Manchester NH HUG Blog

The first Manchester NH HUG meetup was a great success. It was the first time it was held at Schall Creative in the Millyard of Manchester. We had about 20 people in attendance with a range of inbound marketing and HubSpot experience.

 

The presentation was given by the event hosts, Fred and Stacey Schall (that's me!). The chosen topic was Growth Driven Design, a new but rapidly growing trend in the web design and development world, which is being guided by HubSpot’s Luke Summerfield.

 

 

What is Growth Driven Design? It’s a retainer based web development model, designed to continually improve the results of a website by making decisions based on data rather than assumptions and best practices. Instead of a 3 month redesign that ends with a website launch, a Growth Driven Design website starts with a launch pad website that goes live within 30-45 days. From there, action items are decided on and carried out based on what information can be collected from the users. There’s a monthly cycle that takes place which includes planning, developing, learning, and then transferring information and data to other departments. 

 

We have so many amazing tools available to us in order to improve user experience, why not use them as early and often as possible?

 

in the presentation, we talked about what GDD is, and what makes it a better way to design and develop a website. Here are a few key slides we presented.

 

 

The difference between GDD and traditional website design is that the strategy and launch pad is condensed into about 30-45 days. Then there is a cycle that continues on a monthly basis.

 

 

The impact of that cycle means that you have a continually improving website, and the improvements that you are making are based on data that you've collected from the user. Not from assumptions, "best practices," or data that other people have collected from other websites.

 

Of course the presentation dove much deeper into what GDD is and why it is effective. After that, we jumped into some real world examples of GDD tactics, and the tools that were used to carry them out. Here is a rundown of those tools:

 

We talked specifically about the contact record within HubSpot. This tool gives you some amazing insight into how people are using your site. Take a look at a sampling of people that converted on your site and see which pages aided in that conversion. If you’re using the enterprise version of HubSpot, you can also use A/B testing to test out different aspects of a landing page. 

 

Hotjar is a great tool that allows you to use heat maps, recordings, surveys and more to gain some insight on your user. Rumor has it that they are working on having a full integration with HubSpot, which is another big plus for using this tool. You can spend a lot of time creating a CTA for your website, only to find out that not a lot of people are seeing it. Maybe your users aren’t seeing a link, or they’re clicking on an image that isn’t a link. You would never know these things were happening if you didn’t use a tool like HotJar. 

 

 

Here's an example of a recording that was taken with HotJar.

 

 

This is what a click map and a scroll map might look like when you use HotJar.

 

Usability Tools takes full recordings of your users’ visits to your website. It’s a simplified way to see how they are interacting with your site. You can speed up the recordings, and see a complete journey from landing page to conversion. It’s a great way to step into the shoes of your users so you can see what improvements need to be made.

 

CrazyEgg is similar to HotJar—it’s a tool for heat mapping. The difference is that CrazyEgg doesn’t have all of the features that HotJar does, like surveys and forms. They do have a plan that starts at $9 a month. Both tools work great, and what you use is all a matter of what you need and what works for you.

 

We had some great feedback from our first Manchester HUG Meetup, and we are looking forward to having more and growing our community. If you have any topics you are interested in exploring, feel free to leave a comment! 

 

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