As a HubSpot Partner, we tend to parachute into a lot of different situations with clients. Sometimes we work with other web design agencies or designers to collaborate on wireframes, while, at other times, we’re in complete creative control in terms of client direction.
You can certainly successfully use HubSpot to create a web design and launch a website on your own, but you’ll also likely notice the cavalcade of qualified HubSpot web design agencies offering their services.
In this article, I’ll outline the benefits of utilizing a HubSpot website design agency like Vaulted, empowering you with the knowledge to select the right agency for your project.
It’s easy to get confused about HubSpot and the various products (organized as “hubs”) that they offer, but once you understand what each hub does, you can leverage each to most efficiently help you meet your business goals.
Here’s a quick breakdown:
Whether you’re new to HubSpot or a seasoned veteran of the platform, if you’re reading this, you likely already know that HubSpot can be a powerful engine for growth. This is especially true for owned media like blog posts and websites, where a company directly controls the marketing message.
But HubSpot is more than just a starting point for a website. It’s a nexus for all your digital properties. With native support for popular ad platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook plus powerful tools like email marketing, HubSpot’s intended purpose is to be more than just a website.
We often overlook the most important aspect of our go-to marketing strategy: the digital properties we already own. You can make the most of your online presence with a HubSpot website.
Did you know you can run an entire website, end-to-end, using just HubSpot? Thanks to HubSpot's CMS Hub, a powerful and user-friendly content management system, you can build and manage a website on the platform with ease. This comes with distinct advantages over other web technologies and content management systems.
Let’s explore the advantages of creating a HubSpot website.
1. Unified View of Your Business
With a HubSpot website for your business, you’ll have a clear, unified view of the health of your business. In a single portal, you can view everything from the daily activities of your sales team to the number of visitors to your website. You can generate customized reports based on your real business goals, seamlessly delivering key performance indicators to your stakeholders.
In other words, a HubSpot website allows you to connect all the pieces of your business together. HubSpot provides a holistic view of how all the parts of your business are working, which parts of succeeding, and which parts may need more attention..
2. Measuring Content-Driven Growth
For many organizations, their website represents the opening act of a marketing and sales strategy. That is to say that websites are a significant way to source new business, firm up potential sales deals, and generate new relationships.
From a growth perspective, the issue is clear: your website will require quality content, and content marketing isn’t cheap.
We get it. Whether you’re investing in a paid social campaign on LinkedIn for an upcoming webinar or writing a blog post for SEO, every dollar matters when you’re producing content.
With a HubSpot website, you can track the effectiveness of that content and, maybe more importantly, tie those activities together and relate those to your actual sales and revenue.
3. Bringing What Matters Into Focus
When we hear clients discuss the benefits of HubSpot for running a website, they most often quickly mention the relief of skipping the common pitfalls of Wordpress and similar CMS platforms, like security and speed.
This explains some of the popularity of HubSpot websites; it avoids many of the drawbacks of a platform like Wordpress that need constant website maintenance and supervision. Those issues don’t even begin to touch on problems related to Wordpress performance, and it can be costly to hire a developer to begin to diagnose those performance issues.
By taking care of the basics of website management, the HubSpot website platform lets you focus on the most critical aspects of your business.
Frankly, that’s the heart of HubSpot: focusing on what matters the most at the expense of what doesn’t.
Security
Wordpress has a constant need for security updates and general website security maintenance. If you’ve worked with Wordpress before, you’ve likely encountered the headache that is an out-of-date plugin or incorrect permissions settings. Self-managed solutions like this can distract from larger growth strategies and plans.
Many important security basics are covered right out of the box with HubSpot:
5. Website Maintenance
When you choose a managed solution like HubSpot and work with a dedicated HubSpot web developer, you don’t have to worry about maintaining plugins or diagnosing technical issues, meaning you can focus on what matters the most: success..
6. Hosting Costs
While free solutions like Wordpress can seem like a popular option to save money, the cost associated with maintaining and updating these sites can easily exceed the cost of simply going with a HubSpot website in the first place.
Most website design projects intrinsically involve owned media, which is any medium where an entity has direct control over their marketing message. A critical part of that owned media is (you guessed it!) a company’s website.
A Harvard Business Review article underscores the foundational nature of websites:
“At the risk of oversimplifying, paid media is advertising and sponsorships, while earned media is public relations and word-of-mouth. Companies either pay to deliver content to an audience or try to earn coverage and exposure from reporters and influencers. In contrast, owned media is anything under companies’ direct control such as websites, newsletters, catalogs, and blogs.”
In today’s digital landscape, your website is effectively the starting point for your owned media strategy. Effective web design will both establish your brand message and serve as a foundation for growth.
When it comes to website design, no product better embodies these key features than HubSpot. At Vaulted, we view websites as essential building blocks for more advanced and effective marketing—your website serves as the reliable foundation for all other marketing efforts.
The impact of website performance on digital campaigns can’t be understated. Slow websites frustrate visitors, causing them to abandon checkout processes and bounce off websites. Plus, there’s overwhelming evidence that slower sites perform worse in search engine results.
As we’ve established, HubSpot, on a fundamental level, is built around producing incredible, powerful user experiences, especially as it relates to performance.
HubSpot’s website management platform has a few specific features that a HubSpot web design agency like Vaulted can help you take advantage of: A/B testing and SEO.
Testing is a critical part of any marketing strategy. At its most basic, A/B testing is the creation and analysis of variations of website pages, landing pages, or emails. By testing different variations, marketers and salespeople can discover which marketing messages or techniques are most effective.
A/B testing typically needs to be baked into whatever type of software you’re using to conduct and run a test.
Luckily, a HubSpot website comes with this functionality incorporated. With just a few clicks, you can test the copy related to a new promotion or see how a new page layout performs.
As a HubSpot Partner, we have the expertise to not only guide you through how to set up A/B testing, but how to strategically leverage the technology to produce better marketing outcomes. A/B testing can be used to lead your data-driven marketing in a smart way, making the most of your marketing dollars.
When asked which of HubSpot’s website features is most valuable, I immediately think of its search engine optimization tools, which allow you to monitor and improve your SEO strategy.
Rather than spending hours on the Internet or pinging ChatGPT, you can use HubSpot to evaluate your existing content and make recommendations that will improve your organic search results, thanks to HubSpot’s native SEO tools.
HubSpot website SEO tools include:
Throughout my career, I’ve had the misfortune of working in many different content management systems (CMS) and customer relationship management systems (CRM). HubSpot combines the best of both a CMS and a CRM in one sleek platform that allows you to focus on the work behind marketing instead of the repetitive tasks of operations.
At Vaulted, our goal is simple: to help you stand up and operate HubSpot as simply as possible. That perspective guides how we approach your website design as well.
Here’s what to expect with our optimized process:
Discovery is typically part of any professional services project and is the primary phase where essential information about the project is gathered. Critical data is identified and organized in order to proceed with future phases of a project.
When you choose to work with a HubSpot Partner like Vaulted, you’ll discover that we’re asking questions not typically discussed in the realm of strictly web design. Why? Because we know the power and extendibility of HubSpot, and we are designing for your next three years rather than just the next few months.
From leveraging smart content to A/B testing, our objective is to transform your relationship to your CRM and begin the building blocks of a much larger marketing program today.
From a technical perspective, working with an experienced HubSpot web designer ensures that your website is capable of the basic functions you need it to do. Rather than working with someone inexperienced on the platform, set yourself up for success by working with experts.
You can also benefit from the knowledge of best practices on how to use the platform. Rather than spending hours on tutorial videos, we can quickly onboard you to how to leverage a HubSpot website for maximum effect.
3. Building HubSpot for the Long Game
Make no mistake, choosing a HubSpot web designer for your HubSpot website is a forward-thinking move. Your HubSpot website will seamlessly integrate with the other powerful marketing, operations, and service tools that HubSpot offers, making it easier than ever to launch your next initiative.
Partnering with a HubSpot web design agency offers significant benefits that go beyond simple aesthetics. By working with a team that has extensive experience with the HubSpot platform, you can leverage their expertise in owned media growth, website performance optimization, and the long-term success of your marketing efforts.
The right agency can help you make the most of HubSpot's powerful tools for content-driven growth, tracking the effectiveness of your marketing investments, and connecting various aspects of your business together.
Collaborating with a HubSpot-focused web design agency can streamline your website design project and set your business up for success in future marketing endeavors. Our experts at Vaulted understand the platform's capabilities and can guide you through every step of the process, from discovery and onboarding to designing your website with the future in mind.
Ultimately, choosing a HubSpot web design agency is a forward-thinking move that can help you tap into the full potential of the platform and maximize the impact of your marketing and sales operations.
To get started on your HubSpot website, contact us today.