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The Gist
- Faster launch. Agile development reduces website launch time from six-to-12 months to just two-to-three months.
- Enhanced quality. Focus on brand storytelling, professional copywriting and efficient design ensures high-quality websites.
- Continuous growth. Ongoing feedback and improvements drive lead generation and growth post-launch.
Traditional website development projects are often expensive, months-long exercises in disappointment and poor performance — launched as much out of frustration as completion as companies decide to cut their losses and put the painful process behind them.
An agile website development approach, on the other hand, produces better results in less time, shrinking development time to just two-to-three months from the traditional six-to-12 months — without compromising quality.
Agile website development works by focusing on the following important concepts.
Related Article: Website Redesign: Your Brand-New Website Is Just the Beginning
5 Key Concepts for Agile Website Development
1. Embrace Brand Storytelling
The foundation of a high-performing website lies in its ability to tell the story of your brand in a way that resonates powerfully with prospects. By presenting compelling, educational content that addresses each stage of the buyer’s journey, effective website content demonstrates your understanding of a prospect’s problems and capabilities for solving them.
Agile website development requires a deep dive into your business and content that communicates the elements of your brand story:
- Lead With the Problems You Solve: Clearly articulate the challenges your target audience faces and the opportunities that arise when they are overcome.
- Identify Your Audience: Articulate who stands to benefit. Who do you serve as your primary market, along with segments of key vertical markets?
- Explain How You Solve These Problems: Provide a clear and concise overview of how your solutions, process and people work (further detail can be provided via “learn more” links and additional web content for those who want to dig deeper).
- Showcase Your Credibility: Use case studies, reviews, testimonials and success metrics to build trust and show examples of your effectiveness.
- Demonstrate Thought Leadership: Use content marketing — foundational web pages, educational blogs, case studies, guides/whitepapers/ebooks), press releases, calculators, video, etc., to share knowledge and establish authority in your field.
Note: if you’re not sure who your audience is or what they value from you, it’s important to first conduct market research before embarking on any website development projects.
Related Article: The Art of Storytelling for Brands and Marketers
2. Utilize Professional Copywriters
Brand storytelling begins on your home page, where visitors should find a comprehensive overview of your solutions, with multiple paths for further exploration, including links to sub-brand stories that resonate with the different market segments that you serve.
For best results, use the services of a professional and experienced copywriter, ideally with a strong portfolio of published work in newspapers, magazines, trade publications and other reputable outlets where interviewing, writing and storytelling, fact-checking and editing skills are required. Former journalists are ideal.
Content is central to lead generation — which is why beautifully designed websites with little content or light ad copy often disappoint. Writing quality is a key factor in conveying your expertise and credibility in a way that enlightens prospects and leaves them wanting to talk to you. Content created by professional writers can spark engagement and generate leads from the initial brand storytelling through ongoing content marketing.
Related Article: Why Visual Storytelling Is Important to Brand Messaging
3. Stage Your New Brand Storytelling Content & Upgrade Your Design
Contrary to an approach that gets bogged down in mood boards, design concepts and lorem ipsum placeholders, agile development focuses on efficiency:
- Start With Content: Have your professional copywriter(s) write new foundational, brand storytelling content that spans the page in a compelling and educational flow, from the header, navigation, marquee and unique bands of content down through the footer — this is best done in Word so it can be reviewed and edited prior to any designer’s involvement (be sure to strictly adhere to version control to avoid marking up the wrong version).
- Stage the Content & Enhance Existing Design Elements: Minimize time wasted on a subjective design process by having your web design and development team stage new content by applying creative upgrades to your current web design; starting from scratch with multiple design concepts that take three-to-10 times longer to create, review and implement but don’t generate any more leads, is an inefficient and clunky process, especially if a committee of people is reviewing; you’ll get better results by focusing on content, and you’ll still have the opportunity to upgrade design as you go.
Related Article: Web Design: Where’s the Happy Medium Between Too Much and Not Enough?
4. Iterate Based on Feedback
Rapid iteration based on internal and external feedback helps to expedite and refine at the same time. Borrowing from classic project management strategies, iterative-based development relies on feedback to create more compelling content and design that represents your brand and appeals to your prospects.
Using a brand story framework, the foundation for this iterative process begins with two areas:
- Revise the Home Page: Incorporate feedback to refine the home page design.
- Extend the Design Language: Apply the home page’s design elements across the site, with tailored layouts for key pages like primary solution pages, the About section and your blog.
Related Article: Is Your Website Designed With Customer Experience in Mind?
5. Launch & Continuously Improve
Agility doesn’t end at launch. Today’s web is dynamic, so continuous improvement helps ensure the ongoing relevance and effectiveness of your site:
- Monitor Leading Indicator Performance: Use analytics to understand key performance indicators (KPIs) that precede lead generation and sales — i.e., keyword rankings, organic search traffic, overall traffic, top pages viewed, average time spent on your site, bounce rate, and form submissions. Track these year-over-year (monthly variations can render month-to-month comparisons that are misleading).
- Iterate Based on Insights: Implement changes based on data and user feedback to enhance the user experience and monitor the result (a cycle).
Build on what works, discard what doesn’t, and keep trying new things that may appeal to prospects.
While experience and a proven process guide us, the dirty little secret of marketing is that you never know what’s going to work until you try it — and agile continuous improvement is critical for course corrections and discovering new opportunities.
The Advantages of Agility in a Rapidly Changing Digital World
Agile website development isn’t just a methodology, but a mindset of embracing change, all forms of feedback and continuous improvement. Forward-thinking companies leverage agile methodologies to deliver compelling, effective websites in a fraction of the traditional development time with exponentially higher lead generation.
By focusing on brand storytelling, professional copywriting, efficient design, feedback and continuous improvement, you can ensure that your website is launched swiftly and fuels your growth.
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