GROWTH-DRIVEN DESIGN FOR UONEROOF.COM
GROWTH-DRIVEN DESIGN FOR UNDER ONE ROOF
For almost 20 years, Under One Roof has been a preferred provider of trade show flooring and other event services for companies across the country. Because of its strategic industry focus and expert customer service, this small, minority-owned business has been able to grow and thrive despite limited leverage of its online presence. During the spring of 2016, the company reached out to HeavyDuty Branding for help, specifically looking for a website redesign strategy that could help increase lead generation.
Identifying the Opportunity
For years, Under One Roof had been under-utilizing
its biggest marketing asset, best salesperson and centerpiece for all its marketing activities — its website. The previous site was primarily being used during telephone conversations with sales associates. In short, it served as a glorified brochure that just happened to contain the company’s contact information and little else. In addition, the company had very little social media exposure to bolster its digital presence.
Low search engine optimization meant fewer visitors to the site. Additionally, opportunities existed to create conversion points throughout the site which could produce new qualified leads. Finally, with very little content marketing in place and minimal social media use, the growth of the brand had slowed. Under One Roof knew changes were needed but the idea of a wholescale website redesign seemed daunting.
Avoiding the Traditional Way
With the average small to medium-sized business website costing anywhere between $20,000 and $80,000, the risk of making
that kind of investment of time, money and resources without knowing an impact on business would be foolish, especially for a company the size of Under One Roof. And since the typical site sits for almost a year or two with no updates after a launch, the usual way just wouldn’t work.
The decision to employ a Growth-Driven Design
model meant Under One Roof would walk away from the traditional process and the steep costs associated
in doing so. Ultimately, it led the way for HeavyDuty Branding to produce a peak performing website through a process called Growth-Driven Design, a systematic approach that was quick, agile, produced better results and delivered a higher ROI.
The First Stage of Growth-Driven Design
Strategy
Much like what you’d experience in building a traditional website, the first stage in Growth-Driven Design is to define the strategy and set clear goals. In this case, the shift was fairly obvious and easy. Since Under One Roof’s previous site didn’t allow for lead generation, was limited in clearly outlining the products and services it offered, and didn’t offer the content its users were mostly seeking, building a site that would address these concerns was the primary goal.
To better understand ways to build tailored content within the site, HeavyDuty Branding carved out four distinct
personas based on the types of people with whom they worked. These fictional representations were affectionately named Owner Ollie, Marketing Savvy Melissa, Salesy Sally and Admin Annie and corresponded with the job role or function they held. Since Growth-Driven Design focuses on the users, these personas are a key part of building, framing and organizing content.
Taking into account the quantitative research which focused on the website and analytics audit, we were able to see how most people were visiting the site; immediately looking for contact information or quickly going to interior pages to look at product colors and styles. We also learned about their average time spent on site and what pages were most important to them.
Next, we conducted qualitative research, where we conducted a poll and phone surveys to learn the reasons visitors came to the site, what they liked, disliked and areas where we could improve. After making fundamental assumptions based on the quantitative and qualitative research, we were able to explain their behavior and motivations.
The Wishlist
After the strategy portion was concluded, HeavyDuty Branding and the team at Under One Roof came together for a brainstorming session to develop a wishlist for the new site. With around 35 valuable ideas on the whiteboard ranging from “must have” to “nice to have,” the team could examine what should and could be implemented.
With a new and revitalized focus on labor services, we knew this would need to take center stage. A reorganization of its services and examples of prior work in its portfolio became two primary experience tracks. Many questions came up for users during a session, so we created a chat feature. We also found ways to infuse the brand’s personality and the three signature dogs that played about the office in Suwannee, Ga.
The Launch Pad Website
The HeavyDuty Branding team decided that a website template would serve as the foundation for a Launch Pad website to quickly go live and begin addressing Under One Roof’s “must haves.” The Growth-Driven Design process uses the Launch Pad website as a way to mark a better, drastic change meant to be improved upon incrementally. For this project, we sorted and selected which items from the wishlist items we could implement by priority, with other features and functionality going live over the next few months.
Finally, we wanted to make sure Under One Roof’s Launch Pad website was created to include ways to collect and track qualitative and quantitative data. This allowed us to track the goals we de ned in the strategy phase, our fundamental assumptions and the initial data coming into the Launch Pad site as it went live.
The Cycles of Continuous Improvement
For the next months after the Launch Pad website went live, we began developing different hypotheses based on the data the team was seeing. These on-going cycles of continuously experimenting, learning and improving the website are a fundamental aspect of the Growth-Driven Design process.
Each hypothesis was tested in succession as we cycled through four phases: plan, develop, learn, and transfer. There is no limit for the amount of times this cycle can be repeated, nor the amount of positive results it can create as hypotheses are constantly developed.
Results That Work for Everyone
After consulting with HeavyDuty Branding, Under One Roof decided to focus on creating an entirely new web experience, one which improved the user experience, worked harder for the company and employed the Growth-Driven Design model. Across the board, those within Under One Roof and its key customers had commented on the overall experience as being much more useful and a key factor in its positive sales numbers.
