they are likely to miss the mark when it comes to design or capabilities. Most often, these projects are reflective of a best-guess design when the project is initiated, and are not reflective of the actual end users' needs. By nature, they are unlikely to be oriented towards responding to users' real-life interactions with the design and subsequent variations. Even when changes are deemed necessary, a change order and additional cost are virtually guaranteed before implementation.
I'm blessed to be married to the woman of my dreams! We've been married for more than 34 years, and she still takes my breath away just by walking in the room. But it's definitely NOT a perfect marriage, mostly because I'm such a far cry from being a perfect husband. (Pssst... she's not perfect either, as was evidenced this morning when she burned my breakfast.) All marriages experience times of strain and struggle, and ours is no exception. But the principals associated with agile project management techniques, and growth-driven design are such a perfect, seemingly strainless match, that you might conclude that they were cut from the same cloth. And you'd be right.
Growth Driven Design (GDD) is a website design or redesign philosophy centered around making small, incremental, data-driven changes or additions to a website in order to ensure that it is continually adapting to the wants and needs of your target audience and to the operational requirements of your business.
Your website is the cornerstone of your marketing efforts. You have, no doubt, spent countless hours and expended tremendous resources to bring it to its current state. And you will, in all likelihood, spend more hours and consume more resources to update it less than two years from now, even if it just went live. That is, unless you adopt an approach called Growth-Driven Design (GDD).
Could I get a showing of hands, please? How many of you LOVE redesigning your website? Anyone?... There are reasons why so many of us hate even the idea of redesigning our website. Traditional website redesigns take an enormous amount of time, energy, and money, they are usually implemented late, involve budget overruns, and most often produce lack-luster results over the long haul. If that's the case with your most recent website redesign efforts, read on... because we believe there is a better way.
