Businesses can use an iterative approach to improve and build on establishing digital resources, such as a website, continuously. The advantage of this is to allow for improvements and uplifts overtime as the business scales.

We sat down with Angel Nguyen, our multimedia designer, to discuss her experience in using an iterative design approach to establish Exo’s new brand through creating a website. Our discussion focussed on iteration and iterative design in the sense of how a business can use an iterative approach to improve and build on established digital resources continuously.

Building a Website Minimum Viable Product

Angel was tasked with developing Exo Digital’s website using WordPress and Elementor. The purpose of the new website is to help bring in clients and give information to candidates.

Exo Digital is scaling as a business. We want potential clients and candidates to come in and see information on our case studies which show the projects that we’ve worked on, the process of approach and the results that came from it.

“When we first released the website, we had limited features because we wanted to get it out and start attracting clients. The idea of an iterative approach is to add features to a website as you go, keeping the website active and building an online presence.”  - Angel Nguyen, Multimedia Designer at Exo Digital

The crux of iterative design is understanding your Minimal Viable Product or MVP.

Your MVP is the minimum amount of information and features required to have a functioning website that draws online traffic.

This usually means getting your website to about 80% functionality before pushing it out. You are then able to create an online presence that establishes trust in your brand while you build and release content slowly over time.

Essentially, you have a live and constantly growing website, which keeps it fresh and engaging. It gives you room to develop where there’s a gap in the market and continue building to whatever the users are telling you to do.

4 Steps of the iterative approach

There’s freedom in knowing that nothing has to be perfect when the website is launched with the iterative approach. At Exo Digital, we’ve identified four steps to follow when adopting this approach.

Prototyping

Getting the first version of the website up and running to get the brand out there and engage with the target market.

Testing

There is always room for improvement. Do the features work? Is the website easy to navigate and intuitive? What can we improve to provide a better user experience?

Analysing

Analytics gives us insight into problems with conversion. Are users engaging with our page? Are they signing up? Is there anything on the page preventing them from engaging or signing up, i.e. too much or too little information?

Refining

Many of the perceived issues with the website will be based on assumptions. It’s good practice to test it out with customers and get their thoughts, feelings and motivations behind visiting the website in the first place. You can always add and remove things as you progress.

Understanding the iterative design approach

To truly understand the iterative design approach, you need to shift your mindset from making everything perfect before putting it out publicly. Instead, think about the minimum amount you can do and how to track the data to understand how people interact with the product.

Have an open mind to growing into whatever the users are saying that they want.Having the approach of not wanting everything 100% perfect before launch is very liberating in various ways. Launching a website doesn’t mark the end of a project, rather the beginning of an ongoing creative process.

“We’ve launched the Exo website, but minor things like UI and contact fixes need to be done. Nothing is perfect, nothing is broken, but things need refinement. We have the flexibility to do that with the iterative approach.” - Angel Nguyen, Multimedia Designer at Exo Digital

Stop agonising over the little things that don’t affect functionality, go with the flow and grow and improve over time.

If you would like to chat more about our iterative design approach, get in touch with our consultants at Exo Digital.