6 Signs Its Time to Ditch your Current HubSpot CMS Developer

06-27-2022 / deckerdevs

6 Signs Its Time to Ditch your Current HubSpot CMS Developer

You’ve heard it. You understand it. Yet somehow, so many companies aren’t maximizing it. So, we’ll say it again: Your website is your biggest opportunity for lead generation and revenue. No matter what you do, no matter what industry you do business in, or what products you sell — if you’re not maximizing your opportunities to generate revenue with your website, you’re missing out. Too many companies get caught up in the pure aesthetics of a website redesign and don’t dig deep enough into the intricacies of what makes a website that converts traffic into dollars.

How does your HubSpot CMS developer factor into your website conversion? A lot more than you realize. Slow page loading, website down time, poorly placed CTA buttons, and ill-conceived design elements are just the beginning of how a developer can have a negative impact on your website’s ability to convert. From initial design and user experience to load speed and efficient changes, every aspect of your website is either contributing to or detracting from your ability to generate revenue.

Here are a few indicators that it’s time to ditch your current HubSpot CMS developer:

You hired them based on price.

You get what you pay for, and despite that being a cliche, we still see many small businesses choose price over experience when it comes to website development. In the equation of value, experience matters. Bragging about getting a great deal on a new car is awesome, but getting a great deal on your web developer is probably going to cost you more in the long run.

Opportunity cost is defined as the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen. It’s the ROMO (reality of missing out), because when you choose a developer based on price you’re probably going to sacrifice one or more benefits: quality, experience, talent, time, or ROI. An inexperienced, inexpensive developer will cost you leads, customers, and sales — it’s just a matter of how.

Your page load speed is more than 4 seconds.

We recently engaged a client that worked with one of the biggest HubSpot CMS development partner agencies. The agency made a beautiful, cleanly coded website, so we were surprised to hear that the client was looking to move. Initially, they told us that the options the larger agency had for retainers were out of their budget, but as we dug in further during our audit, we noticed a critical issue with their resource center.

Resource centers are a great way for companies to centralize their content and add filters for categories, industries, and relevant topics. In this case, rather than using the native HubSpot database, the agency opted for a cloud server that needed to be accessed on every page load. This unnecessary step added 2-4 seconds to access the resource database, depending on the connection, aside from all the other elements on the website that needed time to load. A user on the page was waiting well over 5 seconds for the biggest educational resource on the website to load. A company’s web resource center is the tool that helps move prospects down the funnel and through the sales process on their own, and we cannot even begin to imagine the number of opportunities.

In this case, the web developers did all the right things and had the right amount of experience, but someone made a critical mistake. That mistake might have been the result of not understanding the different features and capabilities in HubSpot, but the reason doesn’t matter — the client not only is missing sales opportunities, but their rankings suffer in the long term as the result of slow load times. Load speed is critical. If you need more insight about page load speed, check out this blog on factors affecting page load time.

It takes them more than a few days to respond to you, if they respond at all.

More cliches: Time is money. It’s a direct translation here.Whether something major is broken or you just need to update the position of a CTA button in your header, you need to know that your updates are a priority when it comes to HubSpot CMS development. You need an agency that is responsive and knowledgeable, balancing quick solutions with long-term experience in HubSpot CMS. If a developer is ghosting you on a project or generally unresponsive when you approach them for assistance, you need another partner.

Every moment that you spend with a site that isn’t converting optimally is time that you’re losing potential traffic and leads on your site. Balancing an experienced developer with a developer who can handle capacity and regards their clients (and their business goals) as a priority rather than just a number is critical. Is the biggest agency the best solution? Maybe. But it’s even better to get an experienced HubSpot developer who still has that small-business touch when it comes to your website.

They use the word "impossible."

When a web developer tells you something isn’t possible, the odds are they’re being lazy, lack the knowledge they need to execute your idea, or consider the solution time intensive (costly). The term impossible doesn’t exist at an agency with real knowledge of the HubSpot CMS. While it may appear that a solution is unavailable out of the box, there’s usually some kind of workaround to support what you’re trying to do: We just have to think creatively to determine exactly how we can execute it within the constraints of the available features and tools. In the world of web development, especially with a powerful tool like HubSpot, nothing is impossible, it’s just a matter of budget and time to execute.

They’re order takers.

If a client demands it (as sometimes happens with our white-label clients), we will always take a design and implement it as we receive it. However, we will also always raise potential issues we see with that design, whether or not the client has asked for our feedback.

We cannot in good conscience develop a site for a client knowing it’s not the best solution. As we’ve said in a previous blog, your website isn’t a submarine sandwich. Can you walk up and place an order for something you think you want? Absolutely. Is that necessarily what your target buyer wants? Probably not.

We always balance our expertise, our understanding of the tools available within HubSpot CMS, and your needs with user experience and the needs of the buyers who are seeking you out. It’s a red flag when your developer doesn’t ask questions. What you’re asking for might seem simple, but often it can mean the difference between getting what you want versus what you need. An experienced developer can take you to places you didn’t even know you wanted to go.

They’re not digging into your integration opportunities.

For the majority of our clients, we are their go-to for business processes related to their website and technology. A good developer understands a website that converts isn’t enough. The more streamlined the process and delivery between sales, marketing, and customer service are, the happier customers and employees will be.

If your developer is knowledgeable enough to build API integrations and really dig into how your software applications are sharing (or not sharing) data with HubSpot, you can streamline many aspects of your day to day operations. Ensuring your main line of business application speaks to HubSpot CRM, and vice versa, will allow for revenue attribution, more detailed customer profiles, and the ability to close the loop on your sales process.

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