In 2019 I was a baby-faced design graduate from the University of Sunderland who loved exploring the world when I landed in Croatia. It was a beautiful place and was going to be my new home. When I started my job search, I looked into local agencies, and that’s when I first learned about FIVE, a mobile and design development company that is now part of Endava. Until then, I followed a different path. In the following years, I spent some time in advertising, working with different areas of design, and eventually fell in love with the digital path. Then in April 2022, an opportunity to work as a visual designer in the Growth team at Endava knocked on my door. I had been waiting for this a long, long time — to say I was excited is an understatement. I said yes in a heartbeat. But then I asked myself, what is growth marketing and what does design have to do with it?

Learning by doing 

Growth marketing applies data science — measuring the numbers of a product’s everything — to optimize user acquisition, engagement, experience, and any other parts of the user journey. These numbers usually start as KPI baseline measurements, which are a way to measure the product’s health. Then, through A/B and multivariate testing (think of it as planned trial and error), you can look at the numbers, find out what’s working, and optimise your client’s growth strategy. 

Each part of the growth process is essential to the other, with data as the foundation for user acquisition, product optimisation, engagement, and design. Endava’s Growth team has it all, and that’s why they’re known for delivering successful results and satisfying clients’ needs time after time. You can find out more about our holistic take on growth strategy in this post.

Data, data, data

A designer has a multi-disciplinary role in the team. We primarily work in user acquisition, engagement, and product. But we also work on brand design and UX/UI (product optimization). It’s a job that is never boring, and the new challenges that arise with each new client are something keeping me ticking.

We ideate and iterate on different creatives to get the best possible results for each project and client. We take data, and we make the creative look good. And repeat. This refinement gives our clients the high-performing results they chose us for, backed up by the facts.

Teamwork makes the dream work

Collaboration is constant. While the User Acquisition team doesn’t necessarily work with the Engagement team, the Design team works with everyone, meaning constant communication within our team of designers and one amazing copywriter. Here’s a look at what we do for the other teams.

For user acquisition, here’s how our creative expertise helps our team acquire more users for our clients.

  • Display and social ads are common channels for reaching new customers. Display ads are banner ads that you’ll find everywhere on the internet. They come in various shapes, sizes, and flavours, all of which we adapt accordingly. These creatives are built up from various elements such as copy, images, video, animation, and sometimes audio. Our user acquisition team can micro-target users with ads like these, displaying them at the right place at the right time.
    Google Ads is the platform of choice when working with display ads. For social ads, we acquire users via social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, complete with style guides and requirements for each. Just like display ads, we target social ads using user data. Overall, both approaches are powerful additions to traditional marketing campaigns and completing them for optimal results.
     
  • We also make “fake” landing pages to aid concurrent marketing campaigns. Typically, these landing pages are where users wind up after clicking a link in an email or other ad campaign. Unlike traditional web pages, which encourage exploration, we design these with a specific goal — acquiring new users. They’re another part of the funnel that provides actionable data for conversions.
     
  • App Store Optimisation, or ASO, can be tricky. There are a lot of rules to follow while still being creative and standing out in the App Store and Google Play. There’s more to it than having “good” app screenshots in the image gallery. Adding a video that incorporates branding and value props is essential to catch the eyes, spark imagination, and, hopefully, attract new customers. We approach ASO with patience, lots of it, and a healthy amount of trial and error. Never underestimate ASO. There are more apps than ever competing for your potential users.

When it comes to product optimisation, there are many moving parts. But most important is this: our goal is to make a product more valuable to its current users — by alleviating UX/UI pain points, say — while also attracting new ones.

  • Product discovery is the first step in the design process. A lot goes into it. One tool that’s great for this is a heat map. A heat map tracks a user’s on-screen movements on screen and analyses the collected data. The collected data is presented in different colours: warm colours for where users linger; cold colours for where they don’t. This allows us to identify app pain points and no-go points and optimise accordingly.
  • UX audits are fun adventures. We use them to identify areas where a product could be improved or has usability issues, consequently causing a drop-off in conversions. Whatever the data says about user behaviour, whether the product has poor navigation or another lacking functionality, that’s what we use as our basis for optimising performance and business.
  • A/B and multivariate testing are essential for product optimisation. Simply split your app audience in half and give Audience A one thing and Audience B another, but with only one variable changed. Want to test more than one variable? That’s where multivariate testing comes in. This is great for figuring out what users respond to and what works versus what a client “feels” right — with data leading the way.

Just as the name suggests, engagement stimulates a product’s customers and existing user base. Through long-term strategies, the engagement team helps client audiences gain familiarity with a brand and eventually drives its customers to convert on their terms. Building and strengthening your relationship with your audience will boost revenue and stoke positive customer opinion. Here’s how:

  • We can promote products, services, news, and offers while building loyalty and trust through brand awareness by emailing users. From a design perspective, emails are a fun challenge. There are always things to consider, like HTML limitations and email client adaptability. Email design is a great exercise in managing creativity that matches the brand’s tone of voice and makes the audience want to engage, click, and tap for more.
     
  • Everyone knows in-app messages. But most people don’t know how powerful they are for engaging with users. They pop up only when the user is active in an app, making them the perfect medium for driving action through promotions and app exploration. These are split-second interactions, so we must create something eye-catching that makes someone want to click.
     
  • Push notifications are simple. They’re less fancy than in-app messages but equally important for engagement.

And, yes, A/B and multivariate testing is essential. That’s how we get our data.

Tools of the trade

Figma is our best friend

We’re a team that thrives on collaborative work. And Figma makes it easy to do just that. We can edit files together in real time and easily follow along with the presented work. Leaving and answering comments is easy and helps streamline everyone’s work processes — for designers, copywriters, project leads, and clients.

Sometimes clients have their products designed in other programs, so we need to adapt. The most common ones are Sketch, Zeplin, and Adobe XD (read more below).

Adobe Creative Cloud

Designers know they can always rely on their good old friend, Adobe. Motion design comprises a lot of our work, and After Effects is our go-to program. It’s essential for ASO and other aspects of user acquisition. We also use Illustrator to create icons and illustrations that we incorporate into emails and engagement-related tasks. Illustrator’s pen tool is easier to use and gives us more detail than Figma. Finally, we use Photoshop for editing image assets.

Fake landing page stuff

Unbounce allows us to create customised landing pages and change their HTML to fit our needs. It’s a drag-and-drop tool that helps us streamline the process from design to development to delivery. We can also send data from the fake landing page to other CRM tools that the team uses.

Slack & Teams

Quick communication is essential because we often work remotely. We use Slack and Teams both internally and with clients.

The best of the rest

We couldn’t do what we do without some other tools that Growth uses, the ones that gather the data so we can work our digital magic. User Acquisition likes AppTweak for ASO and GoogleAds. Firebase and Hotjar are essential for product optimization. Engagement turns to Braze, Leanplum, Iterable, Customer.io, & MoEngage. Finally, the Data team uses Google Analytics 4, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Looker Studio, and Google Tag Manager.

Endava’s Growth team has been transformative in how we approach and solve problems. Growth solutions aim to not only satisfy current product problems and requirements but also take into account long-term value. First, we ask if we’re solving the right problem. Then, we make sure our solution generates quality data that we can leverage through analytics, product A/B testing, user acquisition and engagement, and much more.

And off we grow…

So now that you know:

  • What growth is 
  • How important it is 
  • A designer’s role in it 
  • And how awesome our growth team is 

Are you ready for the next step? If we sparked your curiosity and you now find yourself with a growing (pun intended) interest, check out our open positions. If you don’t see anything that fits, send an open application anyway.

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