What services should a growth-driven design agency provide?

The method's strategy stage connects what the audience needs and what the business wants to a wishlist, and then turns the wishlist into a plan for building. An agency's first service is doing that work with you and writing down the result.

The method's guide to UX research starts with a question about something users were observed struggling with. The team picks a way to investigate it and reports what it found. Interviews and surveys ask people directly, and in a task-based test the team observes people trying to complete something. Heatmaps, recordings and analytics record what visitors did on the site. A click doesn't explain a motive, so an agency should be able to say which method answered which question.

The strategy work turns that evidence into decisions about the site. Lean Labs' article on the three stages shows one version of the output. It recommends talking to customers, sales reps and support staff. Its strategy stage ends in documents such as problem statements, a buyer-path map, a site architecture and a messaging framework. Another agency may package the work differently. What you need at the end is a document that names the audience, the goal, the pages and the reason each page made the list. We go through that document in what a growth-driven design blueprint should include.

The method calls the first release a launchpad and describes it as a foundation for collecting user data and improving, not the final product. It also says speed shouldn't come at the cost of value to the user. So the agency is building a working site that covers the pages the strategy ranked first, and the rest of the wishlist waits.

That takes several kinds of work, and the agreement should say who does each. The work includes writing the page content, designing and developing the pages and the reusable components behind them, and moving the pages that carry over from the old site. It also includes setting up analytics so there is a baseline to compare against later. Not every agency staffs all of that itself. Some expect your team to write or to supply subject experts, and that is fine when the scope says so.

In Lean Labs' three-stages article, the build runs as a messaging sprint, a design sprint and a development sprint, and the launchpad with its strategy is priced at $30,000 to $70,000 or more. The design sprint uses a separately named offer, the Design Blueprint, which sets visual direction by redesigning one key page. If an agency quotes a design package like that beside a build, ask whether its fee is included in the build quote. We compare prices across the stages in how much growth-driven design costs.

An agency should also bring a way to get decisions made. The method's launch process recommends time-boxed work and one accountable stakeholder for each page, who gathers everyone else's feedback. When several people approve a page and nobody owns the decision, a build can stall while revisions go back and forth.

The third service starts once the site is live. The method's improvement cycle has four steps. The team plans around a focus metric and a ranked list of ideas, builds the chosen changes, learns from the data and transfers what it learned to marketing, sales and service. An agency selling this stage should cover the work in each step: analysis and ranking, the design and development of changes, and reporting what happened.

Lean Labs' growth-driven design program runs the cycle in 30-day sprints on HubSpot CMS and draws on page behavior, forms, CRM lifecycle data and sales feedback. It names the work it covers as messaging, forms, calls to action, personalization and lead routing.

Ongoing work is often sold for a monthly fee, and the fee needs a scope as much as the build does. Suppose a retainer is sold as a set amount of a team's time each month. The fee buys that time, and it isn't unlimited work. If the agency also promises a number of experiments, the agreement should define that count. Suppose the agreed plan for one month is a rebuilt pricing page and a test on the demo form, and the pricing page takes the whole month. Whether the test moves to the next month depends on what the agreement says about unfinished work. So the agreement should say who sets the order of work, what carries over and how you will know what a month produced. We cover those terms in what a growth-driven design contract and retainer should include.

Improvement work is also broader than experiments. Some changes go live on judgment because the page gets too few visits for a comparison to be conclusive, or because sales has heard the same question on enough calls. An agency should tell you which changes were tested and which were shipped on evidence of another kind. We cover the measures behind that reporting in what metrics to track in growth-driven design.

You should know who holds the design files, the site's templates and modules, the analytics accounts and the backlog, and what you keep if the engagement ends. Lean Labs' program is built for HubSpot CMS, and other agencies work on WordPress or Webflow, so ask which changes your own team can make in the editor and which need the agency's developer.

Ask for a record of why things were done as well. A backlog that lists each idea, the evidence behind it and the result helps a new marketing lead, or a different agency, continue the work without reconstructing the reasons.

Some companies need only part of this. A company with its own designers and developers can buy strategy and analysis from an agency and do the building in-house.