It's a trick question. You don't. After all the energy, effort and money you've put into your latest web redesign effort, you were just happy to get to launch day still sane. And, what does your project plan look like after the launch? How does it become a learning tool and not just a black hole?
Not only are there greater risks today involved in trying to get a website "perfect" from launch, such as time delays and cost overruns, but it's guaranteed to produce poor results. Why? Because your intuition isn't very good. If you don't believe me, then you should have a look at this.
It's an academic paper written by some Microsoft engineers a few years back describing their experiments for improving search performance on Microsoft.com. My favorite anecdote from this paper is as follows: Regis Hadiaris from Quicken Loans wrote that “in the five years I've been running tests, I'm only about as correct in guessing the results as a major league baseball player is in hitting the ball. That's right - I've been doing this for 5 years, and I can only "guess" the outcome of a test about 33% of the time!” (Moran, Multivariate Testing in Action, 2008).
What we're trying to say is, the current web design process is broken AND, there is a better way. It's quite simple, actually. It's based user centric and agile principles that allow you to launch something quickly (based on research and proper planning), and let your customers help determine the shape of the experience over the next 12 months.
The experience is called Growth Driven Design and it's all about building a process and methodology that produces better results through analyzing user data and helps establish a mindset and a framework for a cycle of continuous improvement.
Once we have data from an initial "launch-pad website" that is typically produced in half the time and at half the cost of a traditional "perfect" site, we can then get to creating a road-map for a peak-performing experience.
Our intention is to be laser focused on making sure your customers and prospects can find value as quickly as possible and achieve the goals they set out when visiting your website, the front line for your sales force.
CONCLUSION:
Now is the time to say goodbye to your old website building methodology. Stay tuned for the next episode in a series of posts featuring the benefits and details of Growth Driven Design.