Growth Driven Design (GDD) is the latest trend taking place in the website development and design industry. Why are more and more businesses choosing this approach for their law firm? To understand the widespread adoption of this new agile strategy let me unpack all of the elements of GDD and why it is so cost effective and necessary for increased conversions.
The Risks of a Traditional Website Design Process
In case you were late to the party –traditional website design is “broken.” The problem is that we spend a fortune on our law firm web designs and only imagine how it will be received by the users, then we launch and forget. The next time we look at it is when we need a re-design because the site is no longer functioning perfectly for the users or we would like to add additional features. Most businesses never test their sites ability to solve their users pain spots or solve their product or service needs.
Launched and Forgotten
Your law firm web design is one of the most integral aspects of your business and you allow it to sit there for years on end? It’s one of your core marketing assets and you let it gather dust. No important, impactful improvements get made until the site starts behaving poorly. It has been outdated and limping along for ages and we just ignore the problems. It’s such a massive expense upfront but often doesn’t deliver in the way you had hoped that it would. The results are often unpredictable. There are no one size fits all approach to creating a website. What works for one company won’t necessarily work when applied to your product and that is why testing is vital. We have to learn from our users and what they need from our website.
The Fast and the Furious
So what is GDD then? And why are Web Designers and forward thinking businesses adopting it fast and furiously? Basically it’s all about launching quickly and then testing to see what works and constantly tweaking to meet the user need. How do you go about it?
You’ll start with a strategy. You know this part –what do you need your website to do, achieve, convey? But every decision is seen through the lens of the user. What they want, not what we think they want. When we know our target personas we can continually learn what makes them tick online and adjust the strategy to answer their requirements. You want to see how the goals for your company will match with your target audience.
So, you jump in and launch a good looking site. It’s not going to be perfect –that is the point. You need to start to collect data on its efficacy. You do not have to have the entire site completed. You can choose to focus on the high impact pages and migrate other content from your old site to those medium or low impact pages in the meantime. All in good time. You want to first see what is talking to the user so you can evaluate what needs reworking. This is a highly cost effective approach and ensures that your website is being enhanced all the time as test results show where you have hit the mark and where you have fallen down for the user.
Take It for A Test Drive
When you launch, you must make sure that it is also compatible for mobile devices i.e. has responsive design. You are letting your users test drive your website and give you feedback to improve its offering. The idea is not to put up a really bad looking, hard to navigate site –you want it to look good. You just don’t want to spend enormous amounts of time trying to make it “perfect” in every way, only for it to sit on the shelf and never be looked at ever again. It’s a beautiful work in progress. The structure will be well built and you can add to it in the future without wasting money or your valuable time on it.
Following the Data And Keeping Track
So, you’ve launched and now you sit back and let the data roll in. The information coming from the analytics is showing you clearly what needs some reworking and you can get to it immediately. This allows for the creation of a sustainable website that grows with your business. The data keeps giving you insights on new opportunities for development and design. This agile approach keeps you testing and iterating to continuously learn and achieve awesome results. What you are learning from your users through your A/B testing will yield powerful information that can also be useful to the rest of the company. When the data tells you what actions your user is taking, you can tailor make your marketing and sales efforts to speak more directly to their needs.
The types of data that law firms are tracking at the moment include keyword ranking, site traffic and sources, page performance, visit-to-lead conversion rates and lead volume. These elements are the best indicators of user preferences, habits and conversions. By constantly adjusting keywords in your content you will find which of them are traffic magnets. You can also see which pages attract the highest traffic and then you can apply some of those working elements to other pages that are not experiencing the same attention.
Looking for GDD in Your Future?
A growth driven Law Firm Web Design is a dynamic, evolving entity that listens to the user and gives them what they want. When you respond to what your target audience needs you automatically experience high conversions rates and improved customer satisfaction.
If you are law firm that’s looking to jump onto the GDD bandwagon, give us a call. Our experts will show you how we will transform an unresponsive, outdated website with a bit of GDD TLC.
Book a call with one of our Law Firm Marketing Experts for FREE advice today.
