Relaunching our website with growth-driven design

I’ve never met anyone who genuinely enjoys web design projects. Usually, a beautiful website isn’t only the product of a team’s design skills, but also of their ability to manage contradictory expectations, poor communication, perceived high-stakes, and a climate of overall neuroticism.

But, what if there was another way? 

“Growth-driven design” is a reasonable solution to a common problem, but one rarely sees it out in the field. In a sense, it’s similar to “value-based pricing”, a pricing strategy that most successful service companies implement partially and without the client’s knowledge.

Growth-driven design consists of applying the principles of modern software design to a website. So, instead of launching a “one-and-done”, full website, you launch an MVP (or “launch pad”).

After deploying the launchpad, you continue building the website while it’s live. This process is guided by:

• Your team’s changing needs
• User behavior

So, instead of spending thousands in one go to fully design and develop something in a vacuum, you turn design into an ongoing process, informed by real-life data.

Curious about GDD? Here are some common questions - and their respective answers:

Growth-driven design basics

What are the three stages of growth-driven design?

Growth-driven design happens in three stages:

• Strategy
• Launch pad
• Continuous improvement/optimization

During the strategy phase, teams work to understand their users, define clear objectives, analyze competitors, and build a wishlist for website features. The goal is to create a strong foundation by aligning the website’s purpose with organizational goals and user needs.

While it’s okay to state your goals in a general way (“to get more sales”, “to position the brand…”), tie your goals to KPIs. Otherwise, your definition of success will be too vague. Set your goals within timely constraints, and use a traffic lights system to set specific numeric objectives. 

Here’s an example of what it could look like:

In the launch pad phase, the teams develop a minimum viable website. The goal is to develop an asset that can move them closer to their goals without spending too much time or resources. 

The launch pad should be:

• On-brand
• More performant than its predecessor
• Integrated to the company’s RevOps stack
• Designed with the company’s strategic goals in mind

For instance, our own launchpad is:

• Aligned with our brand guidelines
• Optimized for speed and accessibility
• Tracking user behavior
• Integrated with our email marketing stack & CRM
• Designed to support our strategic goals for 2025 & 2026

After the launch pad site is live, the focus shifts to ongoing analysis, testing, and optimization. 

This stage involves:

• Systematically measuring performance
• Experimenting with new ideas
• Making iterative enhancements to the website. 

The goal is to ensure the site remains effective, adaptive, and aligned with both business objectives and user expectations over time.

These three stages (strategy, launch pad, and continuous improvement) form the core of the Growth-Driven Design process, enabling organizations to create and maintain websites that evolve with their audience and business needs

How long does it take to launch the initial “launchpad” site in a GDD approach?

Most teams ship a launch pad in 30–60 days. Because “must-have” pages and features are prioritized, you get a live, revenue-generating site in weeks, not months, while deferring nice-to-have elements to later sprints.

Pro-tip: To minimize QA time while preventing bugs, avoid complex animations and simplify your interactive elements. There’ll be time for flashiness once you’ve proven your new website’s business effectiveness.

How do you prioritize which improvements to make each month?

Each monthly sprint starts with the GDD “prioritization matrix,” weighing impact vs. effort for every idea. It’s very similar to a RICE prioritization matrix! Data from analytics, user recordings, heatmaps, and stakeholder goals feeds the backlog, ensuring the highest-impact, lowest-effort items rise to the top.

The term “prioritization matrix” sounds pretentious and complex. But the tool itself can be as simple as you need it to be. A spreadsheet is good enough! 

For example, our prioritization matrix has 7 columns:

• Round
• Item
• Category
• Owner (this is very important to keep stakeholders accountable!)
• Status
• Priority
• Comments/Context (control metrics, links to relevant documentation, etcetera)

This spreadsheet is managed manually, no fancy software required.

How is user feedback incorporated into each iteration cycle?

Qualitative tools - on-page surveys, usability tests, customer-service logs - generate insights that feed the backlog. Ideas then compete in the prioritization matrix just like quantitative opportunities.

What metrics are typically tracked to measure GDD success?

Core metrics include:

• Traffic growth (deaggregated by source)
• Conversion rate (deaggregated by specific event)
• Qualified leads
• Customer acquisition cost
• Average order value (e-commerce)
• Page speed/Core Web Vitals
• Other user-experience signals (such as bounce rate or Net Promoter Score). 

KPIs are set at the outset and revisited sporadically. We recommend checking KPIs at least once a month. 

Feasibility

How does GDD integrate with existing marketing and sales systems (CRM, CMS, automation tools)?

GDD relies on tight integration. Tracking pixels, CRM form captures, and marketing-automation workflows are wired into the launch pad on day one, ensuring every iteration pulls real funnel data and passes it back to your RevenueOps stack.

Can we apply GDD to an e-commerce site or is it only for lead-generation websites?

Absolutely. E-commerce brands use GDD to test checkout optimizations, product-detail page layouts, merchandising blocks, and upsell flows—often seeing faster ROI because every small tweak directly influences revenue.

Is growth-driven design compatible with our current CMS/platform?

Most likely! The GDD methodology is platform-skeptic. WordPress, Webflow, HubSpot CMS, Shopify, Headless stacks, and custom builds all support agile releases. The key is solid version control, staging environments, and modular components.

How often will we see new design iterations or feature releases?

Most programs ship at least one live improvement every 30 days—sometimes weekly when small UX or copy tweaks are queued. To keep everything on track, ask your team to develop sprint reports summarizing what changed, why it changed, and early performance indicators.

What size budget should we plan for after the initial launchpad goes live?

A common rule of thumb: allocate ~20–25 % of your original redesign budget as a monthly optimization retainer. Because spend spreads out over the year and is tied to measurable gains, cash flow is smoother and easier to justify.

What happens if we pause or stop the monthly optimization cycle?

If you decide to suspend your GDD process, your site should keep running, but you may see growth flatten over time. Like SEO, stopping GDD abruptly won’t translate into a steep and instant loss of your gains. But your traffic may bleed out progressively and your conversion rate may stagnate.

Risk management

Should my website go offline if I want to suspend my GDD retainer?

Pausing your GDD program should simply freeze the backlog. You should be able to restart later without rebuilding from scratch, though you may need a discovery refresh to catch up on new data. Stay away from GDD vendors that may put your website’s hosting at risk if you stop your GDD program. Make sure to keep ownership of your platform and have the GDD vendor “plug into” systems that you control.

How do you ensure SEO best practices aren’t compromised during frequent site updates?

Each sprint should include technical-SEO checks (schema, canonicals, redirects) and on-page audits. Because changes are incremental, issues surface quickly and are patched before they snowball - unlike a big-bang redesign that can tank rankings overnight.

Can GDD help improve page speed and Core Web Vitals scores over time?

GDD can definitely improve page speed and Core Web Vitals. Performance audits are woven into the backlog; low-hanging fruit (image compression, lazy loading) land early, while code splitting, server-side rendering, and CDN tuning follow. Scores typically trend upward quarter after quarter.

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