How to Build a Fast-to-Market Website for the New Economy

Our economic climate is rapidly changing. Is your website equipped to weather any environment?

It's not news to marketers and salespeople that our current economic climate shifted hard and fast. In a digitally-driven world your website is no doubt one of your most important tools. Does your website boast engaging content, strong search engine optimization (SEO), a smooth user experience, clean design, and ample options for lead generation. If not, it's not too late to act fast and adapt your website to excel in the new digital-first economy.

The traditional process for website development is broken.

Over the years, people, companies, and corporations of all sizes have been operating off of a dated process. The old, slow-to-market process takes too much time, involves too many people, and demands too many resources. It comes as no surprise that with that outdated process, website builds become way too expensive.

A traditional website building process encompasses three months of strategy, and roughly nine additional months to develop. Take a moment to consider the cost of that — that's an entire year of time, resources, and money. Following this traditional process, you’ve spent upwards of $50,000 -$100,000 in a year-long blink of an eye.

An expensive build doesn't equate to a high-value website. In fact, you may be setting your digital presence up for failure.

Because it’s been so expensive from the get-go, companies are apt to letting their website sit, rust, and outdate themselves until it’s absolutely crucial to build an entirely new website. Think of all the things that could change not only from a buyer’s perspective, but from an internal company perspective in one to two years. Your company could offer new products, have an entirely new staff, or completely pivot your business model — and your website wouldn't have the functionality to keep up with your changing needs.

It goes without saying that if your website can't adapt to your company's needs in real time, your business is surely missing out on potential qualified leads and product sales. Shouldn’t the process of building a website that works for you be implemented with a structure that’s not built for impending failure? 

You need a fast-to-market website that is built to evolve with your business and with the times.

Our current economic climate has proven that dated websites without editing and optimization abilities baked into the initial process are set up for impending failure. Luckily, with the fast-to-market process, this is a website problem of the past. 

Now, small- to medium-sized innovative companies in the new age are lean, efficient, and aggressive. Your website should be, too. Companies that excel are those that leverage agile solutions to get their message out quickly and provide buyers with crucial information that affects purchase decisions. Fast-to-market websites are the winners in the new economy. Your website development team should understand that your website needs to have the ability to adapt and shift as the market does.

What does a fast-to-market website build look like?

Your fast-to-market website has three phases:

1. Strategy
2. Build + launch
3. Optimization

A lean, agile team can build a fast-to-market website in as little as 4-6 weeks, utilizing Growth Driven Design, or "GDD", brought forth by Luke Summerfield of HubSpot.

Strategy Phase

This first stage focuses on developing an empathetic understanding of your audience and identifying requirements for your website. Your prospects have pain points they're trying to solve, and you can provide a solution. Leverage existing data and conduct research to look at how prospects are currently engaging with your website. This could entail looking at your website metrics and analytics, performing keyword research, monitoring social media to identify problems your consumers may be experiencing, developing your core buyer personas, or determining KPIs that are essential to the growth of your business. 

Build & Launch Phase

The Build & Launch phase is fast. You want to get something launched with the understanding that this is not the final product. Your website should be your MVP, or the "minimum viable product", needed to communicate your brand's message effectively, and aid buyers in the consideration stage of the buyer's journey. Your website development team should have the ability to produce this in 4-6 weeks. Performing the proper legwork during the strategy phase will ensure that this phase is fast and efficient.

Optimization Phase

Now that you've launched the MVP version of your website, it's time for ongoing optimization. The point of leaving room for optimization is to allow your buyers to inform your strategy and content. How are visitors ending up on your website? Where and how are they interacting with each webpage? Which of your content is proving to be less engaging? Collect data from visitors to the website to enable data-driven decisions. Basing your decisions around data will allow you to continually optimize your website and turn it into a valuable sales enablement tool.

Lastly, once you have some data to work from, you'll want to set tangible KPIs you can measure on a frequent basis in order to hit sales goals, marketing goals, and overall business goals.

Create a website that converts visitors to customers — in any economic climate.

Whether it's time to revamp your old website, or create an entirely new fast-to-market website, remember that your ultimate goal is to attract, engage, and delight your audience. With a fast-to-market website build, your site has the potential to become one of your greatest sales and marketing tools. Take our Free Website Assessment to see how your website currently stacks up.