HubSpot recently launched its fourth "hub" called CMS Hub. The new CMS Hub includes a completely revamped publishing system. Website building tools will play a bigger role in the HubSpot toolkit. We wrote a story about what CMS Hub contains and what are the biggest differences from the old CMS add-on.
In the past, CMS has been offered as an add-on to other HubSpot products, but in the future it will also be available as a stand-alone product that can be easily linked to any automation or CRM platform. With this change HubSpot aims to be a notable challenger to well-known open source platforms such as WordPress and Drupal. We’ve listed the most important CMS Hub features in this story that are worth a visit for every marketer.
In addition to the previously used site templates, it is now possible to create themes in CMS Hub. Themes are pre-customized packages that include modules, page templates, and style files. Themes make life easier for marketers, as they allow you to easily customize your site's styles, colors, and functionalities - without the help of a developer! HubSpot offers a number of ready-made themes to choose from, or you can create a theme just right for you with a website developer.
The new CMS Hub gives users significantly more flexibility in editing, testing, and using the content they create on a website (without the constant need to pull a developer by the sleeve). The drag-and-drop editor will be even more flexible and agile in the future as global module settings do not limit the appearance of individual elements. If you want to make changes throughout the website, editing global elements will be as easy in the future as creating a CTA or form. If you make edits to the visual elements or colors that define your entire site, you can easily see what the end result will look like in the preview, as well as get a clear list of which all the pages the change will affect. Overall, customizing your site is more flexible and easier than before and this is what marketers are really excited about!
If in the past HubSpot has not been seen as an equal competitor in the competition between publishing systems, now CMS Hub offers a wide range of opportunities to build even the most demanding sites. Modern websites seamlessly combine the functionalities of numerous different service providers and CMS Hub is flexible when it comes to integrations. For large companies, new CMS Hub offers an agile way e.g. to manage the language versions of websites and the secure use of multiple domains.
Want to create a customer community for your website? With the new Memberships feature in CMS, you can create sites that are only accessible to logged-in users and that allow you to securely display personalized content. You can easily create services where the customer can, for example, check the status of their own open service requests or license information. The new Memberships site is guaranteed to be a much-anticipated feature for many HubSpot customers, as previously similar solutions have required rigorous technical development and complex implementations.
Technologically, one of the biggest leaps in the new CMS Hub is the so-called serverless architecture, which makes presenting customer-specific information through an interface on a website really much more secure - and simpler to implement - than before. The same architecture allows different functions and applications to be added to the site and allows the end user to experience an even more dynamic experience in an online environment. The new login feature expands the capabilities of the HubSpot publishing platform. Even larger companies with demanding needs for publishing platform’s flexibility and customizability will be able to rely on CMS Hub.
Check out the example: Vere’s Pioneers online community
The new CMS Hub also introduces marketers to A/B testing for different language versions of websites. Previously users could do A/B testing only on the main pages but not on the language versions. Through content optimization, the convertibility of pages can be tested, allowing the system to drive traffic to the best-performing page version. A/B testing is already an established way of working in email marketing, so it’s definitely worth using testing in website development as well - at least now that it’s made really easy.
HubSpot’s CMS now brings the missing piece to the Marketing, Sales, and Service Hubs as website behavioral data brings completely new dimensions to contact attribution measurement. Modeling can be used to assess the impact of content, channels, and campaigns on lead generation and thus sales generation. Attribution measurement is an area that no marketer can ignore in 2020.
Many of us remember those mammoth website development projects that just never ended. Projects where the light at the end of the tunnel and hope faded as weeks, months and, in the worst case, years just flew past.
Although website implementations are more complex and extensive than ever before, their development has become easier and faster. The GDD model, or Growth Driven Design, is the new standard for designing and building customer-centric websites. GDD is a customer-centric, agile and data-driven approach that minimizes the pitfalls of traditional web design and significantly streamlines the traditional process. Check out our customer story on how we agilely redesigned their website using the GDD model for Invalidisäätiö.