Growth Driven Design:
What You Need to Know

Growth-driven design (GDD) is an agile website development and design process that breaks the project into smaller, intentional phases and sets goals based on how your audience uses the site. Instead of relying on broad assumptions, GDD leverages user data to inform each decision.

Here’s a simplified breakdown of the GDD process:

• Step 1: Analyze existing website performance and functionality and identify obstacles

• Step 2: Conduct audience research and examine how users navigate your site

• Step 3: Use flowcharts to design wireframes, which become completed pages

• Step 4: Launch updated site and continue analyzing user data and optimizing over time

GDD is an ongoing process. Your website is never “done” because the process relies on continuous learning and, inevitably, there will always be something to improve. This saves you from massive, headache-inducing website overhauls because if you’re constantly optimizing your site, it’s unlikely you’ll have to undergo a full redesign every few years.

While GDD may sound like the perfect solution, its effectiveness depends on your approach.

For example, some GDD advocates recommend starting with a “launch pad site,”(a quickly built site that improves upon what you have but still needs to be optimized). But as a marketer, you know there’s no such thing as a “quickly built site” — at least, not a fully functional one.

Launch pad sites are rarely practical and often lead to the same challenges faced in traditional website design, like unrealistic project scope. And for enterprise organizations with multiple divisions and product or service lines, even a scaled-down starter site is a time-intensive endeavor.