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Some Recent Thoughts...
Juicy Tidbits Without the "Tech Speak"
A compilation of ramblings about everything from HubSpot CMS development to data architecture, integrations and all the tech stuff you never knew you needed to know.
memeify the blog!
Blogs Listing - UPDATE 2024 (Jordan)
5 Things to Add to Your Website Budget in 2023
Even if you've already created your website budget for 2023, make more room - we have a few items you probably forgot.
5 Things Wrecking ECommerce Conversion Rates with Holiday Shoppers
Are you ruing your ecommerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers? Here are a few tips...
Why a HubSpot Mega Menu Should Be Your Next Website Investment
Your arsenal of content is getting bigger by the day - here's why a HubSpot mega menu should be your next website investment.
How to Organize a Mega Menu for IT Managed Services Company
Here's how to organize your mega menu for IT managed services companies.
How’d you do? Let’s Talk Site Performance for Black Friday Weekend
When it comes to site performance for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you don't want to miss a THING.
5 signs you’ve outgrown WordPress CMS
Your website shouldn't be breaking constantly and handicapping your marketing team. Here are a few signs that you've outgrown WordPress CMS.
Upwork Developers : A Tradeoff That’s More Risky Than You Think
Upwork developers are a costly tradeoff - here's why we find it to be too risky to trust your web development to a stranger you found on Upwork.
Creating Custom Objects in HubSpot
HubSpot's custom objects have been rolled out to SuperAdmin users with Enterprise subscriptions - here's what you need to know.
Your Web Development Budget Restrictions are Holding You Back
Your web development budget restrictions will handicap your marketing and sales goals and cost you more than you think.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
- \n
- adopt continuous improvement \n
- optimize page speed \n
- switch to a sustainable website platform \n
- organize your content better \n
- add more back-end features and more flexible modules
Adopting continuous improvement
\nIf you’re already ahead of the game and have a set budget for certain website projects for 2023, we’re pretty proud of you, because most businesses don’t even set aside the budget to redesign their website. Rather than spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on redesigning your website every few years, create a smaller, more manageable budget that allows you to continuously add new modules and features on your website. By adopting the idea of continuous improvement over time, you can do all of the following:
\n- \n
- allocate a predictable monthly budget \n
- work reliably with a skilled developer \n
- improve your website on an ongoing basis to optimize for conversions \n
- add back end functionality inside your website interface to help your marketing team upload and create content more effectively. \n
- creating workflow automations to free up your task time \n
- generate reports to help you better understand data trends over time \n
- refine navigation or resource center filters to better organize your content. \n
According to HubSpot’s 2022 Web Traffic & Analytics Report (we found it interesting that more website analytics data didn’t make the cut of the State of Inbound Report) 58% of website analysts indicated that sales, leads and conversion rates were the most important metrics in assessing website performance - and yet, few companies create a strategy and budget item to strategically improve their website to optimize these things. While website content, optimization efforts, compelling images and CTAs go a long way to improve conversions — small changes to how filters work, the location of a simple button, the functionality of a website’s navigation and so much more directly influence conversion rates.
Related: HubSpot CMS Development - The Continuous Improvement Model
\nOptimizing page speed
\n![\"deckerdevs-fast](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/deckerdevs-fast%20website.svg\")
Recently a website project came to us that was launched and completed by another developer, but the resource center took more than 10 seconds to load, which annihilated conversion rates and sent their bounce rates for their most important content through the roof. The resource center was using an external cloud server that needed to be accessed on every page load rather than a native HubSpot database. We changed the configuration and assisted in media resizing and BOOM - overnight they experienced a significant load speed change. Now rather than seconds, the resource center takes only milliseconds to load, which most marketers understand is absolutely critical when it comes to conversion rates.
It’s so easy to finish up a website and just lean on what you have. “If it ain’t broke,” am I right? But sometimes what we consider to be working is actually seriously handicapping us. That minivan at the race you’re trying to win *works*, right? But it’s not exactly going to break any track records for speed.
If your website, resource center or blog is taking more than a couple seconds to load, you should invest in updates and optimization to help bring that number down, because it will do incredible things for your conversion rates.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nSwitching to a sustainable platform
\n![\"deckerdevs-wordpress](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/deckerdevs-wordpress%20to%20hubspot%20migration-1.svg\")
Adopting a mindset of continuous website improvement and growth driven design is only as easy as your website platform and the framework you’ve built it from. Adding on features and functionality in Wordpress may mean having to piecemeal plugins and result in a bloated website that runs more slowly. If you’re taking a more long term approach to your website, you’ll want to build on a framework that allows for these types of improvements.
We primarily work in HubSpot and have found it not only super flexible for adding new modules, but secure and fast. It’s easy to add and remove functionality and while we do recommend that you consult your developer prior to purchasing a theme, there are a lot of great options that are well-vetted by HubSpot in the theme marketplace. Custom builds allow for more flexibility, notably so, again, contacting a skilled developer before you make an investment in HubSpot CMS is pretty critical.
Related: Signs You’ve Outgrown Wordpress CMS
\nBetter content organization
\n![\"deckerdevs-megamenus\"](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/deckerdevs-megamenus.svg\")
We’re a little obsessed with navigation and we personally believe your navigation structure will make or break your conversion rate and other important website statistics like time on site and pages viewed. We’re also huge fans of proactive planning, which is why we’ve dedicated so much time to geeking out on mega menus. We believe that your mega menu should be well-conceived and strategized and not just a way to inundate your audience with everything on your website. By organizing strategically according to the buyer’s journey, your highest converting website content and putting most frequently viewed pages front and center, you’ll do so much for the user experience on your site. Rather than your most valuable content being buried in your landing pages, why not place some directly in your menu?
Your goal as a business should be to make your website easy to navigate while also providing your prospects with the critical information that they’re looking for. Organizing your pillar pages, menu navigation and website in a way that flows properly and coincides with the buyers’ journey will set you and your website prospects up for success.
Back end features and flexible modules.
\nThere’s nothing worse than a website that you’re constantly having to piecemeal and hack to accomplish the simple goals that you have when it comes to adding content. It’s a frustration we hear come from prospect after prospect, “The interface is just kinda cumbersome” or “We just want to do this one small thing, but the feature isn’t there.” The age of not having full control over your website is over - particularly if you make a move over to HubSpot CMS.
HubSpot CMS might be a decent investment, but it’s a really great way to ensure long term scalability in your website. Take a look at what they have to say about their content management system. Considering our founder built one of the very first websites on HubSpot CMS, we can definitely attest to how it has grown and improved over the years. HubSpot is a platform committed to scalable solutions and the flexibility and power for marketers when partnered with the right developer is amazing.
Every year you probably create big goals surrounding your website, lead generation, conversions and sales. Every year you probably encounter huge obstacles with your website. Make this the year that you truly allocate and plan proactively to make sure your website services your needs and can grow with your goals in the long term. Let’s get to the end of next year and look back proud at what we’ve accomplished.
Cheers to a new approach to your website *and* sales growth when we put our budget in the right places.
What are your website goals in 2023? Let us know in the comments.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
- \n
- adopt continuous improvement \n
- optimize page speed \n
- switch to a sustainable website platform \n
- organize your content better \n
- add more back-end features and more flexible modules
Adopting continuous improvement
\nIf you’re already ahead of the game and have a set budget for certain website projects for 2023, we’re pretty proud of you, because most businesses don’t even set aside the budget to redesign their website. Rather than spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on redesigning your website every few years, create a smaller, more manageable budget that allows you to continuously add new modules and features on your website. By adopting the idea of continuous improvement over time, you can do all of the following:
\n- \n
- allocate a predictable monthly budget \n
- work reliably with a skilled developer \n
- improve your website on an ongoing basis to optimize for conversions \n
- add back end functionality inside your website interface to help your marketing team upload and create content more effectively. \n
- creating workflow automations to free up your task time \n
- generate reports to help you better understand data trends over time \n
- refine navigation or resource center filters to better organize your content. \n
According to HubSpot’s 2022 Web Traffic & Analytics Report (we found it interesting that more website analytics data didn’t make the cut of the State of Inbound Report) 58% of website analysts indicated that sales, leads and conversion rates were the most important metrics in assessing website performance - and yet, few companies create a strategy and budget item to strategically improve their website to optimize these things. While website content, optimization efforts, compelling images and CTAs go a long way to improve conversions — small changes to how filters work, the location of a simple button, the functionality of a website’s navigation and so much more directly influence conversion rates.
Related: HubSpot CMS Development - The Continuous Improvement Model
\nOptimizing page speed
\nRecently a website project came to us that was launched and completed by another developer, but the resource center took more than 10 seconds to load, which annihilated conversion rates and sent their bounce rates for their most important content through the roof. The resource center was using an external cloud server that needed to be accessed on every page load rather than a native HubSpot database. We changed the configuration and assisted in media resizing and BOOM - overnight they experienced a significant load speed change. Now rather than seconds, the resource center takes only milliseconds to load, which most marketers understand is absolutely critical when it comes to conversion rates.
It’s so easy to finish up a website and just lean on what you have. “If it ain’t broke,” am I right? But sometimes what we consider to be working is actually seriously handicapping us. That minivan at the race you’re trying to win *works*, right? But it’s not exactly going to break any track records for speed.
If your website, resource center or blog is taking more than a couple seconds to load, you should invest in updates and optimization to help bring that number down, because it will do incredible things for your conversion rates.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nSwitching to a sustainable platform
\nAdopting a mindset of continuous website improvement and growth driven design is only as easy as your website platform and the framework you’ve built it from. Adding on features and functionality in Wordpress may mean having to piecemeal plugins and result in a bloated website that runs more slowly. If you’re taking a more long term approach to your website, you’ll want to build on a framework that allows for these types of improvements.
We primarily work in HubSpot and have found it not only super flexible for adding new modules, but secure and fast. It’s easy to add and remove functionality and while we do recommend that you consult your developer prior to purchasing a theme, there are a lot of great options that are well-vetted by HubSpot in the theme marketplace. Custom builds allow for more flexibility, notably so, again, contacting a skilled developer before you make an investment in HubSpot CMS is pretty critical.
Related: Signs You’ve Outgrown Wordpress CMS
\nBetter content organization
\nWe’re a little obsessed with navigation and we personally believe your navigation structure will make or break your conversion rate and other important website statistics like time on site and pages viewed. We’re also huge fans of proactive planning, which is why we’ve dedicated so much time to geeking out on mega menus. We believe that your mega menu should be well-conceived and strategized and not just a way to inundate your audience with everything on your website. By organizing strategically according to the buyer’s journey, your highest converting website content and putting most frequently viewed pages front and center, you’ll do so much for the user experience on your site. Rather than your most valuable content being buried in your landing pages, why not place some directly in your menu?
Your goal as a business should be to make your website easy to navigate while also providing your prospects with the critical information that they’re looking for. Organizing your pillar pages, menu navigation and website in a way that flows properly and coincides with the buyers’ journey will set you and your website prospects up for success.
Back end features and flexible modules.
\nThere’s nothing worse than a website that you’re constantly having to piecemeal and hack to accomplish the simple goals that you have when it comes to adding content. It’s a frustration we hear come from prospect after prospect, “The interface is just kinda cumbersome” or “We just want to do this one small thing, but the feature isn’t there.” The age of not having full control over your website is over - particularly if you make a move over to HubSpot CMS.
HubSpot CMS might be a decent investment, but it’s a really great way to ensure long term scalability in your website. Take a look at what they have to say about their content management system. Considering our founder built one of the very first websites on HubSpot CMS, we can definitely attest to how it has grown and improved over the years. HubSpot is a platform committed to scalable solutions and the flexibility and power for marketers when partnered with the right developer is amazing.
Every year you probably create big goals surrounding your website, lead generation, conversions and sales. Every year you probably encounter huge obstacles with your website. Make this the year that you truly allocate and plan proactively to make sure your website services your needs and can grow with your goals in the long term. Let’s get to the end of next year and look back proud at what we’ve accomplished.
Cheers to a new approach to your website *and* sales growth when we put our budget in the right places.
What are your website goals in 2023? Let us know in the comments.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
- \n
- adopt continuous improvement \n
- optimize page speed \n
- switch to a sustainable website platform \n
- organize your content better \n
- add more back-end features and more flexible modules
Adopting continuous improvement
\nIf you’re already ahead of the game and have a set budget for certain website projects for 2023, we’re pretty proud of you, because most businesses don’t even set aside the budget to redesign their website. Rather than spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on redesigning your website every few years, create a smaller, more manageable budget that allows you to continuously add new modules and features on your website. By adopting the idea of continuous improvement over time, you can do all of the following:
\n- \n
- allocate a predictable monthly budget \n
- work reliably with a skilled developer \n
- improve your website on an ongoing basis to optimize for conversions \n
- add back end functionality inside your website interface to help your marketing team upload and create content more effectively. \n
- creating workflow automations to free up your task time \n
- generate reports to help you better understand data trends over time \n
- refine navigation or resource center filters to better organize your content. \n
According to HubSpot’s 2022 Web Traffic & Analytics Report (we found it interesting that more website analytics data didn’t make the cut of the State of Inbound Report) 58% of website analysts indicated that sales, leads and conversion rates were the most important metrics in assessing website performance - and yet, few companies create a strategy and budget item to strategically improve their website to optimize these things. While website content, optimization efforts, compelling images and CTAs go a long way to improve conversions — small changes to how filters work, the location of a simple button, the functionality of a website’s navigation and so much more directly influence conversion rates.
Related: HubSpot CMS Development - The Continuous Improvement Model
\nOptimizing page speed
\nRecently a website project came to us that was launched and completed by another developer, but the resource center took more than 10 seconds to load, which annihilated conversion rates and sent their bounce rates for their most important content through the roof. The resource center was using an external cloud server that needed to be accessed on every page load rather than a native HubSpot database. We changed the configuration and assisted in media resizing and BOOM - overnight they experienced a significant load speed change. Now rather than seconds, the resource center takes only milliseconds to load, which most marketers understand is absolutely critical when it comes to conversion rates.
It’s so easy to finish up a website and just lean on what you have. “If it ain’t broke,” am I right? But sometimes what we consider to be working is actually seriously handicapping us. That minivan at the race you’re trying to win *works*, right? But it’s not exactly going to break any track records for speed.
If your website, resource center or blog is taking more than a couple seconds to load, you should invest in updates and optimization to help bring that number down, because it will do incredible things for your conversion rates.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nSwitching to a sustainable platform
\nAdopting a mindset of continuous website improvement and growth driven design is only as easy as your website platform and the framework you’ve built it from. Adding on features and functionality in Wordpress may mean having to piecemeal plugins and result in a bloated website that runs more slowly. If you’re taking a more long term approach to your website, you’ll want to build on a framework that allows for these types of improvements.
We primarily work in HubSpot and have found it not only super flexible for adding new modules, but secure and fast. It’s easy to add and remove functionality and while we do recommend that you consult your developer prior to purchasing a theme, there are a lot of great options that are well-vetted by HubSpot in the theme marketplace. Custom builds allow for more flexibility, notably so, again, contacting a skilled developer before you make an investment in HubSpot CMS is pretty critical.
Related: Signs You’ve Outgrown Wordpress CMS
\nBetter content organization
\nWe’re a little obsessed with navigation and we personally believe your navigation structure will make or break your conversion rate and other important website statistics like time on site and pages viewed. We’re also huge fans of proactive planning, which is why we’ve dedicated so much time to geeking out on mega menus. We believe that your mega menu should be well-conceived and strategized and not just a way to inundate your audience with everything on your website. By organizing strategically according to the buyer’s journey, your highest converting website content and putting most frequently viewed pages front and center, you’ll do so much for the user experience on your site. Rather than your most valuable content being buried in your landing pages, why not place some directly in your menu?
Your goal as a business should be to make your website easy to navigate while also providing your prospects with the critical information that they’re looking for. Organizing your pillar pages, menu navigation and website in a way that flows properly and coincides with the buyers’ journey will set you and your website prospects up for success.
Back end features and flexible modules.
\nThere’s nothing worse than a website that you’re constantly having to piecemeal and hack to accomplish the simple goals that you have when it comes to adding content. It’s a frustration we hear come from prospect after prospect, “The interface is just kinda cumbersome” or “We just want to do this one small thing, but the feature isn’t there.” The age of not having full control over your website is over - particularly if you make a move over to HubSpot CMS.
HubSpot CMS might be a decent investment, but it’s a really great way to ensure long term scalability in your website. Take a look at what they have to say about their content management system. Considering our founder built one of the very first websites on HubSpot CMS, we can definitely attest to how it has grown and improved over the years. HubSpot is a platform committed to scalable solutions and the flexibility and power for marketers when partnered with the right developer is amazing.
Every year you probably create big goals surrounding your website, lead generation, conversions and sales. Every year you probably encounter huge obstacles with your website. Make this the year that you truly allocate and plan proactively to make sure your website services your needs and can grow with your goals in the long term. Let’s get to the end of next year and look back proud at what we’ve accomplished.
Cheers to a new approach to your website *and* sales growth when we put our budget in the right places.
What are your website goals in 2023? Let us know in the comments.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
- \n
- adopt continuous improvement \n
- optimize page speed \n
- switch to a sustainable website platform \n
- organize your content better \n
- add more back-end features and more flexible modules
Adopting continuous improvement
\nIf you’re already ahead of the game and have a set budget for certain website projects for 2023, we’re pretty proud of you, because most businesses don’t even set aside the budget to redesign their website. Rather than spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on redesigning your website every few years, create a smaller, more manageable budget that allows you to continuously add new modules and features on your website. By adopting the idea of continuous improvement over time, you can do all of the following:
\n- \n
- allocate a predictable monthly budget \n
- work reliably with a skilled developer \n
- improve your website on an ongoing basis to optimize for conversions \n
- add back end functionality inside your website interface to help your marketing team upload and create content more effectively. \n
- creating workflow automations to free up your task time \n
- generate reports to help you better understand data trends over time \n
- refine navigation or resource center filters to better organize your content. \n
According to HubSpot’s 2022 Web Traffic & Analytics Report (we found it interesting that more website analytics data didn’t make the cut of the State of Inbound Report) 58% of website analysts indicated that sales, leads and conversion rates were the most important metrics in assessing website performance - and yet, few companies create a strategy and budget item to strategically improve their website to optimize these things. While website content, optimization efforts, compelling images and CTAs go a long way to improve conversions — small changes to how filters work, the location of a simple button, the functionality of a website’s navigation and so much more directly influence conversion rates.
Related: HubSpot CMS Development - The Continuous Improvement Model
\nOptimizing page speed
\nRecently a website project came to us that was launched and completed by another developer, but the resource center took more than 10 seconds to load, which annihilated conversion rates and sent their bounce rates for their most important content through the roof. The resource center was using an external cloud server that needed to be accessed on every page load rather than a native HubSpot database. We changed the configuration and assisted in media resizing and BOOM - overnight they experienced a significant load speed change. Now rather than seconds, the resource center takes only milliseconds to load, which most marketers understand is absolutely critical when it comes to conversion rates.
It’s so easy to finish up a website and just lean on what you have. “If it ain’t broke,” am I right? But sometimes what we consider to be working is actually seriously handicapping us. That minivan at the race you’re trying to win *works*, right? But it’s not exactly going to break any track records for speed.
If your website, resource center or blog is taking more than a couple seconds to load, you should invest in updates and optimization to help bring that number down, because it will do incredible things for your conversion rates.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nSwitching to a sustainable platform
\nAdopting a mindset of continuous website improvement and growth driven design is only as easy as your website platform and the framework you’ve built it from. Adding on features and functionality in Wordpress may mean having to piecemeal plugins and result in a bloated website that runs more slowly. If you’re taking a more long term approach to your website, you’ll want to build on a framework that allows for these types of improvements.
We primarily work in HubSpot and have found it not only super flexible for adding new modules, but secure and fast. It’s easy to add and remove functionality and while we do recommend that you consult your developer prior to purchasing a theme, there are a lot of great options that are well-vetted by HubSpot in the theme marketplace. Custom builds allow for more flexibility, notably so, again, contacting a skilled developer before you make an investment in HubSpot CMS is pretty critical.
Related: Signs You’ve Outgrown Wordpress CMS
\nBetter content organization
\nWe’re a little obsessed with navigation and we personally believe your navigation structure will make or break your conversion rate and other important website statistics like time on site and pages viewed. We’re also huge fans of proactive planning, which is why we’ve dedicated so much time to geeking out on mega menus. We believe that your mega menu should be well-conceived and strategized and not just a way to inundate your audience with everything on your website. By organizing strategically according to the buyer’s journey, your highest converting website content and putting most frequently viewed pages front and center, you’ll do so much for the user experience on your site. Rather than your most valuable content being buried in your landing pages, why not place some directly in your menu?
Your goal as a business should be to make your website easy to navigate while also providing your prospects with the critical information that they’re looking for. Organizing your pillar pages, menu navigation and website in a way that flows properly and coincides with the buyers’ journey will set you and your website prospects up for success.
Back end features and flexible modules.
\nThere’s nothing worse than a website that you’re constantly having to piecemeal and hack to accomplish the simple goals that you have when it comes to adding content. It’s a frustration we hear come from prospect after prospect, “The interface is just kinda cumbersome” or “We just want to do this one small thing, but the feature isn’t there.” The age of not having full control over your website is over - particularly if you make a move over to HubSpot CMS.
HubSpot CMS might be a decent investment, but it’s a really great way to ensure long term scalability in your website. Take a look at what they have to say about their content management system. Considering our founder built one of the very first websites on HubSpot CMS, we can definitely attest to how it has grown and improved over the years. HubSpot is a platform committed to scalable solutions and the flexibility and power for marketers when partnered with the right developer is amazing.
Every year you probably create big goals surrounding your website, lead generation, conversions and sales. Every year you probably encounter huge obstacles with your website. Make this the year that you truly allocate and plan proactively to make sure your website services your needs and can grow with your goals in the long term. Let’s get to the end of next year and look back proud at what we’ve accomplished.
Cheers to a new approach to your website *and* sales growth when we put our budget in the right places.
What are your website goals in 2023? Let us know in the comments.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
- \n
- adopt continuous improvement \n
- optimize page speed \n
- switch to a sustainable website platform \n
- organize your content better \n
- add more back-end features and more flexible modules
Adopting continuous improvement
\nIf you’re already ahead of the game and have a set budget for certain website projects for 2023, we’re pretty proud of you, because most businesses don’t even set aside the budget to redesign their website. Rather than spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on redesigning your website every few years, create a smaller, more manageable budget that allows you to continuously add new modules and features on your website. By adopting the idea of continuous improvement over time, you can do all of the following:
\n- \n
- allocate a predictable monthly budget \n
- work reliably with a skilled developer \n
- improve your website on an ongoing basis to optimize for conversions \n
- add back end functionality inside your website interface to help your marketing team upload and create content more effectively. \n
- creating workflow automations to free up your task time \n
- generate reports to help you better understand data trends over time \n
- refine navigation or resource center filters to better organize your content. \n
According to HubSpot’s 2022 Web Traffic & Analytics Report (we found it interesting that more website analytics data didn’t make the cut of the State of Inbound Report) 58% of website analysts indicated that sales, leads and conversion rates were the most important metrics in assessing website performance - and yet, few companies create a strategy and budget item to strategically improve their website to optimize these things. While website content, optimization efforts, compelling images and CTAs go a long way to improve conversions — small changes to how filters work, the location of a simple button, the functionality of a website’s navigation and so much more directly influence conversion rates.
Related: HubSpot CMS Development - The Continuous Improvement Model
\nOptimizing page speed
\nRecently a website project came to us that was launched and completed by another developer, but the resource center took more than 10 seconds to load, which annihilated conversion rates and sent their bounce rates for their most important content through the roof. The resource center was using an external cloud server that needed to be accessed on every page load rather than a native HubSpot database. We changed the configuration and assisted in media resizing and BOOM - overnight they experienced a significant load speed change. Now rather than seconds, the resource center takes only milliseconds to load, which most marketers understand is absolutely critical when it comes to conversion rates.
It’s so easy to finish up a website and just lean on what you have. “If it ain’t broke,” am I right? But sometimes what we consider to be working is actually seriously handicapping us. That minivan at the race you’re trying to win *works*, right? But it’s not exactly going to break any track records for speed.
If your website, resource center or blog is taking more than a couple seconds to load, you should invest in updates and optimization to help bring that number down, because it will do incredible things for your conversion rates.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nSwitching to a sustainable platform
\nAdopting a mindset of continuous website improvement and growth driven design is only as easy as your website platform and the framework you’ve built it from. Adding on features and functionality in Wordpress may mean having to piecemeal plugins and result in a bloated website that runs more slowly. If you’re taking a more long term approach to your website, you’ll want to build on a framework that allows for these types of improvements.
We primarily work in HubSpot and have found it not only super flexible for adding new modules, but secure and fast. It’s easy to add and remove functionality and while we do recommend that you consult your developer prior to purchasing a theme, there are a lot of great options that are well-vetted by HubSpot in the theme marketplace. Custom builds allow for more flexibility, notably so, again, contacting a skilled developer before you make an investment in HubSpot CMS is pretty critical.
Related: Signs You’ve Outgrown Wordpress CMS
\nBetter content organization
\nWe’re a little obsessed with navigation and we personally believe your navigation structure will make or break your conversion rate and other important website statistics like time on site and pages viewed. We’re also huge fans of proactive planning, which is why we’ve dedicated so much time to geeking out on mega menus. We believe that your mega menu should be well-conceived and strategized and not just a way to inundate your audience with everything on your website. By organizing strategically according to the buyer’s journey, your highest converting website content and putting most frequently viewed pages front and center, you’ll do so much for the user experience on your site. Rather than your most valuable content being buried in your landing pages, why not place some directly in your menu?
Your goal as a business should be to make your website easy to navigate while also providing your prospects with the critical information that they’re looking for. Organizing your pillar pages, menu navigation and website in a way that flows properly and coincides with the buyers’ journey will set you and your website prospects up for success.
Back end features and flexible modules.
\nThere’s nothing worse than a website that you’re constantly having to piecemeal and hack to accomplish the simple goals that you have when it comes to adding content. It’s a frustration we hear come from prospect after prospect, “The interface is just kinda cumbersome” or “We just want to do this one small thing, but the feature isn’t there.” The age of not having full control over your website is over - particularly if you make a move over to HubSpot CMS.
HubSpot CMS might be a decent investment, but it’s a really great way to ensure long term scalability in your website. Take a look at what they have to say about their content management system. Considering our founder built one of the very first websites on HubSpot CMS, we can definitely attest to how it has grown and improved over the years. HubSpot is a platform committed to scalable solutions and the flexibility and power for marketers when partnered with the right developer is amazing.
Every year you probably create big goals surrounding your website, lead generation, conversions and sales. Every year you probably encounter huge obstacles with your website. Make this the year that you truly allocate and plan proactively to make sure your website services your needs and can grow with your goals in the long term. Let’s get to the end of next year and look back proud at what we’ve accomplished.
Cheers to a new approach to your website *and* sales growth when we put our budget in the right places.
What are your website goals in 2023? Let us know in the comments.
The end of the year is upon us and while you may already have created your website budget, it’s not too late to do some moving around. We talk to a lot of prospects every single day that have very little to no budget for website improvements on a monthly or annual basis. Yet these same businesses commonly report their website as their single best source of leads for their sales team. Imagine that. It’s a little like being a race car driver for 20 years only to roll up to the biggest race of your life in a minivan. We hate to be the ones to say it, but… ::whisper:: I don’t think it’s gonna get you to the finish line, friend.
We are persistently hammering home the idea that having a fast-loading, flexible website that optimizes conversion and puts the right information in front of your audience, but we’re having the same conversations over and over again.
Budgets are budgets and while we haven’t mastered the development of the money manufacturing machine (we’re still working on a robot for the shower that delivers you pizza because priorities), we do know that most businesses understand the simple concept of ROI. And most marketers understand that their website is a critical and ongoing way to get more of it.
In fact, 36% of survey respondents put their top marketing channel as their website/blog in the HubSpot 2022 State of Inbound Marketing Report. It was the second biggest marketing channel behind social media.
All we want for Christmas is for you to get real with yourself on how critical investing in an ongoing strategy surrounding your website is (well, besides shower pizza, of course). That said - let’s break down 5 things we want you to consider adding to your website budget for 2023.
![\"wrecking](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/BLOG%20Images/wrecking%20ecommerce%202.webp\")
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
You have no personalization campaigns running.
\nHoliday shopping messaging inundates our browsers and social media platforms on every device we use. Sales emails, text messages promising huge savings, and social media ads are constantly finding their way into our everyday activities around the holidays. Like the old days of website pop ups and spam phone calls, it seems more retailers than ever are making their way into every aspect of our lives… and as more and more shoppers opt out of text and email messaging from brands they no longer want to hear from, it’s more important than ever to give people a reason to “opt in”.
Specials are great, but when it comes to sales incentives, small businesses will have a tough time keeping up with retail giants. Instead, try using your text, e-mail and social media platform to create personalized messaging that resounds with your buyers. Most major e-commerce platforms offer personalization recommendations in the form of code that can be pasted into emails to recommend products based on recent purchases, but don’t stop there. Personalized content on your website pages based on viewed products, inside your mega menu navigation and in landing pages based on previous conversions are the perfect way to increase conversion rates.
Don’t believe me? Here are some great statistics on personalization for conversion rates from outgrow.co:
- \n
- Lack of personalized content generates 83% lower response rate in an average marketing campaign \n
- Personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50% \n
- Personalized content results in repeat purchases in nearly 44% of customers \n
- Personalized CTAs convert over 200% better than non-personalized CTAs \n
Your page speed is horrendous
\nDead horse. Beaten.
Sorry, we have to. We cannot hammer home enough the importance of page speed optimization, particularly for e-commerce websites and absolutely when it comes to the biggest shopping month of the year. If you haven’t given this a read, check out these 5 factors bogging down your website and make sure to do whatever you can to optimize your website for load speeds this holiday season.
Need a little more proof? Here are some e-commerce page load stats you should take a look at:
- \n
- 57% of customers will leave your site if your page load times are longer than 3 seconds (80% of these people will never come back and 44% of the 80% will tell a friend. Ouch.) \n
- A 2 second delay in page load speed reduces session length by 51% \n
- For every additional second it takes your website to load, your conversion rate decreases by 7% \n
Optimize your images. Optimize your videos. Use lazy loading. And USE A DEVELOPER THAT KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING! You should have a best practices process document for uploading new listings to your website and make sure that your employees are trained to avoid large images or videos being loaded to your website without your knowledge. Every second matters.
\nRelated: How’d You Do? Let’s Talk Site Performance for Black Friday Weekend
\n\n
You aren’t prominently featuring your offers
\nThis one seems pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised. While text, e-mail and social media marketing are the go-to for promoting holiday deals and shopping incentives, your website is even better. Many retailers shy away from pop ups and banners, but they’re the best way to promote holiday deals to your audience. A pop up with special codes, text opt in for holiday deal promo codes or a banner placed prominently at the top of your page are all great options for promoting your holiday shopping offers to your website visitors .
GetSiteControl.com has great suggestions for banner placement on your website with live examples for promotions during the holiday season. They make suggestions not only for banner placement locations but also ideas for what to put in those banners like:
- \n
- Limited coupon promotions \n
- A Banner advertising shipping incentives \n
- Product recommendations pop ups \n
- Gift card reminders \n
- Filter options inside website banners \n
- E-mail sign up forms \n
Be sure to make your banner easy to navigate out of for customers that aren’t interested to avoid user frustration.
\nYou’re not creating urgency
\nWhen it comes to conversion, creating urgency is proven to increase the likelihood that a customer buys from you. According to Optimonk, a pop up sale banner with a countdown timer on it conversion 4.5% higher than a pop up sale banner without a timer.
Marcus Taylor or CXL posted an interesting blog on creating urgency in the launch of a limited resource package deal he created for musicians. He offered his bundle package for 100 hours total and did everything he could to optimize his conversion rate. He increased it from 2.5 to 10%, which increased his sales by 332% (woah!). He makes some really good suggestions in his article to decrease buyer anxiety while creating urgency by giving them both rational and emotional reasons to buy and supporting those by offering clarity and relevance to that decision. This article is packed with great advice - like real versus implied urgency and why is important to put deadlines on any deals that you run. But his most important takeaway is his discussion on how to handle urgency and his A/B test:
“Adding urgency doesn’t work if your offer is full of distractions, or if your value proposition is crap. It won’t work if your offer’s irrelevant to your audience, or if your audience doesn’t trust you.”![\"wrecking](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/BLOG%20Images/wrecking%20ecommerce.webp\")
He A/B tested a countdown timer on his CTAs - and Variation B (with the countdown) increased conversion from 3.5% to 10%
If that’s not enough fuel to tell you to create urgency with your audience during holiday shopping, I don’t know what is.
You have no abandoned cart plans in place
\nYou need a strategy for abandoned carts and page exits. In 2021 70% of online shoppers on Black Friday abandoned their shopping carts. Rather than losing this revenue, create a strategy and put proactive measures in place to make sure your customers convert.
Offering your customers the ability to create a wish list or save for later option for their items either inside the shopping cart or as a pop up is a great way to keep them interested in the products they’ve added to their cart. Robust e-mail automation will help here as well, as an automatic e-mail for abandoned carts should be sent out immediately following cart abandonment. Sending an immediate e-mail one hour after a cart has been abandoned has the greatest chance for website conversion, according to Rejoiner.com.
But don’t stop there. Rejoiner also mentions that second and third abandoned cart e-mails can be sent to capture additional revenue, which accounted for 50% of the revenue recaptured from their entire abandoned e-mail campaign.
Don’t discount the value of discounts (heh) - in those second and third abandoned cart e-mails, adding a discount incentive. Unexpected shipping costs are a common reason that abandoned shopping carts occur, and they’re responsible for around 25% of abandoned shopping carts. Offering free or discounted shipping could be another good way to convert those people on the line in your campaigns. A robust automation plan will help you personalize the content in your abandoned cart campaigns to get more out of your customer base. You can easily set these up in HubSpot or in your e-commerce platform, depending on which you use.
With your increased supply costs and logistics expenses, you need to make sure that you convert customers at a higher rate on your website. The holiday shopping season is your biggest opportunity and your time is running out. Do what you can to set your retail business up to success now and plan even more proactively next year to help increase those conversion rates and boost your sales in 2023.
If you haven’t created your 2023 e-commerce strategy yet, it’s probably time. Book some time with us and lets go over your optimization plans. 
","rss_summary":"
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
You have no personalization campaigns running.
\nHoliday shopping messaging inundates our browsers and social media platforms on every device we use. Sales emails, text messages promising huge savings, and social media ads are constantly finding their way into our everyday activities around the holidays. Like the old days of website pop ups and spam phone calls, it seems more retailers than ever are making their way into every aspect of our lives… and as more and more shoppers opt out of text and email messaging from brands they no longer want to hear from, it’s more important than ever to give people a reason to “opt in”.
Specials are great, but when it comes to sales incentives, small businesses will have a tough time keeping up with retail giants. Instead, try using your text, e-mail and social media platform to create personalized messaging that resounds with your buyers. Most major e-commerce platforms offer personalization recommendations in the form of code that can be pasted into emails to recommend products based on recent purchases, but don’t stop there. Personalized content on your website pages based on viewed products, inside your mega menu navigation and in landing pages based on previous conversions are the perfect way to increase conversion rates.
Don’t believe me? Here are some great statistics on personalization for conversion rates from outgrow.co:
- \n
- Lack of personalized content generates 83% lower response rate in an average marketing campaign \n
- Personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50% \n
- Personalized content results in repeat purchases in nearly 44% of customers \n
- Personalized CTAs convert over 200% better than non-personalized CTAs \n
Your page speed is horrendous
\nDead horse. Beaten.
Sorry, we have to. We cannot hammer home enough the importance of page speed optimization, particularly for e-commerce websites and absolutely when it comes to the biggest shopping month of the year. If you haven’t given this a read, check out these 5 factors bogging down your website and make sure to do whatever you can to optimize your website for load speeds this holiday season.
Need a little more proof? Here are some e-commerce page load stats you should take a look at:
- \n
- 57% of customers will leave your site if your page load times are longer than 3 seconds (80% of these people will never come back and 44% of the 80% will tell a friend. Ouch.) \n
- A 2 second delay in page load speed reduces session length by 51% \n
- For every additional second it takes your website to load, your conversion rate decreases by 7% \n
Optimize your images. Optimize your videos. Use lazy loading. And USE A DEVELOPER THAT KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING! You should have a best practices process document for uploading new listings to your website and make sure that your employees are trained to avoid large images or videos being loaded to your website without your knowledge. Every second matters.
\nRelated: How’d You Do? Let’s Talk Site Performance for Black Friday Weekend
\n\n
You aren’t prominently featuring your offers
\nThis one seems pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised. While text, e-mail and social media marketing are the go-to for promoting holiday deals and shopping incentives, your website is even better. Many retailers shy away from pop ups and banners, but they’re the best way to promote holiday deals to your audience. A pop up with special codes, text opt in for holiday deal promo codes or a banner placed prominently at the top of your page are all great options for promoting your holiday shopping offers to your website visitors .
GetSiteControl.com has great suggestions for banner placement on your website with live examples for promotions during the holiday season. They make suggestions not only for banner placement locations but also ideas for what to put in those banners like:
- \n
- Limited coupon promotions \n
- A Banner advertising shipping incentives \n
- Product recommendations pop ups \n
- Gift card reminders \n
- Filter options inside website banners \n
- E-mail sign up forms \n
Be sure to make your banner easy to navigate out of for customers that aren’t interested to avoid user frustration.
\nYou’re not creating urgency
\nWhen it comes to conversion, creating urgency is proven to increase the likelihood that a customer buys from you. According to Optimonk, a pop up sale banner with a countdown timer on it conversion 4.5% higher than a pop up sale banner without a timer.
Marcus Taylor or CXL posted an interesting blog on creating urgency in the launch of a limited resource package deal he created for musicians. He offered his bundle package for 100 hours total and did everything he could to optimize his conversion rate. He increased it from 2.5 to 10%, which increased his sales by 332% (woah!). He makes some really good suggestions in his article to decrease buyer anxiety while creating urgency by giving them both rational and emotional reasons to buy and supporting those by offering clarity and relevance to that decision. This article is packed with great advice - like real versus implied urgency and why is important to put deadlines on any deals that you run. But his most important takeaway is his discussion on how to handle urgency and his A/B test:
“Adding urgency doesn’t work if your offer is full of distractions, or if your value proposition is crap. It won’t work if your offer’s irrelevant to your audience, or if your audience doesn’t trust you.”
He A/B tested a countdown timer on his CTAs - and Variation B (with the countdown) increased conversion from 3.5% to 10%
If that’s not enough fuel to tell you to create urgency with your audience during holiday shopping, I don’t know what is.
You have no abandoned cart plans in place
\nYou need a strategy for abandoned carts and page exits. In 2021 70% of online shoppers on Black Friday abandoned their shopping carts. Rather than losing this revenue, create a strategy and put proactive measures in place to make sure your customers convert.
Offering your customers the ability to create a wish list or save for later option for their items either inside the shopping cart or as a pop up is a great way to keep them interested in the products they’ve added to their cart. Robust e-mail automation will help here as well, as an automatic e-mail for abandoned carts should be sent out immediately following cart abandonment. Sending an immediate e-mail one hour after a cart has been abandoned has the greatest chance for website conversion, according to Rejoiner.com.
But don’t stop there. Rejoiner also mentions that second and third abandoned cart e-mails can be sent to capture additional revenue, which accounted for 50% of the revenue recaptured from their entire abandoned e-mail campaign.
Don’t discount the value of discounts (heh) - in those second and third abandoned cart e-mails, adding a discount incentive. Unexpected shipping costs are a common reason that abandoned shopping carts occur, and they’re responsible for around 25% of abandoned shopping carts. Offering free or discounted shipping could be another good way to convert those people on the line in your campaigns. A robust automation plan will help you personalize the content in your abandoned cart campaigns to get more out of your customer base. You can easily set these up in HubSpot or in your e-commerce platform, depending on which you use.
With your increased supply costs and logistics expenses, you need to make sure that you convert customers at a higher rate on your website. The holiday shopping season is your biggest opportunity and your time is running out. Do what you can to set your retail business up to success now and plan even more proactively next year to help increase those conversion rates and boost your sales in 2023.
If you haven’t created your 2023 e-commerce strategy yet, it’s probably time. Book some time with us and lets go over your optimization plans.
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It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
You have no personalization campaigns running.
\nHoliday shopping messaging inundates our browsers and social media platforms on every device we use. Sales emails, text messages promising huge savings, and social media ads are constantly finding their way into our everyday activities around the holidays. Like the old days of website pop ups and spam phone calls, it seems more retailers than ever are making their way into every aspect of our lives… and as more and more shoppers opt out of text and email messaging from brands they no longer want to hear from, it’s more important than ever to give people a reason to “opt in”.
Specials are great, but when it comes to sales incentives, small businesses will have a tough time keeping up with retail giants. Instead, try using your text, e-mail and social media platform to create personalized messaging that resounds with your buyers. Most major e-commerce platforms offer personalization recommendations in the form of code that can be pasted into emails to recommend products based on recent purchases, but don’t stop there. Personalized content on your website pages based on viewed products, inside your mega menu navigation and in landing pages based on previous conversions are the perfect way to increase conversion rates.
Don’t believe me? Here are some great statistics on personalization for conversion rates from outgrow.co:
- \n
- Lack of personalized content generates 83% lower response rate in an average marketing campaign \n
- Personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50% \n
- Personalized content results in repeat purchases in nearly 44% of customers \n
- Personalized CTAs convert over 200% better than non-personalized CTAs \n
Your page speed is horrendous
\nDead horse. Beaten.
Sorry, we have to. We cannot hammer home enough the importance of page speed optimization, particularly for e-commerce websites and absolutely when it comes to the biggest shopping month of the year. If you haven’t given this a read, check out these 5 factors bogging down your website and make sure to do whatever you can to optimize your website for load speeds this holiday season.
Need a little more proof? Here are some e-commerce page load stats you should take a look at:
- \n
- 57% of customers will leave your site if your page load times are longer than 3 seconds (80% of these people will never come back and 44% of the 80% will tell a friend. Ouch.) \n
- A 2 second delay in page load speed reduces session length by 51% \n
- For every additional second it takes your website to load, your conversion rate decreases by 7% \n
Optimize your images. Optimize your videos. Use lazy loading. And USE A DEVELOPER THAT KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING! You should have a best practices process document for uploading new listings to your website and make sure that your employees are trained to avoid large images or videos being loaded to your website without your knowledge. Every second matters.
\nRelated: How’d You Do? Let’s Talk Site Performance for Black Friday Weekend
\n\n
You aren’t prominently featuring your offers
\nThis one seems pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised. While text, e-mail and social media marketing are the go-to for promoting holiday deals and shopping incentives, your website is even better. Many retailers shy away from pop ups and banners, but they’re the best way to promote holiday deals to your audience. A pop up with special codes, text opt in for holiday deal promo codes or a banner placed prominently at the top of your page are all great options for promoting your holiday shopping offers to your website visitors .
GetSiteControl.com has great suggestions for banner placement on your website with live examples for promotions during the holiday season. They make suggestions not only for banner placement locations but also ideas for what to put in those banners like:
- \n
- Limited coupon promotions \n
- A Banner advertising shipping incentives \n
- Product recommendations pop ups \n
- Gift card reminders \n
- Filter options inside website banners \n
- E-mail sign up forms \n
Be sure to make your banner easy to navigate out of for customers that aren’t interested to avoid user frustration.
\nYou’re not creating urgency
\nWhen it comes to conversion, creating urgency is proven to increase the likelihood that a customer buys from you. According to Optimonk, a pop up sale banner with a countdown timer on it conversion 4.5% higher than a pop up sale banner without a timer.
Marcus Taylor or CXL posted an interesting blog on creating urgency in the launch of a limited resource package deal he created for musicians. He offered his bundle package for 100 hours total and did everything he could to optimize his conversion rate. He increased it from 2.5 to 10%, which increased his sales by 332% (woah!). He makes some really good suggestions in his article to decrease buyer anxiety while creating urgency by giving them both rational and emotional reasons to buy and supporting those by offering clarity and relevance to that decision. This article is packed with great advice - like real versus implied urgency and why is important to put deadlines on any deals that you run. But his most important takeaway is his discussion on how to handle urgency and his A/B test:
“Adding urgency doesn’t work if your offer is full of distractions, or if your value proposition is crap. It won’t work if your offer’s irrelevant to your audience, or if your audience doesn’t trust you.”
He A/B tested a countdown timer on his CTAs - and Variation B (with the countdown) increased conversion from 3.5% to 10%
If that’s not enough fuel to tell you to create urgency with your audience during holiday shopping, I don’t know what is.
You have no abandoned cart plans in place
\nYou need a strategy for abandoned carts and page exits. In 2021 70% of online shoppers on Black Friday abandoned their shopping carts. Rather than losing this revenue, create a strategy and put proactive measures in place to make sure your customers convert.
Offering your customers the ability to create a wish list or save for later option for their items either inside the shopping cart or as a pop up is a great way to keep them interested in the products they’ve added to their cart. Robust e-mail automation will help here as well, as an automatic e-mail for abandoned carts should be sent out immediately following cart abandonment. Sending an immediate e-mail one hour after a cart has been abandoned has the greatest chance for website conversion, according to Rejoiner.com.
But don’t stop there. Rejoiner also mentions that second and third abandoned cart e-mails can be sent to capture additional revenue, which accounted for 50% of the revenue recaptured from their entire abandoned e-mail campaign.
Don’t discount the value of discounts (heh) - in those second and third abandoned cart e-mails, adding a discount incentive. Unexpected shipping costs are a common reason that abandoned shopping carts occur, and they’re responsible for around 25% of abandoned shopping carts. Offering free or discounted shipping could be another good way to convert those people on the line in your campaigns. A robust automation plan will help you personalize the content in your abandoned cart campaigns to get more out of your customer base. You can easily set these up in HubSpot or in your e-commerce platform, depending on which you use.
With your increased supply costs and logistics expenses, you need to make sure that you convert customers at a higher rate on your website. The holiday shopping season is your biggest opportunity and your time is running out. Do what you can to set your retail business up to success now and plan even more proactively next year to help increase those conversion rates and boost your sales in 2023.
If you haven’t created your 2023 e-commerce strategy yet, it’s probably time. Book some time with us and lets go over your optimization plans.
","postBodyRss":"
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
You have no personalization campaigns running.
\nHoliday shopping messaging inundates our browsers and social media platforms on every device we use. Sales emails, text messages promising huge savings, and social media ads are constantly finding their way into our everyday activities around the holidays. Like the old days of website pop ups and spam phone calls, it seems more retailers than ever are making their way into every aspect of our lives… and as more and more shoppers opt out of text and email messaging from brands they no longer want to hear from, it’s more important than ever to give people a reason to “opt in”.
Specials are great, but when it comes to sales incentives, small businesses will have a tough time keeping up with retail giants. Instead, try using your text, e-mail and social media platform to create personalized messaging that resounds with your buyers. Most major e-commerce platforms offer personalization recommendations in the form of code that can be pasted into emails to recommend products based on recent purchases, but don’t stop there. Personalized content on your website pages based on viewed products, inside your mega menu navigation and in landing pages based on previous conversions are the perfect way to increase conversion rates.
Don’t believe me? Here are some great statistics on personalization for conversion rates from outgrow.co:
- \n
- Lack of personalized content generates 83% lower response rate in an average marketing campaign \n
- Personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50% \n
- Personalized content results in repeat purchases in nearly 44% of customers \n
- Personalized CTAs convert over 200% better than non-personalized CTAs \n
Your page speed is horrendous
\nDead horse. Beaten.
Sorry, we have to. We cannot hammer home enough the importance of page speed optimization, particularly for e-commerce websites and absolutely when it comes to the biggest shopping month of the year. If you haven’t given this a read, check out these 5 factors bogging down your website and make sure to do whatever you can to optimize your website for load speeds this holiday season.
Need a little more proof? Here are some e-commerce page load stats you should take a look at:
- \n
- 57% of customers will leave your site if your page load times are longer than 3 seconds (80% of these people will never come back and 44% of the 80% will tell a friend. Ouch.) \n
- A 2 second delay in page load speed reduces session length by 51% \n
- For every additional second it takes your website to load, your conversion rate decreases by 7% \n
Optimize your images. Optimize your videos. Use lazy loading. And USE A DEVELOPER THAT KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING! You should have a best practices process document for uploading new listings to your website and make sure that your employees are trained to avoid large images or videos being loaded to your website without your knowledge. Every second matters.
\nRelated: How’d You Do? Let’s Talk Site Performance for Black Friday Weekend
\n\n
You aren’t prominently featuring your offers
\nThis one seems pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised. While text, e-mail and social media marketing are the go-to for promoting holiday deals and shopping incentives, your website is even better. Many retailers shy away from pop ups and banners, but they’re the best way to promote holiday deals to your audience. A pop up with special codes, text opt in for holiday deal promo codes or a banner placed prominently at the top of your page are all great options for promoting your holiday shopping offers to your website visitors .
GetSiteControl.com has great suggestions for banner placement on your website with live examples for promotions during the holiday season. They make suggestions not only for banner placement locations but also ideas for what to put in those banners like:
- \n
- Limited coupon promotions \n
- A Banner advertising shipping incentives \n
- Product recommendations pop ups \n
- Gift card reminders \n
- Filter options inside website banners \n
- E-mail sign up forms \n
Be sure to make your banner easy to navigate out of for customers that aren’t interested to avoid user frustration.
\nYou’re not creating urgency
\nWhen it comes to conversion, creating urgency is proven to increase the likelihood that a customer buys from you. According to Optimonk, a pop up sale banner with a countdown timer on it conversion 4.5% higher than a pop up sale banner without a timer.
Marcus Taylor or CXL posted an interesting blog on creating urgency in the launch of a limited resource package deal he created for musicians. He offered his bundle package for 100 hours total and did everything he could to optimize his conversion rate. He increased it from 2.5 to 10%, which increased his sales by 332% (woah!). He makes some really good suggestions in his article to decrease buyer anxiety while creating urgency by giving them both rational and emotional reasons to buy and supporting those by offering clarity and relevance to that decision. This article is packed with great advice - like real versus implied urgency and why is important to put deadlines on any deals that you run. But his most important takeaway is his discussion on how to handle urgency and his A/B test:
“Adding urgency doesn’t work if your offer is full of distractions, or if your value proposition is crap. It won’t work if your offer’s irrelevant to your audience, or if your audience doesn’t trust you.”
He A/B tested a countdown timer on his CTAs - and Variation B (with the countdown) increased conversion from 3.5% to 10%
If that’s not enough fuel to tell you to create urgency with your audience during holiday shopping, I don’t know what is.
You have no abandoned cart plans in place
\nYou need a strategy for abandoned carts and page exits. In 2021 70% of online shoppers on Black Friday abandoned their shopping carts. Rather than losing this revenue, create a strategy and put proactive measures in place to make sure your customers convert.
Offering your customers the ability to create a wish list or save for later option for their items either inside the shopping cart or as a pop up is a great way to keep them interested in the products they’ve added to their cart. Robust e-mail automation will help here as well, as an automatic e-mail for abandoned carts should be sent out immediately following cart abandonment. Sending an immediate e-mail one hour after a cart has been abandoned has the greatest chance for website conversion, according to Rejoiner.com.
But don’t stop there. Rejoiner also mentions that second and third abandoned cart e-mails can be sent to capture additional revenue, which accounted for 50% of the revenue recaptured from their entire abandoned e-mail campaign.
Don’t discount the value of discounts (heh) - in those second and third abandoned cart e-mails, adding a discount incentive. Unexpected shipping costs are a common reason that abandoned shopping carts occur, and they’re responsible for around 25% of abandoned shopping carts. Offering free or discounted shipping could be another good way to convert those people on the line in your campaigns. A robust automation plan will help you personalize the content in your abandoned cart campaigns to get more out of your customer base. You can easily set these up in HubSpot or in your e-commerce platform, depending on which you use.
With your increased supply costs and logistics expenses, you need to make sure that you convert customers at a higher rate on your website. The holiday shopping season is your biggest opportunity and your time is running out. Do what you can to set your retail business up to success now and plan even more proactively next year to help increase those conversion rates and boost your sales in 2023.
If you haven’t created your 2023 e-commerce strategy yet, it’s probably time. Book some time with us and lets go over your optimization plans.
","postEmailContent":"
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
You have no personalization campaigns running.
\nHoliday shopping messaging inundates our browsers and social media platforms on every device we use. Sales emails, text messages promising huge savings, and social media ads are constantly finding their way into our everyday activities around the holidays. Like the old days of website pop ups and spam phone calls, it seems more retailers than ever are making their way into every aspect of our lives… and as more and more shoppers opt out of text and email messaging from brands they no longer want to hear from, it’s more important than ever to give people a reason to “opt in”.
Specials are great, but when it comes to sales incentives, small businesses will have a tough time keeping up with retail giants. Instead, try using your text, e-mail and social media platform to create personalized messaging that resounds with your buyers. Most major e-commerce platforms offer personalization recommendations in the form of code that can be pasted into emails to recommend products based on recent purchases, but don’t stop there. Personalized content on your website pages based on viewed products, inside your mega menu navigation and in landing pages based on previous conversions are the perfect way to increase conversion rates.
Don’t believe me? Here are some great statistics on personalization for conversion rates from outgrow.co:
- \n
- Lack of personalized content generates 83% lower response rate in an average marketing campaign \n
- Personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50% \n
- Personalized content results in repeat purchases in nearly 44% of customers \n
- Personalized CTAs convert over 200% better than non-personalized CTAs \n
Your page speed is horrendous
\nDead horse. Beaten.
Sorry, we have to. We cannot hammer home enough the importance of page speed optimization, particularly for e-commerce websites and absolutely when it comes to the biggest shopping month of the year. If you haven’t given this a read, check out these 5 factors bogging down your website and make sure to do whatever you can to optimize your website for load speeds this holiday season.
Need a little more proof? Here are some e-commerce page load stats you should take a look at:
- \n
- 57% of customers will leave your site if your page load times are longer than 3 seconds (80% of these people will never come back and 44% of the 80% will tell a friend. Ouch.) \n
- A 2 second delay in page load speed reduces session length by 51% \n
- For every additional second it takes your website to load, your conversion rate decreases by 7% \n
Optimize your images. Optimize your videos. Use lazy loading. And USE A DEVELOPER THAT KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING! You should have a best practices process document for uploading new listings to your website and make sure that your employees are trained to avoid large images or videos being loaded to your website without your knowledge. Every second matters.
\nRelated: How’d You Do? Let’s Talk Site Performance for Black Friday Weekend
\n\n
You aren’t prominently featuring your offers
\nThis one seems pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised. While text, e-mail and social media marketing are the go-to for promoting holiday deals and shopping incentives, your website is even better. Many retailers shy away from pop ups and banners, but they’re the best way to promote holiday deals to your audience. A pop up with special codes, text opt in for holiday deal promo codes or a banner placed prominently at the top of your page are all great options for promoting your holiday shopping offers to your website visitors .
GetSiteControl.com has great suggestions for banner placement on your website with live examples for promotions during the holiday season. They make suggestions not only for banner placement locations but also ideas for what to put in those banners like:
- \n
- Limited coupon promotions \n
- A Banner advertising shipping incentives \n
- Product recommendations pop ups \n
- Gift card reminders \n
- Filter options inside website banners \n
- E-mail sign up forms \n
Be sure to make your banner easy to navigate out of for customers that aren’t interested to avoid user frustration.
\nYou’re not creating urgency
\nWhen it comes to conversion, creating urgency is proven to increase the likelihood that a customer buys from you. According to Optimonk, a pop up sale banner with a countdown timer on it conversion 4.5% higher than a pop up sale banner without a timer.
Marcus Taylor or CXL posted an interesting blog on creating urgency in the launch of a limited resource package deal he created for musicians. He offered his bundle package for 100 hours total and did everything he could to optimize his conversion rate. He increased it from 2.5 to 10%, which increased his sales by 332% (woah!). He makes some really good suggestions in his article to decrease buyer anxiety while creating urgency by giving them both rational and emotional reasons to buy and supporting those by offering clarity and relevance to that decision. This article is packed with great advice - like real versus implied urgency and why is important to put deadlines on any deals that you run. But his most important takeaway is his discussion on how to handle urgency and his A/B test:
“Adding urgency doesn’t work if your offer is full of distractions, or if your value proposition is crap. It won’t work if your offer’s irrelevant to your audience, or if your audience doesn’t trust you.”
He A/B tested a countdown timer on his CTAs - and Variation B (with the countdown) increased conversion from 3.5% to 10%
If that’s not enough fuel to tell you to create urgency with your audience during holiday shopping, I don’t know what is.
You have no abandoned cart plans in place
\nYou need a strategy for abandoned carts and page exits. In 2021 70% of online shoppers on Black Friday abandoned their shopping carts. Rather than losing this revenue, create a strategy and put proactive measures in place to make sure your customers convert.
Offering your customers the ability to create a wish list or save for later option for their items either inside the shopping cart or as a pop up is a great way to keep them interested in the products they’ve added to their cart. Robust e-mail automation will help here as well, as an automatic e-mail for abandoned carts should be sent out immediately following cart abandonment. Sending an immediate e-mail one hour after a cart has been abandoned has the greatest chance for website conversion, according to Rejoiner.com.
But don’t stop there. Rejoiner also mentions that second and third abandoned cart e-mails can be sent to capture additional revenue, which accounted for 50% of the revenue recaptured from their entire abandoned e-mail campaign.
Don’t discount the value of discounts (heh) - in those second and third abandoned cart e-mails, adding a discount incentive. Unexpected shipping costs are a common reason that abandoned shopping carts occur, and they’re responsible for around 25% of abandoned shopping carts. Offering free or discounted shipping could be another good way to convert those people on the line in your campaigns. A robust automation plan will help you personalize the content in your abandoned cart campaigns to get more out of your customer base. You can easily set these up in HubSpot or in your e-commerce platform, depending on which you use.
With your increased supply costs and logistics expenses, you need to make sure that you convert customers at a higher rate on your website. The holiday shopping season is your biggest opportunity and your time is running out. Do what you can to set your retail business up to success now and plan even more proactively next year to help increase those conversion rates and boost your sales in 2023.
If you haven’t created your 2023 e-commerce strategy yet, it’s probably time. Book some time with us and lets go over your optimization plans.
","rssSummary":"
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
But it’s also more competitive than it has ever been. 196.7 million shoppers took to online stores on Black Friday Weekend for a total spend of $9.12 billion. Despite the increase in spending, predictions remain uncertain for how the rest of the holiday shopping season will go.
It’s more important than ever to not fuck up your e-commerce conversion rates with your holiday shoppers. Is your current conversion strategy (or lack of one) killing your conversion rates? Let’s dig in and look at some of the big mistakes we’ve seen with e-commerce websites around the holiday season and how you can avoid them:
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
Mega Menus require Mega Planning
\nWhen your users visit your website, they have a limited amount of information that they view “above the fold” (the real estate located on the screen before they even start scrolling), so it’s important to maximize that real estate as much as you possibly can. Unfortunately, the majority of the time when websites are designed, they come with massive hero images whose goal is to appeal emotionally to the buyer in some way.
Getting your customers on your side by using an image to communicate that worthy mission of your brand is honorable, but let’s be real here - it usually comes in the form of some kind of stock image that doesn’t do the job. We’re gonna be honest with you here: your tired stock photos are driving up your bounce rate. The same tired images of people working at desks smiling or even a photoshoot of your own employees smiling and working — no one cares. You are not just not resonating with your audience, you’re actively boring them. The big hero image isn’t doing it for you. So what will?
Mega menus solve the problem of addressing multiple points in the buyer journey by putting varied content in front of them and eliminating the repetition of the same tired homepage concepts that a prospective customer views over and over again. Instead? Architect a functional menu that gives them the information they need.
Architecting a Mega Menu in HubSpot requires you to have the deepest psychological understanding of your buyers. You should engage an agency or gifted marketing strategist in an exercise to determine who your buyer personas are, what their goals are, what their needs and struggles are and align those items with the products or services that you provide. It isn’t enough just to align your messaging or create a buyer persona in your content strategy and leave it there. You need to also take that buyer persona and buyer journey and apply it to the way that you display the information on your website.
Related: Mega Mistakes with Mega Menus
\n\n
Categorize your data and focus
\nIf you have multiple buyer persona roles, multiple service offerings, subcategories for those offerings and multiple categories of content in many different mediums for your audience to consume, your mega menu could become a little complicated to plan. Getting feedback from an experienced developer and using buyer journey mapping will help exponentially, but you can start by organizing your information.
\n- \n
- Buyer Personas & Industries
Establishing a list of industries that you work with on your navigation will help businesses feel comfortable that you have adequate experience in their industry. If you segment your navigation by industry it is also useful to consider a case study CTA feature or link. \n - Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
Listing your categories of service offerings by the symptom or benefit can help move top of the funnel prospects quickly into your educational resources by allowing them to identify the pain points they’re experiencing. \n - Services
Listing your services by the names they’re recognized for in their industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one. \n - Icons
Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon. \n - Tools or Resources
This is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. You might have webinars, videos, downloads, case studies or any other number of resources in your content library. A mega menu can change that. Be sure to prioritize your highest converting content in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link. \n - Smart Content
Smart content is being used more and more in emails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? Your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
\nDelve into these bullets even deeper: How to Organize a Mega Menu for IT Managed Services Companies
\n \n
\n
Lay out the goals
\nIt’s important for you to take time to identify the main goals for your website prospects. Are there some high value items that you might want to put into your mega menu? You can add these with graphics, buttons or CTAs. In using our IT company example, these items might be something like “download our disaster recovery checklist” or “malware security webinar” registration link, or something as simple as “request a free technology audit”.
\n\n
These items presented in a different format in a place as frequently visited as navigation is a huge potential conversion boost and boosted exposure for valuable pieces of content that may not be getting the exposure they deserve.
\nHow will this translate to mobile?
\nMany organizations take the time to build out and plan an amazing mega menu only to present the design to us and realize - they never strategized how their mobile mega menu should be laid out. While a mega menu can translate well to mobile, you still have to give a lot of consideration to mobile design and how the decreased real estate can still present valuable information to your prospect. ![\"deckerdevs-mobile](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/deckerdevs-mobile%20optimization_1.svg\")
With between 50 and 60% of websites being accessed from mobile devices (your B2B business may be a little more or less depending on your industry and target buyers, a mobile mega menu needs to be as much or an even greater priority than your desktop mega menu. How you’ll address CTA buttons, graphics, category breakdowns and more will be important considerations for your mobile menu. We recommend starting with your mobile design first so you can add on as you like to your desktop design. Doing it the other way around may create some frustration when you discover that you are limited in space.
Related: Mobile First Approach to Web Design
\nExperiment with flexible design and new ideas
\nThe best development partners are pushing the envelope with website design and mega menus are no exception to that rule. Allocate as much budget as possible into making your mega menu unique and flexible to the different content types and ideas as they arise. Sky’s the limit! We see the ability to add short videos, engage chat, customize with smart content and multitudes of other actions inside your mega menu.
You’ll want to be sure to discuss back end design with your developer and ensure that your user interface is flexible enough to allow for the addition or removal of graphical elements, categories, links, buttons and other media inside your mega menu design.
According to WebFX, the average SMB spends between $2000 and $12,000 every month on content marketing. Investing a decent amount into a mega menu to ensure your content is seen is important and equally or more important is how well you plan for the organization of that content. With a little strategy planning, attention to mobile first strategy, exploring your goals, allocating appropriate budget and remaining flexible in design, you can have an incredible mega menu that will service both you and your customers well in the long term.
Got some questions about planning out your mega menu design? We should chat.
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
Mega Menus require Mega Planning
\nWhen your users visit your website, they have a limited amount of information that they view “above the fold” (the real estate located on the screen before they even start scrolling), so it’s important to maximize that real estate as much as you possibly can. Unfortunately, the majority of the time when websites are designed, they come with massive hero images whose goal is to appeal emotionally to the buyer in some way.
Getting your customers on your side by using an image to communicate that worthy mission of your brand is honorable, but let’s be real here - it usually comes in the form of some kind of stock image that doesn’t do the job. We’re gonna be honest with you here: your tired stock photos are driving up your bounce rate. The same tired images of people working at desks smiling or even a photoshoot of your own employees smiling and working — no one cares. You are not just not resonating with your audience, you’re actively boring them. The big hero image isn’t doing it for you. So what will?
Mega menus solve the problem of addressing multiple points in the buyer journey by putting varied content in front of them and eliminating the repetition of the same tired homepage concepts that a prospective customer views over and over again. Instead? Architect a functional menu that gives them the information they need.
Architecting a Mega Menu in HubSpot requires you to have the deepest psychological understanding of your buyers. You should engage an agency or gifted marketing strategist in an exercise to determine who your buyer personas are, what their goals are, what their needs and struggles are and align those items with the products or services that you provide. It isn’t enough just to align your messaging or create a buyer persona in your content strategy and leave it there. You need to also take that buyer persona and buyer journey and apply it to the way that you display the information on your website.
Related: Mega Mistakes with Mega Menus
\n\n
Categorize your data and focus
\nIf you have multiple buyer persona roles, multiple service offerings, subcategories for those offerings and multiple categories of content in many different mediums for your audience to consume, your mega menu could become a little complicated to plan. Getting feedback from an experienced developer and using buyer journey mapping will help exponentially, but you can start by organizing your information.
\n- \n
- Buyer Personas & Industries
Establishing a list of industries that you work with on your navigation will help businesses feel comfortable that you have adequate experience in their industry. If you segment your navigation by industry it is also useful to consider a case study CTA feature or link. \n - Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
Listing your categories of service offerings by the symptom or benefit can help move top of the funnel prospects quickly into your educational resources by allowing them to identify the pain points they’re experiencing. \n - Services
Listing your services by the names they’re recognized for in their industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one. \n - Icons
Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon. \n - Tools or Resources
This is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. You might have webinars, videos, downloads, case studies or any other number of resources in your content library. A mega menu can change that. Be sure to prioritize your highest converting content in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link. \n - Smart Content
Smart content is being used more and more in emails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? Your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
\nDelve into these bullets even deeper: How to Organize a Mega Menu for IT Managed Services Companies
\n \n
\n
Lay out the goals
\nIt’s important for you to take time to identify the main goals for your website prospects. Are there some high value items that you might want to put into your mega menu? You can add these with graphics, buttons or CTAs. In using our IT company example, these items might be something like “download our disaster recovery checklist” or “malware security webinar” registration link, or something as simple as “request a free technology audit”.
\n\n
These items presented in a different format in a place as frequently visited as navigation is a huge potential conversion boost and boosted exposure for valuable pieces of content that may not be getting the exposure they deserve.
\nHow will this translate to mobile?
\nMany organizations take the time to build out and plan an amazing mega menu only to present the design to us and realize - they never strategized how their mobile mega menu should be laid out. While a mega menu can translate well to mobile, you still have to give a lot of consideration to mobile design and how the decreased real estate can still present valuable information to your prospect. With between 50 and 60% of websites being accessed from mobile devices (your B2B business may be a little more or less depending on your industry and target buyers, a mobile mega menu needs to be as much or an even greater priority than your desktop mega menu. How you’ll address CTA buttons, graphics, category breakdowns and more will be important considerations for your mobile menu. We recommend starting with your mobile design first so you can add on as you like to your desktop design. Doing it the other way around may create some frustration when you discover that you are limited in space.
Related: Mobile First Approach to Web Design
\nExperiment with flexible design and new ideas
\nThe best development partners are pushing the envelope with website design and mega menus are no exception to that rule. Allocate as much budget as possible into making your mega menu unique and flexible to the different content types and ideas as they arise. Sky’s the limit! We see the ability to add short videos, engage chat, customize with smart content and multitudes of other actions inside your mega menu.
You’ll want to be sure to discuss back end design with your developer and ensure that your user interface is flexible enough to allow for the addition or removal of graphical elements, categories, links, buttons and other media inside your mega menu design.
According to WebFX, the average SMB spends between $2000 and $12,000 every month on content marketing. Investing a decent amount into a mega menu to ensure your content is seen is important and equally or more important is how well you plan for the organization of that content. With a little strategy planning, attention to mobile first strategy, exploring your goals, allocating appropriate budget and remaining flexible in design, you can have an incredible mega menu that will service both you and your customers well in the long term.
Got some questions about planning out your mega menu design? We should chat.
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
Mega Menus require Mega Planning
\nWhen your users visit your website, they have a limited amount of information that they view “above the fold” (the real estate located on the screen before they even start scrolling), so it’s important to maximize that real estate as much as you possibly can. Unfortunately, the majority of the time when websites are designed, they come with massive hero images whose goal is to appeal emotionally to the buyer in some way.
Getting your customers on your side by using an image to communicate that worthy mission of your brand is honorable, but let’s be real here - it usually comes in the form of some kind of stock image that doesn’t do the job. We’re gonna be honest with you here: your tired stock photos are driving up your bounce rate. The same tired images of people working at desks smiling or even a photoshoot of your own employees smiling and working — no one cares. You are not just not resonating with your audience, you’re actively boring them. The big hero image isn’t doing it for you. So what will?
Mega menus solve the problem of addressing multiple points in the buyer journey by putting varied content in front of them and eliminating the repetition of the same tired homepage concepts that a prospective customer views over and over again. Instead? Architect a functional menu that gives them the information they need.
Architecting a Mega Menu in HubSpot requires you to have the deepest psychological understanding of your buyers. You should engage an agency or gifted marketing strategist in an exercise to determine who your buyer personas are, what their goals are, what their needs and struggles are and align those items with the products or services that you provide. It isn’t enough just to align your messaging or create a buyer persona in your content strategy and leave it there. You need to also take that buyer persona and buyer journey and apply it to the way that you display the information on your website.
Related: Mega Mistakes with Mega Menus
\n\n
Categorize your data and focus
\nIf you have multiple buyer persona roles, multiple service offerings, subcategories for those offerings and multiple categories of content in many different mediums for your audience to consume, your mega menu could become a little complicated to plan. Getting feedback from an experienced developer and using buyer journey mapping will help exponentially, but you can start by organizing your information.
\n- \n
- Buyer Personas & Industries
Establishing a list of industries that you work with on your navigation will help businesses feel comfortable that you have adequate experience in their industry. If you segment your navigation by industry it is also useful to consider a case study CTA feature or link. \n - Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
Listing your categories of service offerings by the symptom or benefit can help move top of the funnel prospects quickly into your educational resources by allowing them to identify the pain points they’re experiencing. \n - Services
Listing your services by the names they’re recognized for in their industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one. \n - Icons
Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon. \n - Tools or Resources
This is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. You might have webinars, videos, downloads, case studies or any other number of resources in your content library. A mega menu can change that. Be sure to prioritize your highest converting content in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link. \n - Smart Content
Smart content is being used more and more in emails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? Your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
\nDelve into these bullets even deeper: How to Organize a Mega Menu for IT Managed Services Companies
\n \n
\n
Lay out the goals
\nIt’s important for you to take time to identify the main goals for your website prospects. Are there some high value items that you might want to put into your mega menu? You can add these with graphics, buttons or CTAs. In using our IT company example, these items might be something like “download our disaster recovery checklist” or “malware security webinar” registration link, or something as simple as “request a free technology audit”.
\n\n
These items presented in a different format in a place as frequently visited as navigation is a huge potential conversion boost and boosted exposure for valuable pieces of content that may not be getting the exposure they deserve.
\nHow will this translate to mobile?
\nMany organizations take the time to build out and plan an amazing mega menu only to present the design to us and realize - they never strategized how their mobile mega menu should be laid out. While a mega menu can translate well to mobile, you still have to give a lot of consideration to mobile design and how the decreased real estate can still present valuable information to your prospect. With between 50 and 60% of websites being accessed from mobile devices (your B2B business may be a little more or less depending on your industry and target buyers, a mobile mega menu needs to be as much or an even greater priority than your desktop mega menu. How you’ll address CTA buttons, graphics, category breakdowns and more will be important considerations for your mobile menu. We recommend starting with your mobile design first so you can add on as you like to your desktop design. Doing it the other way around may create some frustration when you discover that you are limited in space.
Related: Mobile First Approach to Web Design
\nExperiment with flexible design and new ideas
\nThe best development partners are pushing the envelope with website design and mega menus are no exception to that rule. Allocate as much budget as possible into making your mega menu unique and flexible to the different content types and ideas as they arise. Sky’s the limit! We see the ability to add short videos, engage chat, customize with smart content and multitudes of other actions inside your mega menu.
You’ll want to be sure to discuss back end design with your developer and ensure that your user interface is flexible enough to allow for the addition or removal of graphical elements, categories, links, buttons and other media inside your mega menu design.
According to WebFX, the average SMB spends between $2000 and $12,000 every month on content marketing. Investing a decent amount into a mega menu to ensure your content is seen is important and equally or more important is how well you plan for the organization of that content. With a little strategy planning, attention to mobile first strategy, exploring your goals, allocating appropriate budget and remaining flexible in design, you can have an incredible mega menu that will service both you and your customers well in the long term.
Got some questions about planning out your mega menu design? We should chat.
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
Mega Menus require Mega Planning
\nWhen your users visit your website, they have a limited amount of information that they view “above the fold” (the real estate located on the screen before they even start scrolling), so it’s important to maximize that real estate as much as you possibly can. Unfortunately, the majority of the time when websites are designed, they come with massive hero images whose goal is to appeal emotionally to the buyer in some way.
Getting your customers on your side by using an image to communicate that worthy mission of your brand is honorable, but let’s be real here - it usually comes in the form of some kind of stock image that doesn’t do the job. We’re gonna be honest with you here: your tired stock photos are driving up your bounce rate. The same tired images of people working at desks smiling or even a photoshoot of your own employees smiling and working — no one cares. You are not just not resonating with your audience, you’re actively boring them. The big hero image isn’t doing it for you. So what will?
Mega menus solve the problem of addressing multiple points in the buyer journey by putting varied content in front of them and eliminating the repetition of the same tired homepage concepts that a prospective customer views over and over again. Instead? Architect a functional menu that gives them the information they need.
Architecting a Mega Menu in HubSpot requires you to have the deepest psychological understanding of your buyers. You should engage an agency or gifted marketing strategist in an exercise to determine who your buyer personas are, what their goals are, what their needs and struggles are and align those items with the products or services that you provide. It isn’t enough just to align your messaging or create a buyer persona in your content strategy and leave it there. You need to also take that buyer persona and buyer journey and apply it to the way that you display the information on your website.
Related: Mega Mistakes with Mega Menus
\n\n
Categorize your data and focus
\nIf you have multiple buyer persona roles, multiple service offerings, subcategories for those offerings and multiple categories of content in many different mediums for your audience to consume, your mega menu could become a little complicated to plan. Getting feedback from an experienced developer and using buyer journey mapping will help exponentially, but you can start by organizing your information.
\n- \n
- Buyer Personas & Industries
Establishing a list of industries that you work with on your navigation will help businesses feel comfortable that you have adequate experience in their industry. If you segment your navigation by industry it is also useful to consider a case study CTA feature or link. \n - Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
Listing your categories of service offerings by the symptom or benefit can help move top of the funnel prospects quickly into your educational resources by allowing them to identify the pain points they’re experiencing. \n - Services
Listing your services by the names they’re recognized for in their industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one. \n - Icons
Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon. \n - Tools or Resources
This is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. You might have webinars, videos, downloads, case studies or any other number of resources in your content library. A mega menu can change that. Be sure to prioritize your highest converting content in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link. \n - Smart Content
Smart content is being used more and more in emails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? Your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
\nDelve into these bullets even deeper: How to Organize a Mega Menu for IT Managed Services Companies
\n \n
\n
Lay out the goals
\nIt’s important for you to take time to identify the main goals for your website prospects. Are there some high value items that you might want to put into your mega menu? You can add these with graphics, buttons or CTAs. In using our IT company example, these items might be something like “download our disaster recovery checklist” or “malware security webinar” registration link, or something as simple as “request a free technology audit”.
\n\n
These items presented in a different format in a place as frequently visited as navigation is a huge potential conversion boost and boosted exposure for valuable pieces of content that may not be getting the exposure they deserve.
\nHow will this translate to mobile?
\nMany organizations take the time to build out and plan an amazing mega menu only to present the design to us and realize - they never strategized how their mobile mega menu should be laid out. While a mega menu can translate well to mobile, you still have to give a lot of consideration to mobile design and how the decreased real estate can still present valuable information to your prospect. With between 50 and 60% of websites being accessed from mobile devices (your B2B business may be a little more or less depending on your industry and target buyers, a mobile mega menu needs to be as much or an even greater priority than your desktop mega menu. How you’ll address CTA buttons, graphics, category breakdowns and more will be important considerations for your mobile menu. We recommend starting with your mobile design first so you can add on as you like to your desktop design. Doing it the other way around may create some frustration when you discover that you are limited in space.
Related: Mobile First Approach to Web Design
\nExperiment with flexible design and new ideas
\nThe best development partners are pushing the envelope with website design and mega menus are no exception to that rule. Allocate as much budget as possible into making your mega menu unique and flexible to the different content types and ideas as they arise. Sky’s the limit! We see the ability to add short videos, engage chat, customize with smart content and multitudes of other actions inside your mega menu.
You’ll want to be sure to discuss back end design with your developer and ensure that your user interface is flexible enough to allow for the addition or removal of graphical elements, categories, links, buttons and other media inside your mega menu design.
According to WebFX, the average SMB spends between $2000 and $12,000 every month on content marketing. Investing a decent amount into a mega menu to ensure your content is seen is important and equally or more important is how well you plan for the organization of that content. With a little strategy planning, attention to mobile first strategy, exploring your goals, allocating appropriate budget and remaining flexible in design, you can have an incredible mega menu that will service both you and your customers well in the long term.
Got some questions about planning out your mega menu design? We should chat.
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
Mega Menus require Mega Planning
\nWhen your users visit your website, they have a limited amount of information that they view “above the fold” (the real estate located on the screen before they even start scrolling), so it’s important to maximize that real estate as much as you possibly can. Unfortunately, the majority of the time when websites are designed, they come with massive hero images whose goal is to appeal emotionally to the buyer in some way.
Getting your customers on your side by using an image to communicate that worthy mission of your brand is honorable, but let’s be real here - it usually comes in the form of some kind of stock image that doesn’t do the job. We’re gonna be honest with you here: your tired stock photos are driving up your bounce rate. The same tired images of people working at desks smiling or even a photoshoot of your own employees smiling and working — no one cares. You are not just not resonating with your audience, you’re actively boring them. The big hero image isn’t doing it for you. So what will?
Mega menus solve the problem of addressing multiple points in the buyer journey by putting varied content in front of them and eliminating the repetition of the same tired homepage concepts that a prospective customer views over and over again. Instead? Architect a functional menu that gives them the information they need.
Architecting a Mega Menu in HubSpot requires you to have the deepest psychological understanding of your buyers. You should engage an agency or gifted marketing strategist in an exercise to determine who your buyer personas are, what their goals are, what their needs and struggles are and align those items with the products or services that you provide. It isn’t enough just to align your messaging or create a buyer persona in your content strategy and leave it there. You need to also take that buyer persona and buyer journey and apply it to the way that you display the information on your website.
Related: Mega Mistakes with Mega Menus
\n\n
Categorize your data and focus
\nIf you have multiple buyer persona roles, multiple service offerings, subcategories for those offerings and multiple categories of content in many different mediums for your audience to consume, your mega menu could become a little complicated to plan. Getting feedback from an experienced developer and using buyer journey mapping will help exponentially, but you can start by organizing your information.
\n- \n
- Buyer Personas & Industries
Establishing a list of industries that you work with on your navigation will help businesses feel comfortable that you have adequate experience in their industry. If you segment your navigation by industry it is also useful to consider a case study CTA feature or link. \n - Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
Listing your categories of service offerings by the symptom or benefit can help move top of the funnel prospects quickly into your educational resources by allowing them to identify the pain points they’re experiencing. \n - Services
Listing your services by the names they’re recognized for in their industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one. \n - Icons
Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon. \n - Tools or Resources
This is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. You might have webinars, videos, downloads, case studies or any other number of resources in your content library. A mega menu can change that. Be sure to prioritize your highest converting content in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link. \n - Smart Content
Smart content is being used more and more in emails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? Your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
\nDelve into these bullets even deeper: How to Organize a Mega Menu for IT Managed Services Companies
\n \n
\n
Lay out the goals
\nIt’s important for you to take time to identify the main goals for your website prospects. Are there some high value items that you might want to put into your mega menu? You can add these with graphics, buttons or CTAs. In using our IT company example, these items might be something like “download our disaster recovery checklist” or “malware security webinar” registration link, or something as simple as “request a free technology audit”.
\n\n
These items presented in a different format in a place as frequently visited as navigation is a huge potential conversion boost and boosted exposure for valuable pieces of content that may not be getting the exposure they deserve.
\nHow will this translate to mobile?
\nMany organizations take the time to build out and plan an amazing mega menu only to present the design to us and realize - they never strategized how their mobile mega menu should be laid out. While a mega menu can translate well to mobile, you still have to give a lot of consideration to mobile design and how the decreased real estate can still present valuable information to your prospect. With between 50 and 60% of websites being accessed from mobile devices (your B2B business may be a little more or less depending on your industry and target buyers, a mobile mega menu needs to be as much or an even greater priority than your desktop mega menu. How you’ll address CTA buttons, graphics, category breakdowns and more will be important considerations for your mobile menu. We recommend starting with your mobile design first so you can add on as you like to your desktop design. Doing it the other way around may create some frustration when you discover that you are limited in space.
Related: Mobile First Approach to Web Design
\nExperiment with flexible design and new ideas
\nThe best development partners are pushing the envelope with website design and mega menus are no exception to that rule. Allocate as much budget as possible into making your mega menu unique and flexible to the different content types and ideas as they arise. Sky’s the limit! We see the ability to add short videos, engage chat, customize with smart content and multitudes of other actions inside your mega menu.
You’ll want to be sure to discuss back end design with your developer and ensure that your user interface is flexible enough to allow for the addition or removal of graphical elements, categories, links, buttons and other media inside your mega menu design.
According to WebFX, the average SMB spends between $2000 and $12,000 every month on content marketing. Investing a decent amount into a mega menu to ensure your content is seen is important and equally or more important is how well you plan for the organization of that content. With a little strategy planning, attention to mobile first strategy, exploring your goals, allocating appropriate budget and remaining flexible in design, you can have an incredible mega menu that will service both you and your customers well in the long term.
Got some questions about planning out your mega menu design? We should chat.
There’s an important question that we’re asking when it comes to the content that you’re creating for your website:
Can HubSpot Mega Menus solve your content engagement woes?
According to SeedScientific.com, in 2018 as much as 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were created every day. Content is being created at an alarming rate in multiple mediums and it’s impossible for users to keep up. YouTube, for example, the second most visited website after Google, has 3.7 million new videos uploaded every single day.
Businesses continue to invest in content marketing and are creating content in the form of videos, podcasts, blogs, reels, social media posts and downloads at an alarming rate. According to Gartner, marketing budgets account for more than 6% of a company’s total revenue (down significantly from 11% in 2020) and 25% of that budget is used for content creation. But are users actually seeing that content?
Odds are good that the content you’re working SO hard to cultivate may not be getting the attention it deserves hiding deep within the pages of your website. For this reason, we believe that the UX/UI of your website has a direct effect on the impact of your content.
Mega Menus *can* resolve some of your content engagement woes by helping present your content in a more logical, accessible way that complements the buyer journey - it’s just a matter of architecting them properly. You could say that mega planning is necessary to architect mega menus.
Here are a few things you should know before you start the process of developing a mega menu design for your website:
When it comes to the specifics of organizing a mega menu, every business and industry is totally different. While some service offerings for consumer service brands might be very basic, a B2B brand with complex services offerings or retail brands with lots of different categories might need to go about how they organize a mega menu totally differently. The competition and market share in the IT Managed Services space has grown exponentially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Yahoo, The industry is estimated to reach nearly $245 billion by the end of 2022. From remote employment to cloud hosting, data access, and managing security breaches, the role of the IT Managed Services Company is more important than ever in the world of business. But how can you create a mega menu that encompasses the breadth of the services, industries, and resources that you offer without inundating your prospects?
\n","post_body":"When it comes to the specifics of organizing a mega menu, every business and industry is totally different. While some service offerings for consumer service brands might be very basic, a B2B brand with complex services offerings or retail brands with lots of different categories might need to go about how they organize a mega menu totally differently. The competition and market share in the IT Managed Services space has grown exponentially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Yahoo, The industry is estimated to reach nearly $245 billion by the end of 2022. From remote employment to cloud hosting, data access, and managing security breaches, the role of the IT Managed Services Company is more important than ever in the world of business. But how can you create a mega menu that encompasses the breadth of the services, industries, and resources that you offer without inundating your prospects?
\n\n![\"Charlie](\"https://i.imgflip.com/1itoun.jpg?a463920\")
Planning and organization are everything here.
Here are a few things you need to know when it comes to learning how to organize a mega menu in the IT Managed Services industry:
\nBuyer Personas & Industries
\nIT Managed Services Companies usually have a few different buyer personas, depending on the types of businesses they serve. They might be talking to an IT Director or CTO, an Operations Manager or a business owner. The daily focuses and concerns for each of these roles are all totally different.
While a high level Chief Technology Officer or Chief Information Office may be focused on evolving technology or business continuity, an Operations Manager or COO might be focused on employee efficiency or customer service. All of these personas will be a bit bottom-line driven, but none more than the CEO or CFO inside an organization. The executive and management levels at these companies may work in any different industry and have varied responsibilities based on their unique role in the organizations. These are important CTAs to consider, in addition to any industry verticals that you may want to address whose focuses might be even more specific.
If you have specific industries you specialize in like Construction, Nonprofit or Real Estate, you’ll want to break these down in your mega menu. While most IT professionals and Managed Services companies understand that a blanket proactive approach to IT can be applied across industries, it does make professionals feel good when they know that a vendor has experience in their particular industry.
Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
\nYou’ll want to make sure that you categorize your content with symptoms and benefits, for your top-funnel prospects that are not as well versed in your service offerings. Ask yourself: What are the categories of content that you’re writing about for your audience? These might correlate with your services, which you’ll list separately, but might more directly speak to the issues or symptoms that your prospects or buyer personas are suffering from. Categorizing your content by the types of problems that your prospects are trying to solve is a great way to guide them down further into their buyer journey by speaking to their problems directly.
For a Managed Services Company mega menu, you might want to include items like, “Employee Efficiency, Disaster Recovery Planning and Malware & Virus Protection,” rather than industry specific services like, “Business Continuity” or “Technology Planning” or “Security Services” - speaking to symptoms or benefits helps avoid jargon and keeps the benefit or chief concern front and center - which is usually the best option for prospects that still find themselves early in the decision making process.
Services
\nListing your services by the names they’re recognized for in your industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, symptoms and services you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one.
For the IT industry specifically, services terms like Business Continuity and Cloud Services may resonate with well-qualified prospects like an IT Director, CTO or CIO while the more general symptom-specific categories listed above might appeal more to an Operations Executive, CEO or Management Level prospect or buyer that is less familiar with the offerings associated with the Managed Services industry. Your mega menu has the ability to address both with either separate categories or additional areas for descriptions.
Icons
If you don’t have much real estate to offer descriptions or just want to add a little extra flair to your mega menu, Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section. It can also help provide a graphical representation for top-funnel prospects if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon.
For Managed Services companies, a shield to indicate security protection, a cloud for cloud hosting, a phone icon for VOIP services — there are a number of icons to help further explain your services without using too much additional real estate on lengthy descriptions. Icons can say a lot, keep things clear and concise and direct your buyers easily.
Tools or Resources
\nThis is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. An IT company might have a disaster recovery checklist, an IT security eBook, a guide for choosing the best VOIP system, a webinar breaking down the latest security threat or phishing attempt, or pillar pages that really help a prospect dig into to the different aspects of business continuity, employee efficiency and how it all impacts the bottom line, bringing those resources all together.
Multiple content types, topics and mediums of delivery make that pretty complicated to break down on a mega menu alone. We highly recommend resource center filters and in some cases multiple filters to help your website prospects better sift through that content. You can break your mega menu categories down by content type, add that content by industry or as it relates to the symptoms your fix and and services you provide.
If you have pillar pages to organize your content, they might have previously been hidden deep within a resource center or only found through a CTA or organic search. A mega menu can change that, placing your highest converting content at the top of the page in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link.
Get creative with how you layout your resources and tools within the different categories provided and feel free to experiment with different formats over a certain time period to test what seems to work the best.
Smart Content
\nSmart content is being used more and more in e-mails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? If you’re a HubSpot customer, HubSpot doesn’t include smart content in navigation out of the box, but we are huge supporters of taking technology to the next level and we’ve been experimenting with smart content in mega menu formats.
If a user has filled out a form, your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. If your prospect has downloaded and consumed multiple resources regarding Business Continuity services, for example, your mega menu can be configured to display content that aids them in their buyer journey by placing business continuity, disaster planning, cloud hosting and backup solutions front and center in their mega menu display.
Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. HubSpot users can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
Mega menus are seriously unutilized and as a technology company, IT Managed Services providers really need to explore how a robust mega menu can really help their users access all the valuable content they publish. Organize that content by industry, service, symptom and benefit and place the most important CTAs inside your mega menu using icons, links, graphics and buttons to take your mega menu to the next level.
Ready to implement a mega menu for your IT Managed Services company website, but not sure where to start? Schedule a meeting and let’s break it down together.
When it comes to the specifics of organizing a mega menu, every business and industry is totally different. While some service offerings for consumer service brands might be very basic, a B2B brand with complex services offerings or retail brands with lots of different categories might need to go about how they organize a mega menu totally differently. The competition and market share in the IT Managed Services space has grown exponentially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Yahoo, The industry is estimated to reach nearly $245 billion by the end of 2022. From remote employment to cloud hosting, data access, and managing security breaches, the role of the IT Managed Services Company is more important than ever in the world of business. But how can you create a mega menu that encompasses the breadth of the services, industries, and resources that you offer without inundating your prospects?
\n","rss_body":"When it comes to the specifics of organizing a mega menu, every business and industry is totally different. While some service offerings for consumer service brands might be very basic, a B2B brand with complex services offerings or retail brands with lots of different categories might need to go about how they organize a mega menu totally differently. The competition and market share in the IT Managed Services space has grown exponentially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Yahoo, The industry is estimated to reach nearly $245 billion by the end of 2022. From remote employment to cloud hosting, data access, and managing security breaches, the role of the IT Managed Services Company is more important than ever in the world of business. But how can you create a mega menu that encompasses the breadth of the services, industries, and resources that you offer without inundating your prospects?
\n\n
Planning and organization are everything here.
Here are a few things you need to know when it comes to learning how to organize a mega menu in the IT Managed Services industry:
\nBuyer Personas & Industries
\nIT Managed Services Companies usually have a few different buyer personas, depending on the types of businesses they serve. They might be talking to an IT Director or CTO, an Operations Manager or a business owner. The daily focuses and concerns for each of these roles are all totally different.
While a high level Chief Technology Officer or Chief Information Office may be focused on evolving technology or business continuity, an Operations Manager or COO might be focused on employee efficiency or customer service. All of these personas will be a bit bottom-line driven, but none more than the CEO or CFO inside an organization. The executive and management levels at these companies may work in any different industry and have varied responsibilities based on their unique role in the organizations. These are important CTAs to consider, in addition to any industry verticals that you may want to address whose focuses might be even more specific.
If you have specific industries you specialize in like Construction, Nonprofit or Real Estate, you’ll want to break these down in your mega menu. While most IT professionals and Managed Services companies understand that a blanket proactive approach to IT can be applied across industries, it does make professionals feel good when they know that a vendor has experience in their particular industry.
Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
\nYou’ll want to make sure that you categorize your content with symptoms and benefits, for your top-funnel prospects that are not as well versed in your service offerings. Ask yourself: What are the categories of content that you’re writing about for your audience? These might correlate with your services, which you’ll list separately, but might more directly speak to the issues or symptoms that your prospects or buyer personas are suffering from. Categorizing your content by the types of problems that your prospects are trying to solve is a great way to guide them down further into their buyer journey by speaking to their problems directly.
For a Managed Services Company mega menu, you might want to include items like, “Employee Efficiency, Disaster Recovery Planning and Malware & Virus Protection,” rather than industry specific services like, “Business Continuity” or “Technology Planning” or “Security Services” - speaking to symptoms or benefits helps avoid jargon and keeps the benefit or chief concern front and center - which is usually the best option for prospects that still find themselves early in the decision making process.
Services
\nListing your services by the names they’re recognized for in your industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, symptoms and services you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one.
For the IT industry specifically, services terms like Business Continuity and Cloud Services may resonate with well-qualified prospects like an IT Director, CTO or CIO while the more general symptom-specific categories listed above might appeal more to an Operations Executive, CEO or Management Level prospect or buyer that is less familiar with the offerings associated with the Managed Services industry. Your mega menu has the ability to address both with either separate categories or additional areas for descriptions.
Icons
If you don’t have much real estate to offer descriptions or just want to add a little extra flair to your mega menu, Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section. It can also help provide a graphical representation for top-funnel prospects if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon.
For Managed Services companies, a shield to indicate security protection, a cloud for cloud hosting, a phone icon for VOIP services — there are a number of icons to help further explain your services without using too much additional real estate on lengthy descriptions. Icons can say a lot, keep things clear and concise and direct your buyers easily.
Tools or Resources
\nThis is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. An IT company might have a disaster recovery checklist, an IT security eBook, a guide for choosing the best VOIP system, a webinar breaking down the latest security threat or phishing attempt, or pillar pages that really help a prospect dig into to the different aspects of business continuity, employee efficiency and how it all impacts the bottom line, bringing those resources all together.
Multiple content types, topics and mediums of delivery make that pretty complicated to break down on a mega menu alone. We highly recommend resource center filters and in some cases multiple filters to help your website prospects better sift through that content. You can break your mega menu categories down by content type, add that content by industry or as it relates to the symptoms your fix and and services you provide.
If you have pillar pages to organize your content, they might have previously been hidden deep within a resource center or only found through a CTA or organic search. A mega menu can change that, placing your highest converting content at the top of the page in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link.
Get creative with how you layout your resources and tools within the different categories provided and feel free to experiment with different formats over a certain time period to test what seems to work the best.
Smart Content
\nSmart content is being used more and more in e-mails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? If you’re a HubSpot customer, HubSpot doesn’t include smart content in navigation out of the box, but we are huge supporters of taking technology to the next level and we’ve been experimenting with smart content in mega menu formats.
If a user has filled out a form, your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. If your prospect has downloaded and consumed multiple resources regarding Business Continuity services, for example, your mega menu can be configured to display content that aids them in their buyer journey by placing business continuity, disaster planning, cloud hosting and backup solutions front and center in their mega menu display.
Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. HubSpot users can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
Mega menus are seriously unutilized and as a technology company, IT Managed Services providers really need to explore how a robust mega menu can really help their users access all the valuable content they publish. Organize that content by industry, service, symptom and benefit and place the most important CTAs inside your mega menu using icons, links, graphics and buttons to take your mega menu to the next level.
Ready to implement a mega menu for your IT Managed Services company website, but not sure where to start? Schedule a meeting and let’s break it down together.
When it comes to the specifics of organizing a mega menu, every business and industry is totally different. While some service offerings for consumer service brands might be very basic, a B2B brand with complex services offerings or retail brands with lots of different categories might need to go about how they organize a mega menu totally differently. The competition and market share in the IT Managed Services space has grown exponentially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Yahoo, The industry is estimated to reach nearly $245 billion by the end of 2022. From remote employment to cloud hosting, data access, and managing security breaches, the role of the IT Managed Services Company is more important than ever in the world of business. But how can you create a mega menu that encompasses the breadth of the services, industries, and resources that you offer without inundating your prospects?
\n\n
Planning and organization are everything here.
Here are a few things you need to know when it comes to learning how to organize a mega menu in the IT Managed Services industry:
\nBuyer Personas & Industries
\nIT Managed Services Companies usually have a few different buyer personas, depending on the types of businesses they serve. They might be talking to an IT Director or CTO, an Operations Manager or a business owner. The daily focuses and concerns for each of these roles are all totally different.
While a high level Chief Technology Officer or Chief Information Office may be focused on evolving technology or business continuity, an Operations Manager or COO might be focused on employee efficiency or customer service. All of these personas will be a bit bottom-line driven, but none more than the CEO or CFO inside an organization. The executive and management levels at these companies may work in any different industry and have varied responsibilities based on their unique role in the organizations. These are important CTAs to consider, in addition to any industry verticals that you may want to address whose focuses might be even more specific.
If you have specific industries you specialize in like Construction, Nonprofit or Real Estate, you’ll want to break these down in your mega menu. While most IT professionals and Managed Services companies understand that a blanket proactive approach to IT can be applied across industries, it does make professionals feel good when they know that a vendor has experience in their particular industry.
Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
\nYou’ll want to make sure that you categorize your content with symptoms and benefits, for your top-funnel prospects that are not as well versed in your service offerings. Ask yourself: What are the categories of content that you’re writing about for your audience? These might correlate with your services, which you’ll list separately, but might more directly speak to the issues or symptoms that your prospects or buyer personas are suffering from. Categorizing your content by the types of problems that your prospects are trying to solve is a great way to guide them down further into their buyer journey by speaking to their problems directly.
For a Managed Services Company mega menu, you might want to include items like, “Employee Efficiency, Disaster Recovery Planning and Malware & Virus Protection,” rather than industry specific services like, “Business Continuity” or “Technology Planning” or “Security Services” - speaking to symptoms or benefits helps avoid jargon and keeps the benefit or chief concern front and center - which is usually the best option for prospects that still find themselves early in the decision making process.
Services
\nListing your services by the names they’re recognized for in your industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, symptoms and services you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one.
For the IT industry specifically, services terms like Business Continuity and Cloud Services may resonate with well-qualified prospects like an IT Director, CTO or CIO while the more general symptom-specific categories listed above might appeal more to an Operations Executive, CEO or Management Level prospect or buyer that is less familiar with the offerings associated with the Managed Services industry. Your mega menu has the ability to address both with either separate categories or additional areas for descriptions.
Icons
If you don’t have much real estate to offer descriptions or just want to add a little extra flair to your mega menu, Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section. It can also help provide a graphical representation for top-funnel prospects if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon.
For Managed Services companies, a shield to indicate security protection, a cloud for cloud hosting, a phone icon for VOIP services — there are a number of icons to help further explain your services without using too much additional real estate on lengthy descriptions. Icons can say a lot, keep things clear and concise and direct your buyers easily.
Tools or Resources
\nThis is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. An IT company might have a disaster recovery checklist, an IT security eBook, a guide for choosing the best VOIP system, a webinar breaking down the latest security threat or phishing attempt, or pillar pages that really help a prospect dig into to the different aspects of business continuity, employee efficiency and how it all impacts the bottom line, bringing those resources all together.
Multiple content types, topics and mediums of delivery make that pretty complicated to break down on a mega menu alone. We highly recommend resource center filters and in some cases multiple filters to help your website prospects better sift through that content. You can break your mega menu categories down by content type, add that content by industry or as it relates to the symptoms your fix and and services you provide.
If you have pillar pages to organize your content, they might have previously been hidden deep within a resource center or only found through a CTA or organic search. A mega menu can change that, placing your highest converting content at the top of the page in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link.
Get creative with how you layout your resources and tools within the different categories provided and feel free to experiment with different formats over a certain time period to test what seems to work the best.
Smart Content
\nSmart content is being used more and more in e-mails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? If you’re a HubSpot customer, HubSpot doesn’t include smart content in navigation out of the box, but we are huge supporters of taking technology to the next level and we’ve been experimenting with smart content in mega menu formats.
If a user has filled out a form, your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. If your prospect has downloaded and consumed multiple resources regarding Business Continuity services, for example, your mega menu can be configured to display content that aids them in their buyer journey by placing business continuity, disaster planning, cloud hosting and backup solutions front and center in their mega menu display.
Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. HubSpot users can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
Mega menus are seriously unutilized and as a technology company, IT Managed Services providers really need to explore how a robust mega menu can really help their users access all the valuable content they publish. Organize that content by industry, service, symptom and benefit and place the most important CTAs inside your mega menu using icons, links, graphics and buttons to take your mega menu to the next level.
Ready to implement a mega menu for your IT Managed Services company website, but not sure where to start? Schedule a meeting and let’s break it down together.
When it comes to the specifics of organizing a mega menu, every business and industry is totally different. While some service offerings for consumer service brands might be very basic, a B2B brand with complex services offerings or retail brands with lots of different categories might need to go about how they organize a mega menu totally differently. The competition and market share in the IT Managed Services space has grown exponentially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Yahoo, The industry is estimated to reach nearly $245 billion by the end of 2022. From remote employment to cloud hosting, data access, and managing security breaches, the role of the IT Managed Services Company is more important than ever in the world of business. But how can you create a mega menu that encompasses the breadth of the services, industries, and resources that you offer without inundating your prospects?
\n\n
Planning and organization are everything here.
Here are a few things you need to know when it comes to learning how to organize a mega menu in the IT Managed Services industry:
\nBuyer Personas & Industries
\nIT Managed Services Companies usually have a few different buyer personas, depending on the types of businesses they serve. They might be talking to an IT Director or CTO, an Operations Manager or a business owner. The daily focuses and concerns for each of these roles are all totally different.
While a high level Chief Technology Officer or Chief Information Office may be focused on evolving technology or business continuity, an Operations Manager or COO might be focused on employee efficiency or customer service. All of these personas will be a bit bottom-line driven, but none more than the CEO or CFO inside an organization. The executive and management levels at these companies may work in any different industry and have varied responsibilities based on their unique role in the organizations. These are important CTAs to consider, in addition to any industry verticals that you may want to address whose focuses might be even more specific.
If you have specific industries you specialize in like Construction, Nonprofit or Real Estate, you’ll want to break these down in your mega menu. While most IT professionals and Managed Services companies understand that a blanket proactive approach to IT can be applied across industries, it does make professionals feel good when they know that a vendor has experience in their particular industry.
Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
\nYou’ll want to make sure that you categorize your content with symptoms and benefits, for your top-funnel prospects that are not as well versed in your service offerings. Ask yourself: What are the categories of content that you’re writing about for your audience? These might correlate with your services, which you’ll list separately, but might more directly speak to the issues or symptoms that your prospects or buyer personas are suffering from. Categorizing your content by the types of problems that your prospects are trying to solve is a great way to guide them down further into their buyer journey by speaking to their problems directly.
For a Managed Services Company mega menu, you might want to include items like, “Employee Efficiency, Disaster Recovery Planning and Malware & Virus Protection,” rather than industry specific services like, “Business Continuity” or “Technology Planning” or “Security Services” - speaking to symptoms or benefits helps avoid jargon and keeps the benefit or chief concern front and center - which is usually the best option for prospects that still find themselves early in the decision making process.
Services
\nListing your services by the names they’re recognized for in your industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, symptoms and services you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one.
For the IT industry specifically, services terms like Business Continuity and Cloud Services may resonate with well-qualified prospects like an IT Director, CTO or CIO while the more general symptom-specific categories listed above might appeal more to an Operations Executive, CEO or Management Level prospect or buyer that is less familiar with the offerings associated with the Managed Services industry. Your mega menu has the ability to address both with either separate categories or additional areas for descriptions.
Icons
If you don’t have much real estate to offer descriptions or just want to add a little extra flair to your mega menu, Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section. It can also help provide a graphical representation for top-funnel prospects if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon.
For Managed Services companies, a shield to indicate security protection, a cloud for cloud hosting, a phone icon for VOIP services — there are a number of icons to help further explain your services without using too much additional real estate on lengthy descriptions. Icons can say a lot, keep things clear and concise and direct your buyers easily.
Tools or Resources
\nThis is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. An IT company might have a disaster recovery checklist, an IT security eBook, a guide for choosing the best VOIP system, a webinar breaking down the latest security threat or phishing attempt, or pillar pages that really help a prospect dig into to the different aspects of business continuity, employee efficiency and how it all impacts the bottom line, bringing those resources all together.
Multiple content types, topics and mediums of delivery make that pretty complicated to break down on a mega menu alone. We highly recommend resource center filters and in some cases multiple filters to help your website prospects better sift through that content. You can break your mega menu categories down by content type, add that content by industry or as it relates to the symptoms your fix and and services you provide.
If you have pillar pages to organize your content, they might have previously been hidden deep within a resource center or only found through a CTA or organic search. A mega menu can change that, placing your highest converting content at the top of the page in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link.
Get creative with how you layout your resources and tools within the different categories provided and feel free to experiment with different formats over a certain time period to test what seems to work the best.
Smart Content
\nSmart content is being used more and more in e-mails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? If you’re a HubSpot customer, HubSpot doesn’t include smart content in navigation out of the box, but we are huge supporters of taking technology to the next level and we’ve been experimenting with smart content in mega menu formats.
If a user has filled out a form, your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. If your prospect has downloaded and consumed multiple resources regarding Business Continuity services, for example, your mega menu can be configured to display content that aids them in their buyer journey by placing business continuity, disaster planning, cloud hosting and backup solutions front and center in their mega menu display.
Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. HubSpot users can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
Mega menus are seriously unutilized and as a technology company, IT Managed Services providers really need to explore how a robust mega menu can really help their users access all the valuable content they publish. Organize that content by industry, service, symptom and benefit and place the most important CTAs inside your mega menu using icons, links, graphics and buttons to take your mega menu to the next level.
Ready to implement a mega menu for your IT Managed Services company website, but not sure where to start? Schedule a meeting and let’s break it down together.
When it comes to the specifics of organizing a mega menu, every business and industry is totally different. While some service offerings for consumer service brands might be very basic, a B2B brand with complex services offerings or retail brands with lots of different categories might need to go about how they organize a mega menu totally differently. The competition and market share in the IT Managed Services space has grown exponentially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Yahoo, The industry is estimated to reach nearly $245 billion by the end of 2022. From remote employment to cloud hosting, data access, and managing security breaches, the role of the IT Managed Services Company is more important than ever in the world of business. But how can you create a mega menu that encompasses the breadth of the services, industries, and resources that you offer without inundating your prospects?
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\n\n
Planning and organization are everything here.
Here are a few things you need to know when it comes to learning how to organize a mega menu in the IT Managed Services industry:
\nBuyer Personas & Industries
\nIT Managed Services Companies usually have a few different buyer personas, depending on the types of businesses they serve. They might be talking to an IT Director or CTO, an Operations Manager or a business owner. The daily focuses and concerns for each of these roles are all totally different.
While a high level Chief Technology Officer or Chief Information Office may be focused on evolving technology or business continuity, an Operations Manager or COO might be focused on employee efficiency or customer service. All of these personas will be a bit bottom-line driven, but none more than the CEO or CFO inside an organization. The executive and management levels at these companies may work in any different industry and have varied responsibilities based on their unique role in the organizations. These are important CTAs to consider, in addition to any industry verticals that you may want to address whose focuses might be even more specific.
If you have specific industries you specialize in like Construction, Nonprofit or Real Estate, you’ll want to break these down in your mega menu. While most IT professionals and Managed Services companies understand that a blanket proactive approach to IT can be applied across industries, it does make professionals feel good when they know that a vendor has experience in their particular industry.
Content Categories, Symptoms or Benefits
\nYou’ll want to make sure that you categorize your content with symptoms and benefits, for your top-funnel prospects that are not as well versed in your service offerings. Ask yourself: What are the categories of content that you’re writing about for your audience? These might correlate with your services, which you’ll list separately, but might more directly speak to the issues or symptoms that your prospects or buyer personas are suffering from. Categorizing your content by the types of problems that your prospects are trying to solve is a great way to guide them down further into their buyer journey by speaking to their problems directly.
For a Managed Services Company mega menu, you might want to include items like, “Employee Efficiency, Disaster Recovery Planning and Malware & Virus Protection,” rather than industry specific services like, “Business Continuity” or “Technology Planning” or “Security Services” - speaking to symptoms or benefits helps avoid jargon and keeps the benefit or chief concern front and center - which is usually the best option for prospects that still find themselves early in the decision making process.
Services
\nListing your services by the names they’re recognized for in your industry is still important for prospects at the bottom of the funnel or referral resources that need a quick understanding of what you do. If you don’t have enough space in your navigation to address both, symptoms and services you can use some real estate in your mega menu for a short description sentence that outlines the benefits or symptoms associated with your service lines to combine the last point with this one.
For the IT industry specifically, services terms like Business Continuity and Cloud Services may resonate with well-qualified prospects like an IT Director, CTO or CIO while the more general symptom-specific categories listed above might appeal more to an Operations Executive, CEO or Management Level prospect or buyer that is less familiar with the offerings associated with the Managed Services industry. Your mega menu has the ability to address both with either separate categories or additional areas for descriptions.
Icons
If you don’t have much real estate to offer descriptions or just want to add a little extra flair to your mega menu, Icons are a great way to help a prospect further understand information in the services section. It can also help provide a graphical representation for top-funnel prospects if they’re unfamiliar with industry jargon.
For Managed Services companies, a shield to indicate security protection, a cloud for cloud hosting, a phone icon for VOIP services — there are a number of icons to help further explain your services without using too much additional real estate on lengthy descriptions. Icons can say a lot, keep things clear and concise and direct your buyers easily.
Tools or Resources
\nThis is usually the most complicated aspect of the mega menu planning process, since the arsenal of content for organizations with a digital strategy is usually quite large. An IT company might have a disaster recovery checklist, an IT security eBook, a guide for choosing the best VOIP system, a webinar breaking down the latest security threat or phishing attempt, or pillar pages that really help a prospect dig into to the different aspects of business continuity, employee efficiency and how it all impacts the bottom line, bringing those resources all together.
Multiple content types, topics and mediums of delivery make that pretty complicated to break down on a mega menu alone. We highly recommend resource center filters and in some cases multiple filters to help your website prospects better sift through that content. You can break your mega menu categories down by content type, add that content by industry or as it relates to the symptoms your fix and and services you provide.
If you have pillar pages to organize your content, they might have previously been hidden deep within a resource center or only found through a CTA or organic search. A mega menu can change that, placing your highest converting content at the top of the page in your mega menu using a featured content area, image, CTA or link.
Get creative with how you layout your resources and tools within the different categories provided and feel free to experiment with different formats over a certain time period to test what seems to work the best.
Smart Content
\nSmart content is being used more and more in e-mails, on website landing pages and inside services pages, but what about navigation? If you’re a HubSpot customer, HubSpot doesn’t include smart content in navigation out of the box, but we are huge supporters of taking technology to the next level and we’ve been experimenting with smart content in mega menu formats.
If a user has filled out a form, your development team can create a sophisticated mega menu based on forms that the prospect has filled out previously or content viewed on the website. If your prospect has downloaded and consumed multiple resources regarding Business Continuity services, for example, your mega menu can be configured to display content that aids them in their buyer journey by placing business continuity, disaster planning, cloud hosting and backup solutions front and center in their mega menu display.
Content mapping to the buyer journey is much more powerful when you enable smart content. HubSpot users can even combine smart content with lead scores and custom buyer journey mapping properties in HubSpot. An experienced HubSpot developer can really supercharge what HubSpot provides out of the box.
Mega menus are seriously unutilized and as a technology company, IT Managed Services providers really need to explore how a robust mega menu can really help their users access all the valuable content they publish. Organize that content by industry, service, symptom and benefit and place the most important CTAs inside your mega menu using icons, links, graphics and buttons to take your mega menu to the next level.
Ready to implement a mega menu for your IT Managed Services company website, but not sure where to start? Schedule a meeting and let’s break it down together.
When it comes to the specifics of organizing a mega menu, every business and industry is totally different. While some service offerings for consumer service brands might be very basic, a B2B brand with complex services offerings or retail brands with lots of different categories might need to go about how they organize a mega menu totally differently. The competition and market share in the IT Managed Services space has grown exponentially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Yahoo, The industry is estimated to reach nearly $245 billion by the end of 2022. From remote employment to cloud hosting, data access, and managing security breaches, the role of the IT Managed Services Company is more important than ever in the world of business. But how can you create a mega menu that encompasses the breadth of the services, industries, and resources that you offer without inundating your prospects?
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you do? Let’s Talk Site Performance for Black Friday Weekend","id":93641938346,"includeDefaultCustomCss":null,"isCaptchaRequired":true,"isCrawlableByBots":false,"isDraft":false,"isInstanceLayoutPage":false,"isInstantEmailEnabled":false,"isPublished":true,"isSocialPublishingEnabled":false,"keywords":[],"label":"How’d you do? Let’s Talk Site Performance for Black Friday Weekend","language":"en","lastEditSessionId":null,"lastEditUpdateId":null,"layoutSections":{},"legacyBlogTabid":null,"legacyId":null,"legacyPostGuid":null,"linkRelCanonicalUrl":null,"listTemplate":"","liveDomain":"deckerdevs.com","mab":false,"mabExperimentId":null,"mabMaster":false,"mabVariant":false,"meta":{"html_title":"How’d you do? Let’s Talk Site Performance for Black Friday Weekend","public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
![\"site](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/I%20LOOKED%20AT%20YOUR%20WEBSITE-jpg.jpeg\")
We bring up page speed optimization, conversion optimization and user experience relative to retail sales quite a bit in our conversations with clients old and new. But so many fail to account for site performance in all of the rush to promote and get as many people to their website as possible. To optimize your site performance for Black Friday weekend, here are our best tips:
Dig Deep into Page Load Speed
\nFrom image size to video size to all of the scripts that you’re running - the factors bogging down your page load speed are usually small things that stack up over time as you add content, pages and features. For retail customers we usually see issues with slow loading catalogs, images and videos that bog things down.
A bogged down website doesn’t do great things for your bounce rate. Google found that websites whose load times go from 1-3 seconds bounce rate increase probability goes up 32%. And that only gets worse as the load speed goes up. A website whose load speed increases from 1 to 5 seconds has a 90% chance of bounce rate increase.
Page speed optimization is not just an opportunity to optimize sales, but a requirement moving forward. User expectations are increasing too, and across the board for mobile websites the average time It takes to fully load a mobile landing page has dropped by seven seconds.
Bottom line? Reduce your page load time and you’ll do wonders for keeping people on your website and converting those prospects into sales.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nBoost Conversion Rates with Mega Menus
\nWe are *huge* proponents of mega menus, particularly for organizations that have a lot of information that users need to parse and access quickly and that couldn’t be more true than for retail brands. Companies like GameStop, Home Depot, Wayfair, Best Buy, and even Amazon are constantly testing different versions of mega menus. This allows them to better cater to the complex product offerings, deals and specials they have and optimize conversions by making their information simpler to access.
A mega menu is an expandable menu that allows the user to display a two-dimensional drop-down layout. It usually consists of multiple categories and products associated with those categories along with frequently purchased items, links, and graphics promoting special deals and promotions. ![\"Black](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/Black%20Friday%20Home%20Depot%20Blog%20Image.webp\")
Mega menus are a great way to circumvent impatient customers that might be sensitive to load times when clicking through a website to find the information they’re looking for. They offer a centralized place to see your offerings, which helps avoid user frustration. When a shopper can find everything they’re looking for and understand the depth of your offerings without having to click through to multiple pages on your website, it instantly qualifies your traffic and makes for a better user experience every single time.
Related: Mega Menus are Here to Stay
\nTake a good hard look at your User Experience
\nWe’ve talked about them before, but we can’t stress enough the importance of user experience. A Mega menu or page speed optimization will get you started, but as most marketers know, user experience is an ever-evolving process that requires continuous tweaking and feedback. It goes beyond the standard A-B testing and gets deep into how design draws the eyes or how the color of a button or well-placed sale banner can totally change the game.
Take a look at heat maps, create user experience surveys and do whatever you can to really dig into the intelligence of how every aspect of your website is performing.
Microsoft Clarity is a great (and FREE!) tool that we’ve been testing out recently to help us dig into user sessions and understand a little more about how users are navigating websites. Hot Jar and Lucky Orange are also great tools. If you’re still in the design phase of your landing page and want feedback pre-launch (this is great for all your campaign planning for next year!) Attention Insight is a great paid tool that pulls from AI to predict user behavior and understand how your layout and design will impact user behavior.
Related: 5 Website Optimization Tools to Boost Conversions
If the personal inundation you received from retail brands in your e-mail inbox and text stream this weekend isn’t indication enough, we’re here to tell you: competition is heating up for the attention and wallets of your customers and prospects. It is absolutely critical not only that you take the steps you’re already taking to maximize marketing budget and get in front of their faces - but once you have their attention, you really need to be positive that your website is helping you seal the deal.
By looking at your site navigation, user sessions, heat maps, and optimizing your page load speed, you can increase your conversion rates significantly and boost sales even more going into the holiday season.
Just because Black Friday Weekend is over doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do things now to optimize your site through the holiday shopping season.
Tell us in the comments how you guys did and what you’ll be doing better for the rest of the holiday shopping season.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
We bring up page speed optimization, conversion optimization and user experience relative to retail sales quite a bit in our conversations with clients old and new. But so many fail to account for site performance in all of the rush to promote and get as many people to their website as possible. To optimize your site performance for Black Friday weekend, here are our best tips:
Dig Deep into Page Load Speed
\nFrom image size to video size to all of the scripts that you’re running - the factors bogging down your page load speed are usually small things that stack up over time as you add content, pages and features. For retail customers we usually see issues with slow loading catalogs, images and videos that bog things down.
A bogged down website doesn’t do great things for your bounce rate. Google found that websites whose load times go from 1-3 seconds bounce rate increase probability goes up 32%. And that only gets worse as the load speed goes up. A website whose load speed increases from 1 to 5 seconds has a 90% chance of bounce rate increase.
Page speed optimization is not just an opportunity to optimize sales, but a requirement moving forward. User expectations are increasing too, and across the board for mobile websites the average time It takes to fully load a mobile landing page has dropped by seven seconds.
Bottom line? Reduce your page load time and you’ll do wonders for keeping people on your website and converting those prospects into sales.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nBoost Conversion Rates with Mega Menus
\nWe are *huge* proponents of mega menus, particularly for organizations that have a lot of information that users need to parse and access quickly and that couldn’t be more true than for retail brands. Companies like GameStop, Home Depot, Wayfair, Best Buy, and even Amazon are constantly testing different versions of mega menus. This allows them to better cater to the complex product offerings, deals and specials they have and optimize conversions by making their information simpler to access.
A mega menu is an expandable menu that allows the user to display a two-dimensional drop-down layout. It usually consists of multiple categories and products associated with those categories along with frequently purchased items, links, and graphics promoting special deals and promotions.
Mega menus are a great way to circumvent impatient customers that might be sensitive to load times when clicking through a website to find the information they’re looking for. They offer a centralized place to see your offerings, which helps avoid user frustration. When a shopper can find everything they’re looking for and understand the depth of your offerings without having to click through to multiple pages on your website, it instantly qualifies your traffic and makes for a better user experience every single time.
Related: Mega Menus are Here to Stay
\nTake a good hard look at your User Experience
\nWe’ve talked about them before, but we can’t stress enough the importance of user experience. A Mega menu or page speed optimization will get you started, but as most marketers know, user experience is an ever-evolving process that requires continuous tweaking and feedback. It goes beyond the standard A-B testing and gets deep into how design draws the eyes or how the color of a button or well-placed sale banner can totally change the game.
Take a look at heat maps, create user experience surveys and do whatever you can to really dig into the intelligence of how every aspect of your website is performing.
Microsoft Clarity is a great (and FREE!) tool that we’ve been testing out recently to help us dig into user sessions and understand a little more about how users are navigating websites. Hot Jar and Lucky Orange are also great tools. If you’re still in the design phase of your landing page and want feedback pre-launch (this is great for all your campaign planning for next year!) Attention Insight is a great paid tool that pulls from AI to predict user behavior and understand how your layout and design will impact user behavior.
Related: 5 Website Optimization Tools to Boost Conversions
If the personal inundation you received from retail brands in your e-mail inbox and text stream this weekend isn’t indication enough, we’re here to tell you: competition is heating up for the attention and wallets of your customers and prospects. It is absolutely critical not only that you take the steps you’re already taking to maximize marketing budget and get in front of their faces - but once you have their attention, you really need to be positive that your website is helping you seal the deal.
By looking at your site navigation, user sessions, heat maps, and optimizing your page load speed, you can increase your conversion rates significantly and boost sales even more going into the holiday season.
Just because Black Friday Weekend is over doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do things now to optimize your site through the holiday shopping season.
Tell us in the comments how you guys did and what you’ll be doing better for the rest of the holiday shopping season.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
We bring up page speed optimization, conversion optimization and user experience relative to retail sales quite a bit in our conversations with clients old and new. But so many fail to account for site performance in all of the rush to promote and get as many people to their website as possible. To optimize your site performance for Black Friday weekend, here are our best tips:
Dig Deep into Page Load Speed
\nFrom image size to video size to all of the scripts that you’re running - the factors bogging down your page load speed are usually small things that stack up over time as you add content, pages and features. For retail customers we usually see issues with slow loading catalogs, images and videos that bog things down.
A bogged down website doesn’t do great things for your bounce rate. Google found that websites whose load times go from 1-3 seconds bounce rate increase probability goes up 32%. And that only gets worse as the load speed goes up. A website whose load speed increases from 1 to 5 seconds has a 90% chance of bounce rate increase.
Page speed optimization is not just an opportunity to optimize sales, but a requirement moving forward. User expectations are increasing too, and across the board for mobile websites the average time It takes to fully load a mobile landing page has dropped by seven seconds.
Bottom line? Reduce your page load time and you’ll do wonders for keeping people on your website and converting those prospects into sales.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nBoost Conversion Rates with Mega Menus
\nWe are *huge* proponents of mega menus, particularly for organizations that have a lot of information that users need to parse and access quickly and that couldn’t be more true than for retail brands. Companies like GameStop, Home Depot, Wayfair, Best Buy, and even Amazon are constantly testing different versions of mega menus. This allows them to better cater to the complex product offerings, deals and specials they have and optimize conversions by making their information simpler to access.
A mega menu is an expandable menu that allows the user to display a two-dimensional drop-down layout. It usually consists of multiple categories and products associated with those categories along with frequently purchased items, links, and graphics promoting special deals and promotions.
Mega menus are a great way to circumvent impatient customers that might be sensitive to load times when clicking through a website to find the information they’re looking for. They offer a centralized place to see your offerings, which helps avoid user frustration. When a shopper can find everything they’re looking for and understand the depth of your offerings without having to click through to multiple pages on your website, it instantly qualifies your traffic and makes for a better user experience every single time.
Related: Mega Menus are Here to Stay
\nTake a good hard look at your User Experience
\nWe’ve talked about them before, but we can’t stress enough the importance of user experience. A Mega menu or page speed optimization will get you started, but as most marketers know, user experience is an ever-evolving process that requires continuous tweaking and feedback. It goes beyond the standard A-B testing and gets deep into how design draws the eyes or how the color of a button or well-placed sale banner can totally change the game.
Take a look at heat maps, create user experience surveys and do whatever you can to really dig into the intelligence of how every aspect of your website is performing.
Microsoft Clarity is a great (and FREE!) tool that we’ve been testing out recently to help us dig into user sessions and understand a little more about how users are navigating websites. Hot Jar and Lucky Orange are also great tools. If you’re still in the design phase of your landing page and want feedback pre-launch (this is great for all your campaign planning for next year!) Attention Insight is a great paid tool that pulls from AI to predict user behavior and understand how your layout and design will impact user behavior.
Related: 5 Website Optimization Tools to Boost Conversions
If the personal inundation you received from retail brands in your e-mail inbox and text stream this weekend isn’t indication enough, we’re here to tell you: competition is heating up for the attention and wallets of your customers and prospects. It is absolutely critical not only that you take the steps you’re already taking to maximize marketing budget and get in front of their faces - but once you have their attention, you really need to be positive that your website is helping you seal the deal.
By looking at your site navigation, user sessions, heat maps, and optimizing your page load speed, you can increase your conversion rates significantly and boost sales even more going into the holiday season.
Just because Black Friday Weekend is over doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do things now to optimize your site through the holiday shopping season.
Tell us in the comments how you guys did and what you’ll be doing better for the rest of the holiday shopping season.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
We bring up page speed optimization, conversion optimization and user experience relative to retail sales quite a bit in our conversations with clients old and new. But so many fail to account for site performance in all of the rush to promote and get as many people to their website as possible. To optimize your site performance for Black Friday weekend, here are our best tips:
Dig Deep into Page Load Speed
\nFrom image size to video size to all of the scripts that you’re running - the factors bogging down your page load speed are usually small things that stack up over time as you add content, pages and features. For retail customers we usually see issues with slow loading catalogs, images and videos that bog things down.
A bogged down website doesn’t do great things for your bounce rate. Google found that websites whose load times go from 1-3 seconds bounce rate increase probability goes up 32%. And that only gets worse as the load speed goes up. A website whose load speed increases from 1 to 5 seconds has a 90% chance of bounce rate increase.
Page speed optimization is not just an opportunity to optimize sales, but a requirement moving forward. User expectations are increasing too, and across the board for mobile websites the average time It takes to fully load a mobile landing page has dropped by seven seconds.
Bottom line? Reduce your page load time and you’ll do wonders for keeping people on your website and converting those prospects into sales.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nBoost Conversion Rates with Mega Menus
\nWe are *huge* proponents of mega menus, particularly for organizations that have a lot of information that users need to parse and access quickly and that couldn’t be more true than for retail brands. Companies like GameStop, Home Depot, Wayfair, Best Buy, and even Amazon are constantly testing different versions of mega menus. This allows them to better cater to the complex product offerings, deals and specials they have and optimize conversions by making their information simpler to access.
A mega menu is an expandable menu that allows the user to display a two-dimensional drop-down layout. It usually consists of multiple categories and products associated with those categories along with frequently purchased items, links, and graphics promoting special deals and promotions.
Mega menus are a great way to circumvent impatient customers that might be sensitive to load times when clicking through a website to find the information they’re looking for. They offer a centralized place to see your offerings, which helps avoid user frustration. When a shopper can find everything they’re looking for and understand the depth of your offerings without having to click through to multiple pages on your website, it instantly qualifies your traffic and makes for a better user experience every single time.
Related: Mega Menus are Here to Stay
\nTake a good hard look at your User Experience
\nWe’ve talked about them before, but we can’t stress enough the importance of user experience. A Mega menu or page speed optimization will get you started, but as most marketers know, user experience is an ever-evolving process that requires continuous tweaking and feedback. It goes beyond the standard A-B testing and gets deep into how design draws the eyes or how the color of a button or well-placed sale banner can totally change the game.
Take a look at heat maps, create user experience surveys and do whatever you can to really dig into the intelligence of how every aspect of your website is performing.
Microsoft Clarity is a great (and FREE!) tool that we’ve been testing out recently to help us dig into user sessions and understand a little more about how users are navigating websites. Hot Jar and Lucky Orange are also great tools. If you’re still in the design phase of your landing page and want feedback pre-launch (this is great for all your campaign planning for next year!) Attention Insight is a great paid tool that pulls from AI to predict user behavior and understand how your layout and design will impact user behavior.
Related: 5 Website Optimization Tools to Boost Conversions
If the personal inundation you received from retail brands in your e-mail inbox and text stream this weekend isn’t indication enough, we’re here to tell you: competition is heating up for the attention and wallets of your customers and prospects. It is absolutely critical not only that you take the steps you’re already taking to maximize marketing budget and get in front of their faces - but once you have their attention, you really need to be positive that your website is helping you seal the deal.
By looking at your site navigation, user sessions, heat maps, and optimizing your page load speed, you can increase your conversion rates significantly and boost sales even more going into the holiday season.
Just because Black Friday Weekend is over doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do things now to optimize your site through the holiday shopping season.
Tell us in the comments how you guys did and what you’ll be doing better for the rest of the holiday shopping season.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
We bring up page speed optimization, conversion optimization and user experience relative to retail sales quite a bit in our conversations with clients old and new. But so many fail to account for site performance in all of the rush to promote and get as many people to their website as possible. To optimize your site performance for Black Friday weekend, here are our best tips:
Dig Deep into Page Load Speed
\nFrom image size to video size to all of the scripts that you’re running - the factors bogging down your page load speed are usually small things that stack up over time as you add content, pages and features. For retail customers we usually see issues with slow loading catalogs, images and videos that bog things down.
A bogged down website doesn’t do great things for your bounce rate. Google found that websites whose load times go from 1-3 seconds bounce rate increase probability goes up 32%. And that only gets worse as the load speed goes up. A website whose load speed increases from 1 to 5 seconds has a 90% chance of bounce rate increase.
Page speed optimization is not just an opportunity to optimize sales, but a requirement moving forward. User expectations are increasing too, and across the board for mobile websites the average time It takes to fully load a mobile landing page has dropped by seven seconds.
Bottom line? Reduce your page load time and you’ll do wonders for keeping people on your website and converting those prospects into sales.
Related: Page Speed Optimization - 5 Factors Bogging Down Your Website
\nBoost Conversion Rates with Mega Menus
\nWe are *huge* proponents of mega menus, particularly for organizations that have a lot of information that users need to parse and access quickly and that couldn’t be more true than for retail brands. Companies like GameStop, Home Depot, Wayfair, Best Buy, and even Amazon are constantly testing different versions of mega menus. This allows them to better cater to the complex product offerings, deals and specials they have and optimize conversions by making their information simpler to access.
A mega menu is an expandable menu that allows the user to display a two-dimensional drop-down layout. It usually consists of multiple categories and products associated with those categories along with frequently purchased items, links, and graphics promoting special deals and promotions.
Mega menus are a great way to circumvent impatient customers that might be sensitive to load times when clicking through a website to find the information they’re looking for. They offer a centralized place to see your offerings, which helps avoid user frustration. When a shopper can find everything they’re looking for and understand the depth of your offerings without having to click through to multiple pages on your website, it instantly qualifies your traffic and makes for a better user experience every single time.
Related: Mega Menus are Here to Stay
\nTake a good hard look at your User Experience
\nWe’ve talked about them before, but we can’t stress enough the importance of user experience. A Mega menu or page speed optimization will get you started, but as most marketers know, user experience is an ever-evolving process that requires continuous tweaking and feedback. It goes beyond the standard A-B testing and gets deep into how design draws the eyes or how the color of a button or well-placed sale banner can totally change the game.
Take a look at heat maps, create user experience surveys and do whatever you can to really dig into the intelligence of how every aspect of your website is performing.
Microsoft Clarity is a great (and FREE!) tool that we’ve been testing out recently to help us dig into user sessions and understand a little more about how users are navigating websites. Hot Jar and Lucky Orange are also great tools. If you’re still in the design phase of your landing page and want feedback pre-launch (this is great for all your campaign planning for next year!) Attention Insight is a great paid tool that pulls from AI to predict user behavior and understand how your layout and design will impact user behavior.
Related: 5 Website Optimization Tools to Boost Conversions
If the personal inundation you received from retail brands in your e-mail inbox and text stream this weekend isn’t indication enough, we’re here to tell you: competition is heating up for the attention and wallets of your customers and prospects. It is absolutely critical not only that you take the steps you’re already taking to maximize marketing budget and get in front of their faces - but once you have their attention, you really need to be positive that your website is helping you seal the deal.
By looking at your site navigation, user sessions, heat maps, and optimizing your page load speed, you can increase your conversion rates significantly and boost sales even more going into the holiday season.
Just because Black Friday Weekend is over doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do things now to optimize your site through the holiday shopping season.
Tell us in the comments how you guys did and what you’ll be doing better for the rest of the holiday shopping season.
Black Friday Weekend comes and goes every year and between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday - the opportunity is ripe to have the best weekend in retail that you have all year round. With a record $9.12 Billion spent this Black Friday, we hope that you took the opportunity to get a little piece for yourself. Tell us, how’d you do? Let’s talk about your website performance for Black Friday weekend…
So many marketers spend months preparing for this weekend and work overtime trying to send e-mails, execute ads and get the word out about their products and sales to maximize revenue. Managing coupon codes, carefully curating and planning your e-mail blasts, optimizing your products for search and spending a premium on social media and display ads are just some of the tactics that we see online retailers leveraging to increase their sales this weekend.
To say that there are a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to maximizing your sales during the biggest shopping weekend of the year is an understatement. Each of them are incredibly important, as your success during this weekend and the holiday shopping season in general depends on all of them. But there are a few factors that you may not have considered when it comes to your website and Cyber Monday or optimizing your website for online shopping in general.
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
![\"i](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/i%20dont%20hate%20it.jpeg\")
Businesses grow. It’s what they’re all meant to do and it’s what we as business owners want. But as they grow, businesses and their teams add line of business applications, additional employees, marketing functions, content and additional functionality to the website. All of a sudden what used to work so well for your business is bogged down, barely keeping up and holding our marketing teams back from really leaping into digital marketing and turning the website into a lead generation tool.
If you’re starting to worry that your WordPress website is holding you back, here are a few signs that you might be outgrowing WordPress…
You find yourself compromising on what you want.
\nPlugins. Am I right? Plugins were always to website features what apps were to user needs with the iPhone. There was always a plugin that did what you needed. Fast forward a few years, and as more and more developers stop supporting their plugins, there are fewer secure options to get your goals accomplished inside WordPress. This means you’ve added multiple plugins to accomplish a goal or help with a workflow, resulting in piecemeal websites bogged down by plugins that aren’t properly supported which leads to security holes and slower load times.
\nYour site keeps getting hacked
\nThe security holes that come with outdated plugins really get you in trouble. The multitudes of WordPress plugins and the clunky way you piece together your website might’ve worked when you were just getting going, but once those plugins went out of date they opened huge security holes and it’s possible your site has been compromised. WordPress is well known for their vulnerability issues. While captcha and security tools can help, attacks can slip through from time to time, because the majority of the plugins hosted on WordPress are third party plugins.
\nUpdates break your website
\nWordPress core, themes, and plugins are almost constantly updating to make up for the security vulnerabilities and attacks, but every time they update to accommodate those security gaps, it has the potential to break your website, especially when the developers that created your theme or plugins may not be updating at the same rate that WordPress. Approaching these plugin updates reactively can mean that you experience downtime before your developer can get in to fix these items - and as a growing business, that downtime becomes more and more costly if you’re relying on your website for any kind of revenue.
But it’s not just outdated plugins that can cause your website to break, but misplaced code and styling within WordPress core, themes and plugins can cause updates to break your website as well. Oftentimes developers hack together CSS and HTML and put it in the wrong places or fail to create child themes and directly update the theme files, instead. They may also target part of the structure that shouldn’t be targeted within a theme or even modify core WordPress files. An example of this might be when you ask a developer to update your WordPress site, and after updating the styling is totally out of whack. Some WordPress themes have very specific rules around how the theme should be updated and developers don’t always follow them or leave behind appropriate documentation, which may work if they’re the only one updating the website long term, but if things are misplaced and themes aren’t treated with best practices, updates will inevitably break your site.
You’re exploring integrations
\nAs your business grows, you’ll find that the pieces of software that you use to manage your day to day items may not serve you as well. You might bring on more robust applications, and eventually you might even want to integrate those applications closely with your website. Customer portals, custom calculators, learning centers, the details of customer registration, event management or sales handoffs are just some of the integrations and applications that customers have approached us to design on their behalf. Integrating these applications or building integrations between an already bogged down website and business application needs to be considered carefully. Investing so heavily in advanced integrations should be part of a really comprehensive evaluation of all your technology - including your website.
\nYour site is slow AF
\nWe discuss the frustration associated with bogged down websites all the time - and it’s a huge segment of the reason that a lot of companies decide to completely overhaul their website. Piecing together functionality that you need using multiple plugins for form capture, graphic displays and chatbots for example is great from a functionality and feature perspective, but pile that on with photo gallery and product management and things start to get slower and slower. Your new marketing manager has even more great ideas - but your site is already too slow and you know that slow loading sites are not good for Google *or* user conversions.
Your website served you well for a long time, but you can’t expect what you started with to continue serving you through this growth period in your business. Just like you upgrade phones and computers and processes, you need to upgrade your website framework and CMS. If you’re experiencing any of the above, it’s very likely that it’s time to upgrade from WordPress and hiring a skilled, experienced developer is gonna get you there.
It’s no secret that at deckerdevs we’re HubSpot advocates. We’ve invested a lot of time and funding into growing our knowledge base and experience in HubSpot. We’ve been around since the onset of this powerful automation software and as we continue to watch their CMS grow, we know we can count on the same boundary-pushing best practices, security, user friendliness and attention to detail they’ve always moved forward in their marketing software. Is HubSpot CMS the solution for every business that has outgrown WordPress? Not necessarily. But it might be.
What’s your WordPress struggle?
Let us know what you’re dealing with in the comments or book some time and let’s chat it out.
\n
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
Businesses grow. It’s what they’re all meant to do and it’s what we as business owners want. But as they grow, businesses and their teams add line of business applications, additional employees, marketing functions, content and additional functionality to the website. All of a sudden what used to work so well for your business is bogged down, barely keeping up and holding our marketing teams back from really leaping into digital marketing and turning the website into a lead generation tool.
If you’re starting to worry that your WordPress website is holding you back, here are a few signs that you might be outgrowing WordPress…
You find yourself compromising on what you want.
\nPlugins. Am I right? Plugins were always to website features what apps were to user needs with the iPhone. There was always a plugin that did what you needed. Fast forward a few years, and as more and more developers stop supporting their plugins, there are fewer secure options to get your goals accomplished inside WordPress. This means you’ve added multiple plugins to accomplish a goal or help with a workflow, resulting in piecemeal websites bogged down by plugins that aren’t properly supported which leads to security holes and slower load times.
\nYour site keeps getting hacked
\nThe security holes that come with outdated plugins really get you in trouble. The multitudes of WordPress plugins and the clunky way you piece together your website might’ve worked when you were just getting going, but once those plugins went out of date they opened huge security holes and it’s possible your site has been compromised. WordPress is well known for their vulnerability issues. While captcha and security tools can help, attacks can slip through from time to time, because the majority of the plugins hosted on WordPress are third party plugins.
\nUpdates break your website
\nWordPress core, themes, and plugins are almost constantly updating to make up for the security vulnerabilities and attacks, but every time they update to accommodate those security gaps, it has the potential to break your website, especially when the developers that created your theme or plugins may not be updating at the same rate that WordPress. Approaching these plugin updates reactively can mean that you experience downtime before your developer can get in to fix these items - and as a growing business, that downtime becomes more and more costly if you’re relying on your website for any kind of revenue.
But it’s not just outdated plugins that can cause your website to break, but misplaced code and styling within WordPress core, themes and plugins can cause updates to break your website as well. Oftentimes developers hack together CSS and HTML and put it in the wrong places or fail to create child themes and directly update the theme files, instead. They may also target part of the structure that shouldn’t be targeted within a theme or even modify core WordPress files. An example of this might be when you ask a developer to update your WordPress site, and after updating the styling is totally out of whack. Some WordPress themes have very specific rules around how the theme should be updated and developers don’t always follow them or leave behind appropriate documentation, which may work if they’re the only one updating the website long term, but if things are misplaced and themes aren’t treated with best practices, updates will inevitably break your site.
You’re exploring integrations
\nAs your business grows, you’ll find that the pieces of software that you use to manage your day to day items may not serve you as well. You might bring on more robust applications, and eventually you might even want to integrate those applications closely with your website. Customer portals, custom calculators, learning centers, the details of customer registration, event management or sales handoffs are just some of the integrations and applications that customers have approached us to design on their behalf. Integrating these applications or building integrations between an already bogged down website and business application needs to be considered carefully. Investing so heavily in advanced integrations should be part of a really comprehensive evaluation of all your technology - including your website.
\nYour site is slow AF
\nWe discuss the frustration associated with bogged down websites all the time - and it’s a huge segment of the reason that a lot of companies decide to completely overhaul their website. Piecing together functionality that you need using multiple plugins for form capture, graphic displays and chatbots for example is great from a functionality and feature perspective, but pile that on with photo gallery and product management and things start to get slower and slower. Your new marketing manager has even more great ideas - but your site is already too slow and you know that slow loading sites are not good for Google *or* user conversions.
Your website served you well for a long time, but you can’t expect what you started with to continue serving you through this growth period in your business. Just like you upgrade phones and computers and processes, you need to upgrade your website framework and CMS. If you’re experiencing any of the above, it’s very likely that it’s time to upgrade from WordPress and hiring a skilled, experienced developer is gonna get you there.
It’s no secret that at deckerdevs we’re HubSpot advocates. We’ve invested a lot of time and funding into growing our knowledge base and experience in HubSpot. We’ve been around since the onset of this powerful automation software and as we continue to watch their CMS grow, we know we can count on the same boundary-pushing best practices, security, user friendliness and attention to detail they’ve always moved forward in their marketing software. Is HubSpot CMS the solution for every business that has outgrown WordPress? Not necessarily. But it might be.
What’s your WordPress struggle?
Let us know what you’re dealing with in the comments or book some time and let’s chat it out.
\n
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
Businesses grow. It’s what they’re all meant to do and it’s what we as business owners want. But as they grow, businesses and their teams add line of business applications, additional employees, marketing functions, content and additional functionality to the website. All of a sudden what used to work so well for your business is bogged down, barely keeping up and holding our marketing teams back from really leaping into digital marketing and turning the website into a lead generation tool.
If you’re starting to worry that your WordPress website is holding you back, here are a few signs that you might be outgrowing WordPress…
You find yourself compromising on what you want.
\nPlugins. Am I right? Plugins were always to website features what apps were to user needs with the iPhone. There was always a plugin that did what you needed. Fast forward a few years, and as more and more developers stop supporting their plugins, there are fewer secure options to get your goals accomplished inside WordPress. This means you’ve added multiple plugins to accomplish a goal or help with a workflow, resulting in piecemeal websites bogged down by plugins that aren’t properly supported which leads to security holes and slower load times.
\nYour site keeps getting hacked
\nThe security holes that come with outdated plugins really get you in trouble. The multitudes of WordPress plugins and the clunky way you piece together your website might’ve worked when you were just getting going, but once those plugins went out of date they opened huge security holes and it’s possible your site has been compromised. WordPress is well known for their vulnerability issues. While captcha and security tools can help, attacks can slip through from time to time, because the majority of the plugins hosted on WordPress are third party plugins.
\nUpdates break your website
\nWordPress core, themes, and plugins are almost constantly updating to make up for the security vulnerabilities and attacks, but every time they update to accommodate those security gaps, it has the potential to break your website, especially when the developers that created your theme or plugins may not be updating at the same rate that WordPress. Approaching these plugin updates reactively can mean that you experience downtime before your developer can get in to fix these items - and as a growing business, that downtime becomes more and more costly if you’re relying on your website for any kind of revenue.
But it’s not just outdated plugins that can cause your website to break, but misplaced code and styling within WordPress core, themes and plugins can cause updates to break your website as well. Oftentimes developers hack together CSS and HTML and put it in the wrong places or fail to create child themes and directly update the theme files, instead. They may also target part of the structure that shouldn’t be targeted within a theme or even modify core WordPress files. An example of this might be when you ask a developer to update your WordPress site, and after updating the styling is totally out of whack. Some WordPress themes have very specific rules around how the theme should be updated and developers don’t always follow them or leave behind appropriate documentation, which may work if they’re the only one updating the website long term, but if things are misplaced and themes aren’t treated with best practices, updates will inevitably break your site.
You’re exploring integrations
\nAs your business grows, you’ll find that the pieces of software that you use to manage your day to day items may not serve you as well. You might bring on more robust applications, and eventually you might even want to integrate those applications closely with your website. Customer portals, custom calculators, learning centers, the details of customer registration, event management or sales handoffs are just some of the integrations and applications that customers have approached us to design on their behalf. Integrating these applications or building integrations between an already bogged down website and business application needs to be considered carefully. Investing so heavily in advanced integrations should be part of a really comprehensive evaluation of all your technology - including your website.
\nYour site is slow AF
\nWe discuss the frustration associated with bogged down websites all the time - and it’s a huge segment of the reason that a lot of companies decide to completely overhaul their website. Piecing together functionality that you need using multiple plugins for form capture, graphic displays and chatbots for example is great from a functionality and feature perspective, but pile that on with photo gallery and product management and things start to get slower and slower. Your new marketing manager has even more great ideas - but your site is already too slow and you know that slow loading sites are not good for Google *or* user conversions.
Your website served you well for a long time, but you can’t expect what you started with to continue serving you through this growth period in your business. Just like you upgrade phones and computers and processes, you need to upgrade your website framework and CMS. If you’re experiencing any of the above, it’s very likely that it’s time to upgrade from WordPress and hiring a skilled, experienced developer is gonna get you there.
It’s no secret that at deckerdevs we’re HubSpot advocates. We’ve invested a lot of time and funding into growing our knowledge base and experience in HubSpot. We’ve been around since the onset of this powerful automation software and as we continue to watch their CMS grow, we know we can count on the same boundary-pushing best practices, security, user friendliness and attention to detail they’ve always moved forward in their marketing software. Is HubSpot CMS the solution for every business that has outgrown WordPress? Not necessarily. But it might be.
What’s your WordPress struggle?
Let us know what you’re dealing with in the comments or book some time and let’s chat it out.
\n
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
Businesses grow. It’s what they’re all meant to do and it’s what we as business owners want. But as they grow, businesses and their teams add line of business applications, additional employees, marketing functions, content and additional functionality to the website. All of a sudden what used to work so well for your business is bogged down, barely keeping up and holding our marketing teams back from really leaping into digital marketing and turning the website into a lead generation tool.
If you’re starting to worry that your WordPress website is holding you back, here are a few signs that you might be outgrowing WordPress…
You find yourself compromising on what you want.
\nPlugins. Am I right? Plugins were always to website features what apps were to user needs with the iPhone. There was always a plugin that did what you needed. Fast forward a few years, and as more and more developers stop supporting their plugins, there are fewer secure options to get your goals accomplished inside WordPress. This means you’ve added multiple plugins to accomplish a goal or help with a workflow, resulting in piecemeal websites bogged down by plugins that aren’t properly supported which leads to security holes and slower load times.
\nYour site keeps getting hacked
\nThe security holes that come with outdated plugins really get you in trouble. The multitudes of WordPress plugins and the clunky way you piece together your website might’ve worked when you were just getting going, but once those plugins went out of date they opened huge security holes and it’s possible your site has been compromised. WordPress is well known for their vulnerability issues. While captcha and security tools can help, attacks can slip through from time to time, because the majority of the plugins hosted on WordPress are third party plugins.
\nUpdates break your website
\nWordPress core, themes, and plugins are almost constantly updating to make up for the security vulnerabilities and attacks, but every time they update to accommodate those security gaps, it has the potential to break your website, especially when the developers that created your theme or plugins may not be updating at the same rate that WordPress. Approaching these plugin updates reactively can mean that you experience downtime before your developer can get in to fix these items - and as a growing business, that downtime becomes more and more costly if you’re relying on your website for any kind of revenue.
But it’s not just outdated plugins that can cause your website to break, but misplaced code and styling within WordPress core, themes and plugins can cause updates to break your website as well. Oftentimes developers hack together CSS and HTML and put it in the wrong places or fail to create child themes and directly update the theme files, instead. They may also target part of the structure that shouldn’t be targeted within a theme or even modify core WordPress files. An example of this might be when you ask a developer to update your WordPress site, and after updating the styling is totally out of whack. Some WordPress themes have very specific rules around how the theme should be updated and developers don’t always follow them or leave behind appropriate documentation, which may work if they’re the only one updating the website long term, but if things are misplaced and themes aren’t treated with best practices, updates will inevitably break your site.
You’re exploring integrations
\nAs your business grows, you’ll find that the pieces of software that you use to manage your day to day items may not serve you as well. You might bring on more robust applications, and eventually you might even want to integrate those applications closely with your website. Customer portals, custom calculators, learning centers, the details of customer registration, event management or sales handoffs are just some of the integrations and applications that customers have approached us to design on their behalf. Integrating these applications or building integrations between an already bogged down website and business application needs to be considered carefully. Investing so heavily in advanced integrations should be part of a really comprehensive evaluation of all your technology - including your website.
\nYour site is slow AF
\nWe discuss the frustration associated with bogged down websites all the time - and it’s a huge segment of the reason that a lot of companies decide to completely overhaul their website. Piecing together functionality that you need using multiple plugins for form capture, graphic displays and chatbots for example is great from a functionality and feature perspective, but pile that on with photo gallery and product management and things start to get slower and slower. Your new marketing manager has even more great ideas - but your site is already too slow and you know that slow loading sites are not good for Google *or* user conversions.
Your website served you well for a long time, but you can’t expect what you started with to continue serving you through this growth period in your business. Just like you upgrade phones and computers and processes, you need to upgrade your website framework and CMS. If you’re experiencing any of the above, it’s very likely that it’s time to upgrade from WordPress and hiring a skilled, experienced developer is gonna get you there.
It’s no secret that at deckerdevs we’re HubSpot advocates. We’ve invested a lot of time and funding into growing our knowledge base and experience in HubSpot. We’ve been around since the onset of this powerful automation software and as we continue to watch their CMS grow, we know we can count on the same boundary-pushing best practices, security, user friendliness and attention to detail they’ve always moved forward in their marketing software. Is HubSpot CMS the solution for every business that has outgrown WordPress? Not necessarily. But it might be.
What’s your WordPress struggle?
Let us know what you’re dealing with in the comments or book some time and let’s chat it out.
\n
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
Businesses grow. It’s what they’re all meant to do and it’s what we as business owners want. But as they grow, businesses and their teams add line of business applications, additional employees, marketing functions, content and additional functionality to the website. All of a sudden what used to work so well for your business is bogged down, barely keeping up and holding our marketing teams back from really leaping into digital marketing and turning the website into a lead generation tool.
If you’re starting to worry that your WordPress website is holding you back, here are a few signs that you might be outgrowing WordPress…
You find yourself compromising on what you want.
\nPlugins. Am I right? Plugins were always to website features what apps were to user needs with the iPhone. There was always a plugin that did what you needed. Fast forward a few years, and as more and more developers stop supporting their plugins, there are fewer secure options to get your goals accomplished inside WordPress. This means you’ve added multiple plugins to accomplish a goal or help with a workflow, resulting in piecemeal websites bogged down by plugins that aren’t properly supported which leads to security holes and slower load times.
\nYour site keeps getting hacked
\nThe security holes that come with outdated plugins really get you in trouble. The multitudes of WordPress plugins and the clunky way you piece together your website might’ve worked when you were just getting going, but once those plugins went out of date they opened huge security holes and it’s possible your site has been compromised. WordPress is well known for their vulnerability issues. While captcha and security tools can help, attacks can slip through from time to time, because the majority of the plugins hosted on WordPress are third party plugins.
\nUpdates break your website
\nWordPress core, themes, and plugins are almost constantly updating to make up for the security vulnerabilities and attacks, but every time they update to accommodate those security gaps, it has the potential to break your website, especially when the developers that created your theme or plugins may not be updating at the same rate that WordPress. Approaching these plugin updates reactively can mean that you experience downtime before your developer can get in to fix these items - and as a growing business, that downtime becomes more and more costly if you’re relying on your website for any kind of revenue.
But it’s not just outdated plugins that can cause your website to break, but misplaced code and styling within WordPress core, themes and plugins can cause updates to break your website as well. Oftentimes developers hack together CSS and HTML and put it in the wrong places or fail to create child themes and directly update the theme files, instead. They may also target part of the structure that shouldn’t be targeted within a theme or even modify core WordPress files. An example of this might be when you ask a developer to update your WordPress site, and after updating the styling is totally out of whack. Some WordPress themes have very specific rules around how the theme should be updated and developers don’t always follow them or leave behind appropriate documentation, which may work if they’re the only one updating the website long term, but if things are misplaced and themes aren’t treated with best practices, updates will inevitably break your site.
You’re exploring integrations
\nAs your business grows, you’ll find that the pieces of software that you use to manage your day to day items may not serve you as well. You might bring on more robust applications, and eventually you might even want to integrate those applications closely with your website. Customer portals, custom calculators, learning centers, the details of customer registration, event management or sales handoffs are just some of the integrations and applications that customers have approached us to design on their behalf. Integrating these applications or building integrations between an already bogged down website and business application needs to be considered carefully. Investing so heavily in advanced integrations should be part of a really comprehensive evaluation of all your technology - including your website.
\nYour site is slow AF
\nWe discuss the frustration associated with bogged down websites all the time - and it’s a huge segment of the reason that a lot of companies decide to completely overhaul their website. Piecing together functionality that you need using multiple plugins for form capture, graphic displays and chatbots for example is great from a functionality and feature perspective, but pile that on with photo gallery and product management and things start to get slower and slower. Your new marketing manager has even more great ideas - but your site is already too slow and you know that slow loading sites are not good for Google *or* user conversions.
Your website served you well for a long time, but you can’t expect what you started with to continue serving you through this growth period in your business. Just like you upgrade phones and computers and processes, you need to upgrade your website framework and CMS. If you’re experiencing any of the above, it’s very likely that it’s time to upgrade from WordPress and hiring a skilled, experienced developer is gonna get you there.
It’s no secret that at deckerdevs we’re HubSpot advocates. We’ve invested a lot of time and funding into growing our knowledge base and experience in HubSpot. We’ve been around since the onset of this powerful automation software and as we continue to watch their CMS grow, we know we can count on the same boundary-pushing best practices, security, user friendliness and attention to detail they’ve always moved forward in their marketing software. Is HubSpot CMS the solution for every business that has outgrown WordPress? Not necessarily. But it might be.
What’s your WordPress struggle?
Let us know what you’re dealing with in the comments or book some time and let’s chat it out.
\n
WordPress CMS has always been a great way for a small business to develop a pretty customized website. You choose a theme or framework, add some plugins and you’re off to the races. Even a technically savvy small business owner could theoretically walk themselves through basic WordPress development - and many have (though we don’t recommend this).
The problem is, over time this piecemeal approach that served you well in your initial stages ends up cumbersome and doesn’t quite suit your business as it grows. Small businesses outgrow their initial Wordpress framework all the time and we help drive them to a custom solution. How do you know when your business has outgrown Wordpress, though?
Websites like Fiverr and Upwork are a great way for small businesses to reach freelancers and cut out the middle man when it comes to hiring for certain types of work that they need completed. In theory, these websites help eliminate the additional costs associated with hiring an agency, since you don’t have the labor markup or overhead that typically comes along with engaging an agency. As a tradeoff, you have to do project management and additional leg work corresponding with the freelancer yourself, but most businesses are happy to do that to make up for budget they may not have.
\n","post_body":"Websites like Fiverr and Upwork are a great way for small businesses to reach freelancers and cut out the middle man when it comes to hiring for certain types of work that they need completed. In theory, these websites help eliminate the additional costs associated with hiring an agency, since you don’t have the labor markup or overhead that typically comes along with engaging an agency. As a tradeoff, you have to do project management and additional leg work corresponding with the freelancer yourself, but most businesses are happy to do that to make up for budget they may not have.
\n\n![\"Dwight](\"https://www.officetally.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/card-would-an-idiot-do-that.jpg\")
It’s important to note that not every experience in Upwork or other web developer freelancing websites is a positive experience. In fact, more often than not, using Upwork developers can be a pretty big risk. We recently took on a project that came from an Upwork developer we lost a prospect to for budget reasons. The prospect resurfaced in the next few months, indicating that they’d selected an Upwork developer and the developer had gotten in over their head, oversold their services and wasn’t able to complete the Wordpress project as promised. Now they were out the majority of the initial budget and we have to work inside code that wasn’t ours, written by an inexperienced developer.
\n
RELATED: So, your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n\n
We don’t have egos when it comes to clients that choose other developers, but as a small business ourselves, it’s so unfortunate to watch the client pay two developers and then ultimately end up with an inferior project because they don’t have the capital to start from scratch. Hiring Upwork web developers is more of a gamble than people realize - and can seem a little like playing roulette.
\n\n
RELATED: The Problem with Cheap Outsourced Web Development
\nYou’ve lost the middle man.
\n\n
While you might be saving a load by managing the project yourself, odds are pretty good you haven’t managed a lot of website projects in the past. By saving money on the middle man, you can’t forget that you’re also losing the middle man.
You’re losing project oversight, the accountability of someone else to bother you about content, images, and timelines. You’ll often get stuck doing quality assurance testing yourself and may end up with an untested website that is full of errors and bugs as a result.
You hire experts not just to avoid doing the work yourself, but because you have your own business to run or job to do. Taking on the management of an entire website when you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
The odds aren’t in your favor.
\n\n
It’s very possible that you’ll find an incredible developer with the appropriate amount of experience in your industry that can manage a project and craft a vision and rabbit hole into the user experience as effectively as they can write code - but this is not the standard. When it comes to finding developers on Upwork and other web development outsourcing on websites, finding a developer that balances all of these skills that codes with attention to detail without bugs and with the user in mind - it’s not an easy task.
We’ve done a few different write ups on questions to ask when you’re interviewing web developers:
Part 1: Interview questions to ask your web developer
Part 2
Part 3
The interview questions above will prepare you well for your interview process with prospective developers for outsourcing.
\n
You have no idea what you’re getting.
\n\n
The freelance world can get a little wild. In theory you know what you’re paying for - websites like Upwork and Fiverr have review mechanisms, so at minimum you know that they’ve been successful before. We’ve also discussed the importance of requesting referrals and actually contacting those referrals.
Ultimately a developer can list that they have skills in different languages, different CMS platforms and their SEO expertise, but you won’t know exactly how much you’re missing out on until you delve deeply into the project. No one expects a new website project to go perfectly, but the more skilled and experienced your developer is, the smoother the process will go.
\n
RELATED: HubSpot CMS Developer Utopia - What to expect when developing a website
\n\n
Rather than going straight to Upwork or Fiverr to hire a freelance web developer, consider asking for referrals from trusted friends. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can usually ask your HubSpot rep for assistance with this. There is a robust network of professionals that account managers refer out when HubSpot users need assistance with redevelopment of their website.
Alternatively, if you’re looking to redesign a website hosted on Wordpress you can search on LinkedIn for prospective Wordpress developers as well.
Don’t end up like some of the prospects that come back to us to help bail them out of a sticky situation. While it might seem impossible to get a quality developer with a smaller website budget, it’s very possible if you’re willing to be patient. By establishing a larger budget that can be broken down over time and extending your timeline for launch, you can sustainably overhaul your website or execute your development project without sacrificing quality.
Just because you’re a smaller mid-sized business doesn’t mean that you can’t access the same resources without a little additional creativity. Vet your developer carefully and be prepared to pay a little extra so you can be situated as well as possible when your new website or project launches.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
","rss_summary":"Websites like Fiverr and Upwork are a great way for small businesses to reach freelancers and cut out the middle man when it comes to hiring for certain types of work that they need completed. In theory, these websites help eliminate the additional costs associated with hiring an agency, since you don’t have the labor markup or overhead that typically comes along with engaging an agency. As a tradeoff, you have to do project management and additional leg work corresponding with the freelancer yourself, but most businesses are happy to do that to make up for budget they may not have.
\n","rss_body":"Websites like Fiverr and Upwork are a great way for small businesses to reach freelancers and cut out the middle man when it comes to hiring for certain types of work that they need completed. In theory, these websites help eliminate the additional costs associated with hiring an agency, since you don’t have the labor markup or overhead that typically comes along with engaging an agency. As a tradeoff, you have to do project management and additional leg work corresponding with the freelancer yourself, but most businesses are happy to do that to make up for budget they may not have.
\n\n
It’s important to note that not every experience in Upwork or other web developer freelancing websites is a positive experience. In fact, more often than not, using Upwork developers can be a pretty big risk. We recently took on a project that came from an Upwork developer we lost a prospect to for budget reasons. The prospect resurfaced in the next few months, indicating that they’d selected an Upwork developer and the developer had gotten in over their head, oversold their services and wasn’t able to complete the Wordpress project as promised. Now they were out the majority of the initial budget and we have to work inside code that wasn’t ours, written by an inexperienced developer.
\n
RELATED: So, your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n\n
We don’t have egos when it comes to clients that choose other developers, but as a small business ourselves, it’s so unfortunate to watch the client pay two developers and then ultimately end up with an inferior project because they don’t have the capital to start from scratch. Hiring Upwork web developers is more of a gamble than people realize - and can seem a little like playing roulette.
\n\n
RELATED: The Problem with Cheap Outsourced Web Development
\nYou’ve lost the middle man.
\n\n
While you might be saving a load by managing the project yourself, odds are pretty good you haven’t managed a lot of website projects in the past. By saving money on the middle man, you can’t forget that you’re also losing the middle man.
You’re losing project oversight, the accountability of someone else to bother you about content, images, and timelines. You’ll often get stuck doing quality assurance testing yourself and may end up with an untested website that is full of errors and bugs as a result.
You hire experts not just to avoid doing the work yourself, but because you have your own business to run or job to do. Taking on the management of an entire website when you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
The odds aren’t in your favor.
\n\n
It’s very possible that you’ll find an incredible developer with the appropriate amount of experience in your industry that can manage a project and craft a vision and rabbit hole into the user experience as effectively as they can write code - but this is not the standard. When it comes to finding developers on Upwork and other web development outsourcing on websites, finding a developer that balances all of these skills that codes with attention to detail without bugs and with the user in mind - it’s not an easy task.
We’ve done a few different write ups on questions to ask when you’re interviewing web developers:
Part 1: Interview questions to ask your web developer
Part 2
Part 3
The interview questions above will prepare you well for your interview process with prospective developers for outsourcing.
\n
You have no idea what you’re getting.
\n\n
The freelance world can get a little wild. In theory you know what you’re paying for - websites like Upwork and Fiverr have review mechanisms, so at minimum you know that they’ve been successful before. We’ve also discussed the importance of requesting referrals and actually contacting those referrals.
Ultimately a developer can list that they have skills in different languages, different CMS platforms and their SEO expertise, but you won’t know exactly how much you’re missing out on until you delve deeply into the project. No one expects a new website project to go perfectly, but the more skilled and experienced your developer is, the smoother the process will go.
\n
RELATED: HubSpot CMS Developer Utopia - What to expect when developing a website
\n\n
Rather than going straight to Upwork or Fiverr to hire a freelance web developer, consider asking for referrals from trusted friends. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can usually ask your HubSpot rep for assistance with this. There is a robust network of professionals that account managers refer out when HubSpot users need assistance with redevelopment of their website.
Alternatively, if you’re looking to redesign a website hosted on Wordpress you can search on LinkedIn for prospective Wordpress developers as well.
Don’t end up like some of the prospects that come back to us to help bail them out of a sticky situation. While it might seem impossible to get a quality developer with a smaller website budget, it’s very possible if you’re willing to be patient. By establishing a larger budget that can be broken down over time and extending your timeline for launch, you can sustainably overhaul your website or execute your development project without sacrificing quality.
Just because you’re a smaller mid-sized business doesn’t mean that you can’t access the same resources without a little additional creativity. Vet your developer carefully and be prepared to pay a little extra so you can be situated as well as possible when your new website or project launches.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
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In theory, these websites help eliminate the additional costs associated with hiring an agency, since you don’t have the labor markup or overhead that typically comes along with engaging an agency. As a tradeoff, you have to do project management and additional leg work corresponding with the freelancer yourself, but most businesses are happy to do that to make up for budget they may not have.
\n\n
It’s important to note that not every experience in Upwork or other web developer freelancing websites is a positive experience. In fact, more often than not, using Upwork developers can be a pretty big risk. We recently took on a project that came from an Upwork developer we lost a prospect to for budget reasons. The prospect resurfaced in the next few months, indicating that they’d selected an Upwork developer and the developer had gotten in over their head, oversold their services and wasn’t able to complete the Wordpress project as promised. Now they were out the majority of the initial budget and we have to work inside code that wasn’t ours, written by an inexperienced developer.
\n
RELATED: So, your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n\n
We don’t have egos when it comes to clients that choose other developers, but as a small business ourselves, it’s so unfortunate to watch the client pay two developers and then ultimately end up with an inferior project because they don’t have the capital to start from scratch. Hiring Upwork web developers is more of a gamble than people realize - and can seem a little like playing roulette.
\n\n
RELATED: The Problem with Cheap Outsourced Web Development
\nYou’ve lost the middle man.
\n\n
While you might be saving a load by managing the project yourself, odds are pretty good you haven’t managed a lot of website projects in the past. By saving money on the middle man, you can’t forget that you’re also losing the middle man.
You’re losing project oversight, the accountability of someone else to bother you about content, images, and timelines. You’ll often get stuck doing quality assurance testing yourself and may end up with an untested website that is full of errors and bugs as a result.
You hire experts not just to avoid doing the work yourself, but because you have your own business to run or job to do. Taking on the management of an entire website when you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
The odds aren’t in your favor.
\n\n
It’s very possible that you’ll find an incredible developer with the appropriate amount of experience in your industry that can manage a project and craft a vision and rabbit hole into the user experience as effectively as they can write code - but this is not the standard. When it comes to finding developers on Upwork and other web development outsourcing on websites, finding a developer that balances all of these skills that codes with attention to detail without bugs and with the user in mind - it’s not an easy task.
We’ve done a few different write ups on questions to ask when you’re interviewing web developers:
Part 1: Interview questions to ask your web developer
Part 2
Part 3
The interview questions above will prepare you well for your interview process with prospective developers for outsourcing.
\n
You have no idea what you’re getting.
\n\n
The freelance world can get a little wild. In theory you know what you’re paying for - websites like Upwork and Fiverr have review mechanisms, so at minimum you know that they’ve been successful before. We’ve also discussed the importance of requesting referrals and actually contacting those referrals.
Ultimately a developer can list that they have skills in different languages, different CMS platforms and their SEO expertise, but you won’t know exactly how much you’re missing out on until you delve deeply into the project. No one expects a new website project to go perfectly, but the more skilled and experienced your developer is, the smoother the process will go.
\n
RELATED: HubSpot CMS Developer Utopia - What to expect when developing a website
\n\n
Rather than going straight to Upwork or Fiverr to hire a freelance web developer, consider asking for referrals from trusted friends. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can usually ask your HubSpot rep for assistance with this. There is a robust network of professionals that account managers refer out when HubSpot users need assistance with redevelopment of their website.
Alternatively, if you’re looking to redesign a website hosted on Wordpress you can search on LinkedIn for prospective Wordpress developers as well.
Don’t end up like some of the prospects that come back to us to help bail them out of a sticky situation. While it might seem impossible to get a quality developer with a smaller website budget, it’s very possible if you’re willing to be patient. By establishing a larger budget that can be broken down over time and extending your timeline for launch, you can sustainably overhaul your website or execute your development project without sacrificing quality.
Just because you’re a smaller mid-sized business doesn’t mean that you can’t access the same resources without a little additional creativity. Vet your developer carefully and be prepared to pay a little extra so you can be situated as well as possible when your new website or project launches.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
","postBodyRss":"Websites like Fiverr and Upwork are a great way for small businesses to reach freelancers and cut out the middle man when it comes to hiring for certain types of work that they need completed. In theory, these websites help eliminate the additional costs associated with hiring an agency, since you don’t have the labor markup or overhead that typically comes along with engaging an agency. As a tradeoff, you have to do project management and additional leg work corresponding with the freelancer yourself, but most businesses are happy to do that to make up for budget they may not have.
\n\n
It’s important to note that not every experience in Upwork or other web developer freelancing websites is a positive experience. In fact, more often than not, using Upwork developers can be a pretty big risk. We recently took on a project that came from an Upwork developer we lost a prospect to for budget reasons. The prospect resurfaced in the next few months, indicating that they’d selected an Upwork developer and the developer had gotten in over their head, oversold their services and wasn’t able to complete the Wordpress project as promised. Now they were out the majority of the initial budget and we have to work inside code that wasn’t ours, written by an inexperienced developer.
\n
RELATED: So, your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n\n
We don’t have egos when it comes to clients that choose other developers, but as a small business ourselves, it’s so unfortunate to watch the client pay two developers and then ultimately end up with an inferior project because they don’t have the capital to start from scratch. Hiring Upwork web developers is more of a gamble than people realize - and can seem a little like playing roulette.
\n\n
RELATED: The Problem with Cheap Outsourced Web Development
\nYou’ve lost the middle man.
\n\n
While you might be saving a load by managing the project yourself, odds are pretty good you haven’t managed a lot of website projects in the past. By saving money on the middle man, you can’t forget that you’re also losing the middle man.
You’re losing project oversight, the accountability of someone else to bother you about content, images, and timelines. You’ll often get stuck doing quality assurance testing yourself and may end up with an untested website that is full of errors and bugs as a result.
You hire experts not just to avoid doing the work yourself, but because you have your own business to run or job to do. Taking on the management of an entire website when you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
The odds aren’t in your favor.
\n\n
It’s very possible that you’ll find an incredible developer with the appropriate amount of experience in your industry that can manage a project and craft a vision and rabbit hole into the user experience as effectively as they can write code - but this is not the standard. When it comes to finding developers on Upwork and other web development outsourcing on websites, finding a developer that balances all of these skills that codes with attention to detail without bugs and with the user in mind - it’s not an easy task.
We’ve done a few different write ups on questions to ask when you’re interviewing web developers:
Part 1: Interview questions to ask your web developer
Part 2
Part 3
The interview questions above will prepare you well for your interview process with prospective developers for outsourcing.
\n
You have no idea what you’re getting.
\n\n
The freelance world can get a little wild. In theory you know what you’re paying for - websites like Upwork and Fiverr have review mechanisms, so at minimum you know that they’ve been successful before. We’ve also discussed the importance of requesting referrals and actually contacting those referrals.
Ultimately a developer can list that they have skills in different languages, different CMS platforms and their SEO expertise, but you won’t know exactly how much you’re missing out on until you delve deeply into the project. No one expects a new website project to go perfectly, but the more skilled and experienced your developer is, the smoother the process will go.
\n
RELATED: HubSpot CMS Developer Utopia - What to expect when developing a website
\n\n
Rather than going straight to Upwork or Fiverr to hire a freelance web developer, consider asking for referrals from trusted friends. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can usually ask your HubSpot rep for assistance with this. There is a robust network of professionals that account managers refer out when HubSpot users need assistance with redevelopment of their website.
Alternatively, if you’re looking to redesign a website hosted on Wordpress you can search on LinkedIn for prospective Wordpress developers as well.
Don’t end up like some of the prospects that come back to us to help bail them out of a sticky situation. While it might seem impossible to get a quality developer with a smaller website budget, it’s very possible if you’re willing to be patient. By establishing a larger budget that can be broken down over time and extending your timeline for launch, you can sustainably overhaul your website or execute your development project without sacrificing quality.
Just because you’re a smaller mid-sized business doesn’t mean that you can’t access the same resources without a little additional creativity. Vet your developer carefully and be prepared to pay a little extra so you can be situated as well as possible when your new website or project launches.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
","postEmailContent":"Websites like Fiverr and Upwork are a great way for small businesses to reach freelancers and cut out the middle man when it comes to hiring for certain types of work that they need completed. In theory, these websites help eliminate the additional costs associated with hiring an agency, since you don’t have the labor markup or overhead that typically comes along with engaging an agency. As a tradeoff, you have to do project management and additional leg work corresponding with the freelancer yourself, but most businesses are happy to do that to make up for budget they may not have.
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\n","postSummaryRss":"Websites like Fiverr and Upwork are a great way for small businesses to reach freelancers and cut out the middle man when it comes to hiring for certain types of work that they need completed. In theory, these websites help eliminate the additional costs associated with hiring an agency, since you don’t have the labor markup or overhead that typically comes along with engaging an agency. As a tradeoff, you have to do project management and additional leg work corresponding with the freelancer yourself, but most businesses are happy to do that to make up for budget they may not have.
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\n\n
It’s important to note that not every experience in Upwork or other web developer freelancing websites is a positive experience. In fact, more often than not, using Upwork developers can be a pretty big risk. We recently took on a project that came from an Upwork developer we lost a prospect to for budget reasons. The prospect resurfaced in the next few months, indicating that they’d selected an Upwork developer and the developer had gotten in over their head, oversold their services and wasn’t able to complete the Wordpress project as promised. Now they were out the majority of the initial budget and we have to work inside code that wasn’t ours, written by an inexperienced developer.
\n
RELATED: So, your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n\n
We don’t have egos when it comes to clients that choose other developers, but as a small business ourselves, it’s so unfortunate to watch the client pay two developers and then ultimately end up with an inferior project because they don’t have the capital to start from scratch. Hiring Upwork web developers is more of a gamble than people realize - and can seem a little like playing roulette.
\n\n
RELATED: The Problem with Cheap Outsourced Web Development
\nYou’ve lost the middle man.
\n\n
While you might be saving a load by managing the project yourself, odds are pretty good you haven’t managed a lot of website projects in the past. By saving money on the middle man, you can’t forget that you’re also losing the middle man.
You’re losing project oversight, the accountability of someone else to bother you about content, images, and timelines. You’ll often get stuck doing quality assurance testing yourself and may end up with an untested website that is full of errors and bugs as a result.
You hire experts not just to avoid doing the work yourself, but because you have your own business to run or job to do. Taking on the management of an entire website when you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
The odds aren’t in your favor.
\n\n
It’s very possible that you’ll find an incredible developer with the appropriate amount of experience in your industry that can manage a project and craft a vision and rabbit hole into the user experience as effectively as they can write code - but this is not the standard. When it comes to finding developers on Upwork and other web development outsourcing on websites, finding a developer that balances all of these skills that codes with attention to detail without bugs and with the user in mind - it’s not an easy task.
We’ve done a few different write ups on questions to ask when you’re interviewing web developers:
Part 1: Interview questions to ask your web developer
Part 2
Part 3
The interview questions above will prepare you well for your interview process with prospective developers for outsourcing.
\n
You have no idea what you’re getting.
\n\n
The freelance world can get a little wild. In theory you know what you’re paying for - websites like Upwork and Fiverr have review mechanisms, so at minimum you know that they’ve been successful before. We’ve also discussed the importance of requesting referrals and actually contacting those referrals.
Ultimately a developer can list that they have skills in different languages, different CMS platforms and their SEO expertise, but you won’t know exactly how much you’re missing out on until you delve deeply into the project. No one expects a new website project to go perfectly, but the more skilled and experienced your developer is, the smoother the process will go.
\n
RELATED: HubSpot CMS Developer Utopia - What to expect when developing a website
\n\n
Rather than going straight to Upwork or Fiverr to hire a freelance web developer, consider asking for referrals from trusted friends. If you’re a HubSpot user, you can usually ask your HubSpot rep for assistance with this. There is a robust network of professionals that account managers refer out when HubSpot users need assistance with redevelopment of their website.
Alternatively, if you’re looking to redesign a website hosted on Wordpress you can search on LinkedIn for prospective Wordpress developers as well.
Don’t end up like some of the prospects that come back to us to help bail them out of a sticky situation. While it might seem impossible to get a quality developer with a smaller website budget, it’s very possible if you’re willing to be patient. By establishing a larger budget that can be broken down over time and extending your timeline for launch, you can sustainably overhaul your website or execute your development project without sacrificing quality.
Just because you’re a smaller mid-sized business doesn’t mean that you can’t access the same resources without a little additional creativity. Vet your developer carefully and be prepared to pay a little extra so you can be situated as well as possible when your new website or project launches.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
INTERVIEW YOUR DEVELOPER.
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Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
![\"Explain](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/BLOG%20Images/Explain%20like%20im%205.webp\")
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
What are custom objects?
\nCustom objects allow you to store and structure any data that’s relevant to your business that might not already exist in HubSpot’s standard list of objects. It’s basically a way to customize HubSpot to suit the nuance of your business.
Objects, as defined by HubSpot, represent the different types of relationships and processes your business has. All HubSpot accounts use four standard objects: contacts, companies, deals, and tickets. Depending on your HubSpot subscription, there are other objects, such as calls, conversations, payments, products, quotes, and custom objects. All objects use the same framework, which enables you to segment or report on them.
Basically, objects allow you to assign contacts, companies, deals and tickets with associated data records. Each object has properties used to collect information about that object. In order to better integrate data and make intelligent decisions in your marketing and operations, storing more data is sometimes necessary. This can be done with custom objects.
Custom objects are only available for HubSpot customers with enterprise-level subscriptions, but the power in the data associations is significant. Custom objects increase flexibility and efficiency in your operations.
What can you do with custom objects?
\nCustom objects can
\n- \n
- create and update individual records in the interface \n
- associate with other existing records \n
- gain accuracy by including this information in reporting \n
- trigger automations and workflows \n
- integrate data between applications \n
- be used in automated emails \n
Previously objects were limited to contacts, companies, deals and tickets. However, when custom objects launched, it helped businesses further integrate and segment their data. Once a custom object has been defined, properties can be attached to it and it can be used to establish associations between objects.
\nHow do I create a custom object?
\nAt Inbound 2022, HubSpot released creating custom objects in Beta to their Enterprise subscription customers. In order to create a custom object, you must have an Enterprise subscription to one of the following HubSpot subscriptions:
\n- \n
- Marketing Hub \n
- Sales Hub \n
- CMS Hub \n
- Service Hub \n
- Operations Hub \n
You can find more detailed information about custom objects in HubSpot’s blog, but we’ve pulled the instructions for how to create a custom object directly from their Knowledge Center where HubSpot created an object for cars, something we’re all very familiar with that will help you understand how objects and object properties can be set up. This basic example will help you understand how objects have different object types like the model of a car.
“If you're a super admin, you can create a custom object in your HubSpot settings or via the API once you enable the beta.
To create a custom object in HubSpot:
\n- \n
- In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
- In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Objects > Custom Objects.
- Click the Create a custom object button. If you've previously created a custom object, the Create custom object button will appear in the top right.
- In the right panel, set up your custom object:\n
- \n
- To set your custom object's name:\n
- \n
- Object Name (Singular): enter the singular title for your custom object (e.g., Pet). \n
- Object Name (Plural): enter the plural title of your custom object (e.g., Pets). \n
\n - To create the object's primary display property:
\n- \n
- Primary display property: enter a label for the property used to name a record of your object (e.g., Pet name for Pets). This property is required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: select the type of your primary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
- Select the checkbox to require unique values for the primary display property. With this turned on, users will be unable to enter the same value for multiple records (e.g., for the object Orders, the primary property Order number should require unique values). \n
\n
\n - To set your custom object's name:\n
![](\"https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/oJGQ0I5c34K6UKowt9D4mSaVpywjiNmCjrN2zxeO4rkLDxatVWAOPwvVEqzpmKDNJieyT1Ym6ExlkHFeZxaZ_9kibb4PRse_FbtYvuywpF8ZWeKbdTopgi0oe1BhN2R9eydt9qspzXkI26RpcmxYNiTvH8zNaig7JzJQHb6uEZLdG1m1Q9NCXQcxbuu81Q\")
\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
- \n
- Secondary display property: enter a label for the property that is displayed below the primary property on a record (e.g, Type of pet and Owner phone number for Pets). Secondary properties are not required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: the type of your secondary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
\n - To add an additional secondary display property, click + Add property. \n
- To remove a secondary property, click the delete delete icon next to the property. \n
\n - To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
![](\"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/yJuNIy7qZCjdeLxcVDswiZ7A2JIpddX6VRE_Gu6lpqh6M1bAksRgqnpvAPsQtHSe3kGpliEWiO5o2Z-y-lk6Ym5roqQ7wQO0AQSr65OJxlolsw_pNFuqYLIttFDrVndw4ts-0cMKMF8_M8NOopMxjLPzPG3VfObVm206Yy_7LW4bwjcZA9zkHgFMvhWBlA\")
Once you're done, click Create at the bottom of the panel.”
What to expect:
\nWhile this new ability to custom objects without any code will open up a lot of opportunities for HubSpot customers, it’s also really important that you consider your use-case carefully and determine if a custom object is the best way to handle your data. Custom objects are an exceptional way to integrate more of the data that might otherwise be found in separate applications.
Some examples of use cases for custom objects:
- \n
- A realtor selling condominiums at different high rises in the area might want to create a custom object for each property or the individual listings and details about the listings within that property. \n
- A veterinarian might want to track the different types of animals owned by the patients in his practice (you could also create a child object to add treatments or medications) \n
- A school with online learning may want to track a student’s interest in different subjects or which courses they’ve completed. \n
- A retailer may want to keep track of shipping information for their customers. \n
- A car dealership may want to keep track of individual vehicles, vin numbers, mileage and associate those vehicle listings with sales (as you saw in the example above from HubSpot’s Knowledge Center) \n
You can see above that this is a game changer for pipeline tracking and really personalizing the marketing experience for a prospect or customer based on the custom objects that you create.
\nIn the past, a HubSpot user or marketer would have just resorted to adding a bunch of properties on the contact or company record. If you did this, say, with the example provided regarding online learning, a HubSpot admin might create 10 different properties for different interests associated with a contact record, but that doesn’t scale well if their interests are more diverse.
The same is true for the example of the veterinarian’s office. Depending on an individual, they might have a very exhaustive list of pets. A farmer would not only have multiple varieties of animals, but even different breeds of that specific species of animal. An animal rescue contact would have multiple animals of different breeds as well. Being able to keep track of complex information that translates into all of the different areas of HubSpot that your marketers, service teams and salespeople use is critical to your success.
The scalability of custom objects gets really exciting when you can associate multiple objects with with different contacts. The possibilities for personalized marketing associated with these objects are virtually endless. It can allow marketers to get super creative and really hone in on personalization and custom content. And when you get a developer involved? There are literally no limits to how empowered you can be with your marketing.
If you need to integrate data from an external database or need help creating a strategy surrounding custom objects, we highly recommend that you reach out to a skilled developer.
We’re obviously happy to help address any questions with custom objects and assist in setup training, strategy or integrating external data into HubSpot to help centralize everything.
Ready to dig into custom objects, but not sure where to start? We can help. Use the button below to book some time and chat about what custom objects can do for your business.
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
What are custom objects?
\nCustom objects allow you to store and structure any data that’s relevant to your business that might not already exist in HubSpot’s standard list of objects. It’s basically a way to customize HubSpot to suit the nuance of your business.
Objects, as defined by HubSpot, represent the different types of relationships and processes your business has. All HubSpot accounts use four standard objects: contacts, companies, deals, and tickets. Depending on your HubSpot subscription, there are other objects, such as calls, conversations, payments, products, quotes, and custom objects. All objects use the same framework, which enables you to segment or report on them.
Basically, objects allow you to assign contacts, companies, deals and tickets with associated data records. Each object has properties used to collect information about that object. In order to better integrate data and make intelligent decisions in your marketing and operations, storing more data is sometimes necessary. This can be done with custom objects.
Custom objects are only available for HubSpot customers with enterprise-level subscriptions, but the power in the data associations is significant. Custom objects increase flexibility and efficiency in your operations.
What can you do with custom objects?
\nCustom objects can
\n- \n
- create and update individual records in the interface \n
- associate with other existing records \n
- gain accuracy by including this information in reporting \n
- trigger automations and workflows \n
- integrate data between applications \n
- be used in automated emails \n
Previously objects were limited to contacts, companies, deals and tickets. However, when custom objects launched, it helped businesses further integrate and segment their data. Once a custom object has been defined, properties can be attached to it and it can be used to establish associations between objects.
\nHow do I create a custom object?
\nAt Inbound 2022, HubSpot released creating custom objects in Beta to their Enterprise subscription customers. In order to create a custom object, you must have an Enterprise subscription to one of the following HubSpot subscriptions:
\n- \n
- Marketing Hub \n
- Sales Hub \n
- CMS Hub \n
- Service Hub \n
- Operations Hub \n
You can find more detailed information about custom objects in HubSpot’s blog, but we’ve pulled the instructions for how to create a custom object directly from their Knowledge Center where HubSpot created an object for cars, something we’re all very familiar with that will help you understand how objects and object properties can be set up. This basic example will help you understand how objects have different object types like the model of a car.
“If you're a super admin, you can create a custom object in your HubSpot settings or via the API once you enable the beta.
To create a custom object in HubSpot:
\n- \n
- In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
- In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Objects > Custom Objects.
- Click the Create a custom object button. If you've previously created a custom object, the Create custom object button will appear in the top right.
- In the right panel, set up your custom object:\n
- \n
- To set your custom object's name:\n
- \n
- Object Name (Singular): enter the singular title for your custom object (e.g., Pet). \n
- Object Name (Plural): enter the plural title of your custom object (e.g., Pets). \n
\n - To create the object's primary display property:
\n- \n
- Primary display property: enter a label for the property used to name a record of your object (e.g., Pet name for Pets). This property is required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: select the type of your primary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
- Select the checkbox to require unique values for the primary display property. With this turned on, users will be unable to enter the same value for multiple records (e.g., for the object Orders, the primary property Order number should require unique values). \n
\n
\n - To set your custom object's name:\n
\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
- \n
- Secondary display property: enter a label for the property that is displayed below the primary property on a record (e.g, Type of pet and Owner phone number for Pets). Secondary properties are not required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: the type of your secondary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
\n - To add an additional secondary display property, click + Add property. \n
- To remove a secondary property, click the delete delete icon next to the property. \n
\n - To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
Once you're done, click Create at the bottom of the panel.”
What to expect:
\nWhile this new ability to custom objects without any code will open up a lot of opportunities for HubSpot customers, it’s also really important that you consider your use-case carefully and determine if a custom object is the best way to handle your data. Custom objects are an exceptional way to integrate more of the data that might otherwise be found in separate applications.
Some examples of use cases for custom objects:
- \n
- A realtor selling condominiums at different high rises in the area might want to create a custom object for each property or the individual listings and details about the listings within that property. \n
- A veterinarian might want to track the different types of animals owned by the patients in his practice (you could also create a child object to add treatments or medications) \n
- A school with online learning may want to track a student’s interest in different subjects or which courses they’ve completed. \n
- A retailer may want to keep track of shipping information for their customers. \n
- A car dealership may want to keep track of individual vehicles, vin numbers, mileage and associate those vehicle listings with sales (as you saw in the example above from HubSpot’s Knowledge Center) \n
You can see above that this is a game changer for pipeline tracking and really personalizing the marketing experience for a prospect or customer based on the custom objects that you create.
\nIn the past, a HubSpot user or marketer would have just resorted to adding a bunch of properties on the contact or company record. If you did this, say, with the example provided regarding online learning, a HubSpot admin might create 10 different properties for different interests associated with a contact record, but that doesn’t scale well if their interests are more diverse.
The same is true for the example of the veterinarian’s office. Depending on an individual, they might have a very exhaustive list of pets. A farmer would not only have multiple varieties of animals, but even different breeds of that specific species of animal. An animal rescue contact would have multiple animals of different breeds as well. Being able to keep track of complex information that translates into all of the different areas of HubSpot that your marketers, service teams and salespeople use is critical to your success.
The scalability of custom objects gets really exciting when you can associate multiple objects with with different contacts. The possibilities for personalized marketing associated with these objects are virtually endless. It can allow marketers to get super creative and really hone in on personalization and custom content. And when you get a developer involved? There are literally no limits to how empowered you can be with your marketing.
If you need to integrate data from an external database or need help creating a strategy surrounding custom objects, we highly recommend that you reach out to a skilled developer.
We’re obviously happy to help address any questions with custom objects and assist in setup training, strategy or integrating external data into HubSpot to help centralize everything.
Ready to dig into custom objects, but not sure where to start? We can help. Use the button below to book some time and chat about what custom objects can do for your business.
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
What are custom objects?
\nCustom objects allow you to store and structure any data that’s relevant to your business that might not already exist in HubSpot’s standard list of objects. It’s basically a way to customize HubSpot to suit the nuance of your business.
Objects, as defined by HubSpot, represent the different types of relationships and processes your business has. All HubSpot accounts use four standard objects: contacts, companies, deals, and tickets. Depending on your HubSpot subscription, there are other objects, such as calls, conversations, payments, products, quotes, and custom objects. All objects use the same framework, which enables you to segment or report on them.
Basically, objects allow you to assign contacts, companies, deals and tickets with associated data records. Each object has properties used to collect information about that object. In order to better integrate data and make intelligent decisions in your marketing and operations, storing more data is sometimes necessary. This can be done with custom objects.
Custom objects are only available for HubSpot customers with enterprise-level subscriptions, but the power in the data associations is significant. Custom objects increase flexibility and efficiency in your operations.
What can you do with custom objects?
\nCustom objects can
\n- \n
- create and update individual records in the interface \n
- associate with other existing records \n
- gain accuracy by including this information in reporting \n
- trigger automations and workflows \n
- integrate data between applications \n
- be used in automated emails \n
Previously objects were limited to contacts, companies, deals and tickets. However, when custom objects launched, it helped businesses further integrate and segment their data. Once a custom object has been defined, properties can be attached to it and it can be used to establish associations between objects.
\nHow do I create a custom object?
\nAt Inbound 2022, HubSpot released creating custom objects in Beta to their Enterprise subscription customers. In order to create a custom object, you must have an Enterprise subscription to one of the following HubSpot subscriptions:
\n- \n
- Marketing Hub \n
- Sales Hub \n
- CMS Hub \n
- Service Hub \n
- Operations Hub \n
You can find more detailed information about custom objects in HubSpot’s blog, but we’ve pulled the instructions for how to create a custom object directly from their Knowledge Center where HubSpot created an object for cars, something we’re all very familiar with that will help you understand how objects and object properties can be set up. This basic example will help you understand how objects have different object types like the model of a car.
“If you're a super admin, you can create a custom object in your HubSpot settings or via the API once you enable the beta.
To create a custom object in HubSpot:
\n- \n
- In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
- In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Objects > Custom Objects.
- Click the Create a custom object button. If you've previously created a custom object, the Create custom object button will appear in the top right.
- In the right panel, set up your custom object:\n
- \n
- To set your custom object's name:\n
- \n
- Object Name (Singular): enter the singular title for your custom object (e.g., Pet). \n
- Object Name (Plural): enter the plural title of your custom object (e.g., Pets). \n
\n - To create the object's primary display property:
\n- \n
- Primary display property: enter a label for the property used to name a record of your object (e.g., Pet name for Pets). This property is required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: select the type of your primary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
- Select the checkbox to require unique values for the primary display property. With this turned on, users will be unable to enter the same value for multiple records (e.g., for the object Orders, the primary property Order number should require unique values). \n
\n
\n - To set your custom object's name:\n
\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
- \n
- Secondary display property: enter a label for the property that is displayed below the primary property on a record (e.g, Type of pet and Owner phone number for Pets). Secondary properties are not required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: the type of your secondary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
\n - To add an additional secondary display property, click + Add property. \n
- To remove a secondary property, click the delete delete icon next to the property. \n
\n - To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
Once you're done, click Create at the bottom of the panel.”
What to expect:
\nWhile this new ability to custom objects without any code will open up a lot of opportunities for HubSpot customers, it’s also really important that you consider your use-case carefully and determine if a custom object is the best way to handle your data. Custom objects are an exceptional way to integrate more of the data that might otherwise be found in separate applications.
Some examples of use cases for custom objects:
- \n
- A realtor selling condominiums at different high rises in the area might want to create a custom object for each property or the individual listings and details about the listings within that property. \n
- A veterinarian might want to track the different types of animals owned by the patients in his practice (you could also create a child object to add treatments or medications) \n
- A school with online learning may want to track a student’s interest in different subjects or which courses they’ve completed. \n
- A retailer may want to keep track of shipping information for their customers. \n
- A car dealership may want to keep track of individual vehicles, vin numbers, mileage and associate those vehicle listings with sales (as you saw in the example above from HubSpot’s Knowledge Center) \n
You can see above that this is a game changer for pipeline tracking and really personalizing the marketing experience for a prospect or customer based on the custom objects that you create.
\nIn the past, a HubSpot user or marketer would have just resorted to adding a bunch of properties on the contact or company record. If you did this, say, with the example provided regarding online learning, a HubSpot admin might create 10 different properties for different interests associated with a contact record, but that doesn’t scale well if their interests are more diverse.
The same is true for the example of the veterinarian’s office. Depending on an individual, they might have a very exhaustive list of pets. A farmer would not only have multiple varieties of animals, but even different breeds of that specific species of animal. An animal rescue contact would have multiple animals of different breeds as well. Being able to keep track of complex information that translates into all of the different areas of HubSpot that your marketers, service teams and salespeople use is critical to your success.
The scalability of custom objects gets really exciting when you can associate multiple objects with with different contacts. The possibilities for personalized marketing associated with these objects are virtually endless. It can allow marketers to get super creative and really hone in on personalization and custom content. And when you get a developer involved? There are literally no limits to how empowered you can be with your marketing.
If you need to integrate data from an external database or need help creating a strategy surrounding custom objects, we highly recommend that you reach out to a skilled developer.
We’re obviously happy to help address any questions with custom objects and assist in setup training, strategy or integrating external data into HubSpot to help centralize everything.
Ready to dig into custom objects, but not sure where to start? We can help. Use the button below to book some time and chat about what custom objects can do for your business.
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
What are custom objects?
\nCustom objects allow you to store and structure any data that’s relevant to your business that might not already exist in HubSpot’s standard list of objects. It’s basically a way to customize HubSpot to suit the nuance of your business.
Objects, as defined by HubSpot, represent the different types of relationships and processes your business has. All HubSpot accounts use four standard objects: contacts, companies, deals, and tickets. Depending on your HubSpot subscription, there are other objects, such as calls, conversations, payments, products, quotes, and custom objects. All objects use the same framework, which enables you to segment or report on them.
Basically, objects allow you to assign contacts, companies, deals and tickets with associated data records. Each object has properties used to collect information about that object. In order to better integrate data and make intelligent decisions in your marketing and operations, storing more data is sometimes necessary. This can be done with custom objects.
Custom objects are only available for HubSpot customers with enterprise-level subscriptions, but the power in the data associations is significant. Custom objects increase flexibility and efficiency in your operations.
What can you do with custom objects?
\nCustom objects can
\n- \n
- create and update individual records in the interface \n
- associate with other existing records \n
- gain accuracy by including this information in reporting \n
- trigger automations and workflows \n
- integrate data between applications \n
- be used in automated emails \n
Previously objects were limited to contacts, companies, deals and tickets. However, when custom objects launched, it helped businesses further integrate and segment their data. Once a custom object has been defined, properties can be attached to it and it can be used to establish associations between objects.
\nHow do I create a custom object?
\nAt Inbound 2022, HubSpot released creating custom objects in Beta to their Enterprise subscription customers. In order to create a custom object, you must have an Enterprise subscription to one of the following HubSpot subscriptions:
\n- \n
- Marketing Hub \n
- Sales Hub \n
- CMS Hub \n
- Service Hub \n
- Operations Hub \n
You can find more detailed information about custom objects in HubSpot’s blog, but we’ve pulled the instructions for how to create a custom object directly from their Knowledge Center where HubSpot created an object for cars, something we’re all very familiar with that will help you understand how objects and object properties can be set up. This basic example will help you understand how objects have different object types like the model of a car.
“If you're a super admin, you can create a custom object in your HubSpot settings or via the API once you enable the beta.
To create a custom object in HubSpot:
\n- \n
- In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
- In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Objects > Custom Objects.
- Click the Create a custom object button. If you've previously created a custom object, the Create custom object button will appear in the top right.
- In the right panel, set up your custom object:\n
- \n
- To set your custom object's name:\n
- \n
- Object Name (Singular): enter the singular title for your custom object (e.g., Pet). \n
- Object Name (Plural): enter the plural title of your custom object (e.g., Pets). \n
\n - To create the object's primary display property:
\n- \n
- Primary display property: enter a label for the property used to name a record of your object (e.g., Pet name for Pets). This property is required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: select the type of your primary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
- Select the checkbox to require unique values for the primary display property. With this turned on, users will be unable to enter the same value for multiple records (e.g., for the object Orders, the primary property Order number should require unique values). \n
\n
\n - To set your custom object's name:\n
\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
- \n
- Secondary display property: enter a label for the property that is displayed below the primary property on a record (e.g, Type of pet and Owner phone number for Pets). Secondary properties are not required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: the type of your secondary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
\n - To add an additional secondary display property, click + Add property. \n
- To remove a secondary property, click the delete delete icon next to the property. \n
\n - To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
Once you're done, click Create at the bottom of the panel.”
What to expect:
\nWhile this new ability to custom objects without any code will open up a lot of opportunities for HubSpot customers, it’s also really important that you consider your use-case carefully and determine if a custom object is the best way to handle your data. Custom objects are an exceptional way to integrate more of the data that might otherwise be found in separate applications.
Some examples of use cases for custom objects:
- \n
- A realtor selling condominiums at different high rises in the area might want to create a custom object for each property or the individual listings and details about the listings within that property. \n
- A veterinarian might want to track the different types of animals owned by the patients in his practice (you could also create a child object to add treatments or medications) \n
- A school with online learning may want to track a student’s interest in different subjects or which courses they’ve completed. \n
- A retailer may want to keep track of shipping information for their customers. \n
- A car dealership may want to keep track of individual vehicles, vin numbers, mileage and associate those vehicle listings with sales (as you saw in the example above from HubSpot’s Knowledge Center) \n
You can see above that this is a game changer for pipeline tracking and really personalizing the marketing experience for a prospect or customer based on the custom objects that you create.
\nIn the past, a HubSpot user or marketer would have just resorted to adding a bunch of properties on the contact or company record. If you did this, say, with the example provided regarding online learning, a HubSpot admin might create 10 different properties for different interests associated with a contact record, but that doesn’t scale well if their interests are more diverse.
The same is true for the example of the veterinarian’s office. Depending on an individual, they might have a very exhaustive list of pets. A farmer would not only have multiple varieties of animals, but even different breeds of that specific species of animal. An animal rescue contact would have multiple animals of different breeds as well. Being able to keep track of complex information that translates into all of the different areas of HubSpot that your marketers, service teams and salespeople use is critical to your success.
The scalability of custom objects gets really exciting when you can associate multiple objects with with different contacts. The possibilities for personalized marketing associated with these objects are virtually endless. It can allow marketers to get super creative and really hone in on personalization and custom content. And when you get a developer involved? There are literally no limits to how empowered you can be with your marketing.
If you need to integrate data from an external database or need help creating a strategy surrounding custom objects, we highly recommend that you reach out to a skilled developer.
We’re obviously happy to help address any questions with custom objects and assist in setup training, strategy or integrating external data into HubSpot to help centralize everything.
Ready to dig into custom objects, but not sure where to start? We can help. Use the button below to book some time and chat about what custom objects can do for your business.
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
What are custom objects?
\nCustom objects allow you to store and structure any data that’s relevant to your business that might not already exist in HubSpot’s standard list of objects. It’s basically a way to customize HubSpot to suit the nuance of your business.
Objects, as defined by HubSpot, represent the different types of relationships and processes your business has. All HubSpot accounts use four standard objects: contacts, companies, deals, and tickets. Depending on your HubSpot subscription, there are other objects, such as calls, conversations, payments, products, quotes, and custom objects. All objects use the same framework, which enables you to segment or report on them.
Basically, objects allow you to assign contacts, companies, deals and tickets with associated data records. Each object has properties used to collect information about that object. In order to better integrate data and make intelligent decisions in your marketing and operations, storing more data is sometimes necessary. This can be done with custom objects.
Custom objects are only available for HubSpot customers with enterprise-level subscriptions, but the power in the data associations is significant. Custom objects increase flexibility and efficiency in your operations.
What can you do with custom objects?
\nCustom objects can
\n- \n
- create and update individual records in the interface \n
- associate with other existing records \n
- gain accuracy by including this information in reporting \n
- trigger automations and workflows \n
- integrate data between applications \n
- be used in automated emails \n
Previously objects were limited to contacts, companies, deals and tickets. However, when custom objects launched, it helped businesses further integrate and segment their data. Once a custom object has been defined, properties can be attached to it and it can be used to establish associations between objects.
\nHow do I create a custom object?
\nAt Inbound 2022, HubSpot released creating custom objects in Beta to their Enterprise subscription customers. In order to create a custom object, you must have an Enterprise subscription to one of the following HubSpot subscriptions:
\n- \n
- Marketing Hub \n
- Sales Hub \n
- CMS Hub \n
- Service Hub \n
- Operations Hub \n
You can find more detailed information about custom objects in HubSpot’s blog, but we’ve pulled the instructions for how to create a custom object directly from their Knowledge Center where HubSpot created an object for cars, something we’re all very familiar with that will help you understand how objects and object properties can be set up. This basic example will help you understand how objects have different object types like the model of a car.
“If you're a super admin, you can create a custom object in your HubSpot settings or via the API once you enable the beta.
To create a custom object in HubSpot:
\n- \n
- In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
- In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Objects > Custom Objects.
- Click the Create a custom object button. If you've previously created a custom object, the Create custom object button will appear in the top right.
- In the right panel, set up your custom object:\n
- \n
- To set your custom object's name:\n
- \n
- Object Name (Singular): enter the singular title for your custom object (e.g., Pet). \n
- Object Name (Plural): enter the plural title of your custom object (e.g., Pets). \n
\n - To create the object's primary display property:
\n- \n
- Primary display property: enter a label for the property used to name a record of your object (e.g., Pet name for Pets). This property is required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: select the type of your primary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
- Select the checkbox to require unique values for the primary display property. With this turned on, users will be unable to enter the same value for multiple records (e.g., for the object Orders, the primary property Order number should require unique values). \n
\n
\n - To set your custom object's name:\n
\n
- \n
- \n
- \n
- To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
- \n
- Secondary display property: enter a label for the property that is displayed below the primary property on a record (e.g, Type of pet and Owner phone number for Pets). Secondary properties are not required to create a custom object record. \n
- Property type: the type of your secondary display property, either Single-line text or Number. \n
- Click the edit pencil below the label to edit the property's internal name, then click Save to confirm. The internal name is used by integrations or APIs, and cannot be edited once the object is created. \n
\n - To add an additional secondary display property, click + Add property. \n
- To remove a secondary property, click the delete delete icon next to the property. \n
\n - To create a secondary property for your custom object:\n
Once you're done, click Create at the bottom of the panel.”
What to expect:
\nWhile this new ability to custom objects without any code will open up a lot of opportunities for HubSpot customers, it’s also really important that you consider your use-case carefully and determine if a custom object is the best way to handle your data. Custom objects are an exceptional way to integrate more of the data that might otherwise be found in separate applications.
Some examples of use cases for custom objects:
- \n
- A realtor selling condominiums at different high rises in the area might want to create a custom object for each property or the individual listings and details about the listings within that property. \n
- A veterinarian might want to track the different types of animals owned by the patients in his practice (you could also create a child object to add treatments or medications) \n
- A school with online learning may want to track a student’s interest in different subjects or which courses they’ve completed. \n
- A retailer may want to keep track of shipping information for their customers. \n
- A car dealership may want to keep track of individual vehicles, vin numbers, mileage and associate those vehicle listings with sales (as you saw in the example above from HubSpot’s Knowledge Center) \n
You can see above that this is a game changer for pipeline tracking and really personalizing the marketing experience for a prospect or customer based on the custom objects that you create.
\nIn the past, a HubSpot user or marketer would have just resorted to adding a bunch of properties on the contact or company record. If you did this, say, with the example provided regarding online learning, a HubSpot admin might create 10 different properties for different interests associated with a contact record, but that doesn’t scale well if their interests are more diverse.
The same is true for the example of the veterinarian’s office. Depending on an individual, they might have a very exhaustive list of pets. A farmer would not only have multiple varieties of animals, but even different breeds of that specific species of animal. An animal rescue contact would have multiple animals of different breeds as well. Being able to keep track of complex information that translates into all of the different areas of HubSpot that your marketers, service teams and salespeople use is critical to your success.
The scalability of custom objects gets really exciting when you can associate multiple objects with with different contacts. The possibilities for personalized marketing associated with these objects are virtually endless. It can allow marketers to get super creative and really hone in on personalization and custom content. And when you get a developer involved? There are literally no limits to how empowered you can be with your marketing.
If you need to integrate data from an external database or need help creating a strategy surrounding custom objects, we highly recommend that you reach out to a skilled developer.
We’re obviously happy to help address any questions with custom objects and assist in setup training, strategy or integrating external data into HubSpot to help centralize everything.
Ready to dig into custom objects, but not sure where to start? We can help. Use the button below to book some time and chat about what custom objects can do for your business.
Every year at Inbound we’re left in awe from the speakers, the connections, the words from the HubSpot executive team and all of the exciting new features that are in the works. Inbound 22 was no exception and we’re crazy excited about what these updates mean for HubSpot customers (check out the full list of HubSpot updates from Inbound 22). One of these updates in particular piqued our interest quite a bit, and that’s giving SuperAdmin privileges to create custom objects. Custom objects were announced at Inbound 2020, but have always required the help of a developer. It was always in the plans to open up custom objects for any SuperAdmin in HubSpot to create. While we definitely love the idea of improved data association - with great power comes great responsibility.
In order to understand how you’ll be able to best take advantage of HubSpot’s announcement that custom objects will be able to be created by users in HubSpot, you’ll need to first understand more about objects.
If you’re not familiar with custom objects - here’s the rundown:
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
![\"no](\"https://6534445.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6534445/BLOG%20Images/no%20limit.webp\")
Here are a few ways that your web development budget restrictions can potentially hold you back:
Under-budgeting your website is a growth handicap.
\n
Not having the budget you need for the goals you have for your website is probably the biggest problem we run into when we receive new proposal requests. Before you start the process of vetting developers and requesting proposals, you’ll want to identify what your goals are by asking some important questions:
What are your expectations for your website performance from a lead generation perspective?
Are you a small business that just desires a simple, informative website or do you want your website to be a lead generation machine?
Is your website a hub of information?
Does it need to operate as its own location and generate revenue with a retail store presence?
These are incredibly important questions that will help you determine the best platform and host for your website. Choosing a platform and infrastructure that can grow with your needs over time is the best route. Starting with a “low budget” website and then having to switch platforms or code from scratch because you hired an inexperienced developer will just end up costing you more in the long run.
One of the things that drives us crazy is clients approaching us with a tiny budget and big dreams. Do we wish you could have everything you want for the price you’ve imagined? Of course. But we live in the real world where an equitable energetic exchange is required to get the things that you want and need. We don’t mean to sound insensitive, but it’s just the harsh reality. Quality comes at a price. Do yourself and your organization a favor by not tossing out random numbers before you’ve clearly communicated your wants, needs and goals to a skilled web developer. Talking through your list with a developer will help you balance your business’ budget with the realities of your needs as a business owner and marketer.
Once you have a better idea of your total investment to achieve your goals, you can break that down into the appropriate timeline to help bridge the gap between your budget and the website that you want without compromising features or the integrity of the framework that you’re building from.
RELATED: The problem with cheap outsourced web development
\nHiring low budget talent yields low budget results.
\n
A website that takes forever to load due to poorly written code.
A website that is ranking poorly because the developer didn’t populate meta descriptions or other SEO data.
A website whose media library is too big, because the developer failed to resize images.
A website with no capabilities to easy generate content or conversion opportunities.
Did you know that a bounce rate increases by 123% if page loading time takes more than 1 second?
If your website is taking a long time to load, you’re missing opportunity.
Every millisecond matters. An increased bounce rate means less website conversions, which means less sales.
Hiring an inexperienced web developer can literally cost you tens to hundreds of thousands over the lifetime of that website - and you’re going to let a few thousand dollars keep you from the prospect of exponential sales growth?
That’s a lot of power in the hands of your developer and for that reason you should hire an expert.
Some web developers are order takers, but we’ve written about it before: your website isn’t a sub sandwich. You need a web developer that can proactively plan your website with your goals in mind, that understands the complex needs of businesses and the marketers that serve them. Websites go beyond aesthetics and gifted developers understand that the bones and the intricacies of clean code, a kick ass user experience and a back end that marketers love is the secret recipe to meeting your website goals.
Lack of experience can cost you employee productivity.
\n
Just because they didn’t abandon the project and might have taken your website to launch, doesn’t mean your developer served you well. Far too often in the development process, businesses and marketing agencies look at the aesthetics of the front end, but none of the back end user interface.
RELATED: So your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n
Their outsourced developer or freelancer partner will launch the site and make the interface impossible to use for the marketer. The content is all too often not easily modified, or requires some level of coding knowledge to update.
A website should not just be easy for a user to navigate that is considering your products and services, but it also needs to be easy to update. So often we encounter prospects that need better access to their websites or need us to edit or modify things that they cannot access that should have easily been granted to the marketers before the website launched. Lack of access and a poor back end experience lead to frustrated, disengaged marketers.
Why is this a problem?
According to VentureBeat.com, not only are 91% of employees already frustrated with workplace technology but, “a staggering 71% of leaders acknowledge that employees will consider looking for a new job if their current employer does not provide access to the tools, technology or information they need to do their jobs well.” Every new piece of software or technology that you introduce for your marketing team to use should be simpler, user-friendly and efficient. And the top complaint? 51% of the top complaints were related to slow speeds. Frustrated marketers are less efficient. Happy marketers are more productive. Not investing in the right developer can be very costly.
By working with a talented developer, they can proactively discuss what back-end options you’d like to see during the design phase so that once your website is launched you have more flexibility to test different options, change colors, add filters or change content in a truly customizable way. This gives your marketing team flexibility and allows you to create the experience they’re looking for by partnering with a developer that knows how to do that.
RELATED: Developer Utopia - What to expect when you hire an experienced HubSpot Developer
\nBudget efficiency matters.
\n
We want to finish with this one, because we cannot express enough how important it is for you to understand that estimated hours from two different developers are not an apples to apples comparison. What one developer estimates as taking an hour might not include extensive browser and device testing or adding the types of features that marketers like to see in the back end. Effectively you’ve paid for an aesthetic product, but not received one that is also functional for both your customers and prospects and the team that is creating content within it.
The same idea applies to per-hour rates. A developer charging less per hour likely has less experience than a seasoned developer that can code more cleanly with less bugs and still provide you with better functionality that you didn’t even realize you needed.
Losing prospects to budget restrictions is tough for any web development agency, but what’s tougher is when they come back and have to spend even more starting from scratch, or worse, have run out of money and are forced to work with a mess that was left behind by an inexperienced web developer.
Balancing budget in a small business can be difficult, but investing into a powerful, functional website that serves your needs in the long term is incredibly important. There are many ways that websites can be phased over time to accommodate small business budgets and still allow you to hire talented developers.
When you choose your web developer based on experience rather than budget, you set yourself up for success and build the foundation of a powerful website that your customers, employees and executive team will thank you for later.
Don’t know the right questions to ask when you’re vetting developers for your next website project in HubSpot or Wordpress? Check out our blog offering insight on questions to ask when interviewing website developers.
","rss_summary":"
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
Here are a few ways that your web development budget restrictions can potentially hold you back:
Under-budgeting your website is a growth handicap.
\n
Not having the budget you need for the goals you have for your website is probably the biggest problem we run into when we receive new proposal requests. Before you start the process of vetting developers and requesting proposals, you’ll want to identify what your goals are by asking some important questions:
What are your expectations for your website performance from a lead generation perspective?
Are you a small business that just desires a simple, informative website or do you want your website to be a lead generation machine?
Is your website a hub of information?
Does it need to operate as its own location and generate revenue with a retail store presence?
These are incredibly important questions that will help you determine the best platform and host for your website. Choosing a platform and infrastructure that can grow with your needs over time is the best route. Starting with a “low budget” website and then having to switch platforms or code from scratch because you hired an inexperienced developer will just end up costing you more in the long run.
One of the things that drives us crazy is clients approaching us with a tiny budget and big dreams. Do we wish you could have everything you want for the price you’ve imagined? Of course. But we live in the real world where an equitable energetic exchange is required to get the things that you want and need. We don’t mean to sound insensitive, but it’s just the harsh reality. Quality comes at a price. Do yourself and your organization a favor by not tossing out random numbers before you’ve clearly communicated your wants, needs and goals to a skilled web developer. Talking through your list with a developer will help you balance your business’ budget with the realities of your needs as a business owner and marketer.
Once you have a better idea of your total investment to achieve your goals, you can break that down into the appropriate timeline to help bridge the gap between your budget and the website that you want without compromising features or the integrity of the framework that you’re building from.
RELATED: The problem with cheap outsourced web development
\nHiring low budget talent yields low budget results.
\n
A website that takes forever to load due to poorly written code.
A website that is ranking poorly because the developer didn’t populate meta descriptions or other SEO data.
A website whose media library is too big, because the developer failed to resize images.
A website with no capabilities to easy generate content or conversion opportunities.
Did you know that a bounce rate increases by 123% if page loading time takes more than 1 second?
If your website is taking a long time to load, you’re missing opportunity.
Every millisecond matters. An increased bounce rate means less website conversions, which means less sales.
Hiring an inexperienced web developer can literally cost you tens to hundreds of thousands over the lifetime of that website - and you’re going to let a few thousand dollars keep you from the prospect of exponential sales growth?
That’s a lot of power in the hands of your developer and for that reason you should hire an expert.
Some web developers are order takers, but we’ve written about it before: your website isn’t a sub sandwich. You need a web developer that can proactively plan your website with your goals in mind, that understands the complex needs of businesses and the marketers that serve them. Websites go beyond aesthetics and gifted developers understand that the bones and the intricacies of clean code, a kick ass user experience and a back end that marketers love is the secret recipe to meeting your website goals.
Lack of experience can cost you employee productivity.
\n
Just because they didn’t abandon the project and might have taken your website to launch, doesn’t mean your developer served you well. Far too often in the development process, businesses and marketing agencies look at the aesthetics of the front end, but none of the back end user interface.
RELATED: So your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n
Their outsourced developer or freelancer partner will launch the site and make the interface impossible to use for the marketer. The content is all too often not easily modified, or requires some level of coding knowledge to update.
A website should not just be easy for a user to navigate that is considering your products and services, but it also needs to be easy to update. So often we encounter prospects that need better access to their websites or need us to edit or modify things that they cannot access that should have easily been granted to the marketers before the website launched. Lack of access and a poor back end experience lead to frustrated, disengaged marketers.
Why is this a problem?
According to VentureBeat.com, not only are 91% of employees already frustrated with workplace technology but, “a staggering 71% of leaders acknowledge that employees will consider looking for a new job if their current employer does not provide access to the tools, technology or information they need to do their jobs well.” Every new piece of software or technology that you introduce for your marketing team to use should be simpler, user-friendly and efficient. And the top complaint? 51% of the top complaints were related to slow speeds. Frustrated marketers are less efficient. Happy marketers are more productive. Not investing in the right developer can be very costly.
By working with a talented developer, they can proactively discuss what back-end options you’d like to see during the design phase so that once your website is launched you have more flexibility to test different options, change colors, add filters or change content in a truly customizable way. This gives your marketing team flexibility and allows you to create the experience they’re looking for by partnering with a developer that knows how to do that.
RELATED: Developer Utopia - What to expect when you hire an experienced HubSpot Developer
\nBudget efficiency matters.
\n
We want to finish with this one, because we cannot express enough how important it is for you to understand that estimated hours from two different developers are not an apples to apples comparison. What one developer estimates as taking an hour might not include extensive browser and device testing or adding the types of features that marketers like to see in the back end. Effectively you’ve paid for an aesthetic product, but not received one that is also functional for both your customers and prospects and the team that is creating content within it.
The same idea applies to per-hour rates. A developer charging less per hour likely has less experience than a seasoned developer that can code more cleanly with less bugs and still provide you with better functionality that you didn’t even realize you needed.
Losing prospects to budget restrictions is tough for any web development agency, but what’s tougher is when they come back and have to spend even more starting from scratch, or worse, have run out of money and are forced to work with a mess that was left behind by an inexperienced web developer.
Balancing budget in a small business can be difficult, but investing into a powerful, functional website that serves your needs in the long term is incredibly important. There are many ways that websites can be phased over time to accommodate small business budgets and still allow you to hire talented developers.
When you choose your web developer based on experience rather than budget, you set yourself up for success and build the foundation of a powerful website that your customers, employees and executive team will thank you for later.
Don’t know the right questions to ask when you’re vetting developers for your next website project in HubSpot or Wordpress? Check out our blog offering insight on questions to ask when interviewing website developers.
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In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
Here are a few ways that your web development budget restrictions can potentially hold you back:
Under-budgeting your website is a growth handicap.
\n
Not having the budget you need for the goals you have for your website is probably the biggest problem we run into when we receive new proposal requests. Before you start the process of vetting developers and requesting proposals, you’ll want to identify what your goals are by asking some important questions:
What are your expectations for your website performance from a lead generation perspective?
Are you a small business that just desires a simple, informative website or do you want your website to be a lead generation machine?
Is your website a hub of information?
Does it need to operate as its own location and generate revenue with a retail store presence?
These are incredibly important questions that will help you determine the best platform and host for your website. Choosing a platform and infrastructure that can grow with your needs over time is the best route. Starting with a “low budget” website and then having to switch platforms or code from scratch because you hired an inexperienced developer will just end up costing you more in the long run.
One of the things that drives us crazy is clients approaching us with a tiny budget and big dreams. Do we wish you could have everything you want for the price you’ve imagined? Of course. But we live in the real world where an equitable energetic exchange is required to get the things that you want and need. We don’t mean to sound insensitive, but it’s just the harsh reality. Quality comes at a price. Do yourself and your organization a favor by not tossing out random numbers before you’ve clearly communicated your wants, needs and goals to a skilled web developer. Talking through your list with a developer will help you balance your business’ budget with the realities of your needs as a business owner and marketer.
Once you have a better idea of your total investment to achieve your goals, you can break that down into the appropriate timeline to help bridge the gap between your budget and the website that you want without compromising features or the integrity of the framework that you’re building from.
RELATED: The problem with cheap outsourced web development
\nHiring low budget talent yields low budget results.
\n
A website that takes forever to load due to poorly written code.
A website that is ranking poorly because the developer didn’t populate meta descriptions or other SEO data.
A website whose media library is too big, because the developer failed to resize images.
A website with no capabilities to easy generate content or conversion opportunities.
Did you know that a bounce rate increases by 123% if page loading time takes more than 1 second?
If your website is taking a long time to load, you’re missing opportunity.
Every millisecond matters. An increased bounce rate means less website conversions, which means less sales.
Hiring an inexperienced web developer can literally cost you tens to hundreds of thousands over the lifetime of that website - and you’re going to let a few thousand dollars keep you from the prospect of exponential sales growth?
That’s a lot of power in the hands of your developer and for that reason you should hire an expert.
Some web developers are order takers, but we’ve written about it before: your website isn’t a sub sandwich. You need a web developer that can proactively plan your website with your goals in mind, that understands the complex needs of businesses and the marketers that serve them. Websites go beyond aesthetics and gifted developers understand that the bones and the intricacies of clean code, a kick ass user experience and a back end that marketers love is the secret recipe to meeting your website goals.
Lack of experience can cost you employee productivity.
\n
Just because they didn’t abandon the project and might have taken your website to launch, doesn’t mean your developer served you well. Far too often in the development process, businesses and marketing agencies look at the aesthetics of the front end, but none of the back end user interface.
RELATED: So your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n
Their outsourced developer or freelancer partner will launch the site and make the interface impossible to use for the marketer. The content is all too often not easily modified, or requires some level of coding knowledge to update.
A website should not just be easy for a user to navigate that is considering your products and services, but it also needs to be easy to update. So often we encounter prospects that need better access to their websites or need us to edit or modify things that they cannot access that should have easily been granted to the marketers before the website launched. Lack of access and a poor back end experience lead to frustrated, disengaged marketers.
Why is this a problem?
According to VentureBeat.com, not only are 91% of employees already frustrated with workplace technology but, “a staggering 71% of leaders acknowledge that employees will consider looking for a new job if their current employer does not provide access to the tools, technology or information they need to do their jobs well.” Every new piece of software or technology that you introduce for your marketing team to use should be simpler, user-friendly and efficient. And the top complaint? 51% of the top complaints were related to slow speeds. Frustrated marketers are less efficient. Happy marketers are more productive. Not investing in the right developer can be very costly.
By working with a talented developer, they can proactively discuss what back-end options you’d like to see during the design phase so that once your website is launched you have more flexibility to test different options, change colors, add filters or change content in a truly customizable way. This gives your marketing team flexibility and allows you to create the experience they’re looking for by partnering with a developer that knows how to do that.
RELATED: Developer Utopia - What to expect when you hire an experienced HubSpot Developer
\nBudget efficiency matters.
\n
We want to finish with this one, because we cannot express enough how important it is for you to understand that estimated hours from two different developers are not an apples to apples comparison. What one developer estimates as taking an hour might not include extensive browser and device testing or adding the types of features that marketers like to see in the back end. Effectively you’ve paid for an aesthetic product, but not received one that is also functional for both your customers and prospects and the team that is creating content within it.
The same idea applies to per-hour rates. A developer charging less per hour likely has less experience than a seasoned developer that can code more cleanly with less bugs and still provide you with better functionality that you didn’t even realize you needed.
Losing prospects to budget restrictions is tough for any web development agency, but what’s tougher is when they come back and have to spend even more starting from scratch, or worse, have run out of money and are forced to work with a mess that was left behind by an inexperienced web developer.
Balancing budget in a small business can be difficult, but investing into a powerful, functional website that serves your needs in the long term is incredibly important. There are many ways that websites can be phased over time to accommodate small business budgets and still allow you to hire talented developers.
When you choose your web developer based on experience rather than budget, you set yourself up for success and build the foundation of a powerful website that your customers, employees and executive team will thank you for later.
Don’t know the right questions to ask when you’re vetting developers for your next website project in HubSpot or Wordpress? Check out our blog offering insight on questions to ask when interviewing website developers.
","postBodyRss":"
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
Here are a few ways that your web development budget restrictions can potentially hold you back:
Under-budgeting your website is a growth handicap.
\n
Not having the budget you need for the goals you have for your website is probably the biggest problem we run into when we receive new proposal requests. Before you start the process of vetting developers and requesting proposals, you’ll want to identify what your goals are by asking some important questions:
What are your expectations for your website performance from a lead generation perspective?
Are you a small business that just desires a simple, informative website or do you want your website to be a lead generation machine?
Is your website a hub of information?
Does it need to operate as its own location and generate revenue with a retail store presence?
These are incredibly important questions that will help you determine the best platform and host for your website. Choosing a platform and infrastructure that can grow with your needs over time is the best route. Starting with a “low budget” website and then having to switch platforms or code from scratch because you hired an inexperienced developer will just end up costing you more in the long run.
One of the things that drives us crazy is clients approaching us with a tiny budget and big dreams. Do we wish you could have everything you want for the price you’ve imagined? Of course. But we live in the real world where an equitable energetic exchange is required to get the things that you want and need. We don’t mean to sound insensitive, but it’s just the harsh reality. Quality comes at a price. Do yourself and your organization a favor by not tossing out random numbers before you’ve clearly communicated your wants, needs and goals to a skilled web developer. Talking through your list with a developer will help you balance your business’ budget with the realities of your needs as a business owner and marketer.
Once you have a better idea of your total investment to achieve your goals, you can break that down into the appropriate timeline to help bridge the gap between your budget and the website that you want without compromising features or the integrity of the framework that you’re building from.
RELATED: The problem with cheap outsourced web development
\nHiring low budget talent yields low budget results.
\n
A website that takes forever to load due to poorly written code.
A website that is ranking poorly because the developer didn’t populate meta descriptions or other SEO data.
A website whose media library is too big, because the developer failed to resize images.
A website with no capabilities to easy generate content or conversion opportunities.
Did you know that a bounce rate increases by 123% if page loading time takes more than 1 second?
If your website is taking a long time to load, you’re missing opportunity.
Every millisecond matters. An increased bounce rate means less website conversions, which means less sales.
Hiring an inexperienced web developer can literally cost you tens to hundreds of thousands over the lifetime of that website - and you’re going to let a few thousand dollars keep you from the prospect of exponential sales growth?
That’s a lot of power in the hands of your developer and for that reason you should hire an expert.
Some web developers are order takers, but we’ve written about it before: your website isn’t a sub sandwich. You need a web developer that can proactively plan your website with your goals in mind, that understands the complex needs of businesses and the marketers that serve them. Websites go beyond aesthetics and gifted developers understand that the bones and the intricacies of clean code, a kick ass user experience and a back end that marketers love is the secret recipe to meeting your website goals.
Lack of experience can cost you employee productivity.
\n
Just because they didn’t abandon the project and might have taken your website to launch, doesn’t mean your developer served you well. Far too often in the development process, businesses and marketing agencies look at the aesthetics of the front end, but none of the back end user interface.
RELATED: So your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n
Their outsourced developer or freelancer partner will launch the site and make the interface impossible to use for the marketer. The content is all too often not easily modified, or requires some level of coding knowledge to update.
A website should not just be easy for a user to navigate that is considering your products and services, but it also needs to be easy to update. So often we encounter prospects that need better access to their websites or need us to edit or modify things that they cannot access that should have easily been granted to the marketers before the website launched. Lack of access and a poor back end experience lead to frustrated, disengaged marketers.
Why is this a problem?
According to VentureBeat.com, not only are 91% of employees already frustrated with workplace technology but, “a staggering 71% of leaders acknowledge that employees will consider looking for a new job if their current employer does not provide access to the tools, technology or information they need to do their jobs well.” Every new piece of software or technology that you introduce for your marketing team to use should be simpler, user-friendly and efficient. And the top complaint? 51% of the top complaints were related to slow speeds. Frustrated marketers are less efficient. Happy marketers are more productive. Not investing in the right developer can be very costly.
By working with a talented developer, they can proactively discuss what back-end options you’d like to see during the design phase so that once your website is launched you have more flexibility to test different options, change colors, add filters or change content in a truly customizable way. This gives your marketing team flexibility and allows you to create the experience they’re looking for by partnering with a developer that knows how to do that.
RELATED: Developer Utopia - What to expect when you hire an experienced HubSpot Developer
\nBudget efficiency matters.
\n
We want to finish with this one, because we cannot express enough how important it is for you to understand that estimated hours from two different developers are not an apples to apples comparison. What one developer estimates as taking an hour might not include extensive browser and device testing or adding the types of features that marketers like to see in the back end. Effectively you’ve paid for an aesthetic product, but not received one that is also functional for both your customers and prospects and the team that is creating content within it.
The same idea applies to per-hour rates. A developer charging less per hour likely has less experience than a seasoned developer that can code more cleanly with less bugs and still provide you with better functionality that you didn’t even realize you needed.
Losing prospects to budget restrictions is tough for any web development agency, but what’s tougher is when they come back and have to spend even more starting from scratch, or worse, have run out of money and are forced to work with a mess that was left behind by an inexperienced web developer.
Balancing budget in a small business can be difficult, but investing into a powerful, functional website that serves your needs in the long term is incredibly important. There are many ways that websites can be phased over time to accommodate small business budgets and still allow you to hire talented developers.
When you choose your web developer based on experience rather than budget, you set yourself up for success and build the foundation of a powerful website that your customers, employees and executive team will thank you for later.
Don’t know the right questions to ask when you’re vetting developers for your next website project in HubSpot or Wordpress? Check out our blog offering insight on questions to ask when interviewing website developers.
","postEmailContent":"
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.
Here are a few ways that your web development budget restrictions can potentially hold you back:
Under-budgeting your website is a growth handicap.
\n
Not having the budget you need for the goals you have for your website is probably the biggest problem we run into when we receive new proposal requests. Before you start the process of vetting developers and requesting proposals, you’ll want to identify what your goals are by asking some important questions:
What are your expectations for your website performance from a lead generation perspective?
Are you a small business that just desires a simple, informative website or do you want your website to be a lead generation machine?
Is your website a hub of information?
Does it need to operate as its own location and generate revenue with a retail store presence?
These are incredibly important questions that will help you determine the best platform and host for your website. Choosing a platform and infrastructure that can grow with your needs over time is the best route. Starting with a “low budget” website and then having to switch platforms or code from scratch because you hired an inexperienced developer will just end up costing you more in the long run.
One of the things that drives us crazy is clients approaching us with a tiny budget and big dreams. Do we wish you could have everything you want for the price you’ve imagined? Of course. But we live in the real world where an equitable energetic exchange is required to get the things that you want and need. We don’t mean to sound insensitive, but it’s just the harsh reality. Quality comes at a price. Do yourself and your organization a favor by not tossing out random numbers before you’ve clearly communicated your wants, needs and goals to a skilled web developer. Talking through your list with a developer will help you balance your business’ budget with the realities of your needs as a business owner and marketer.
Once you have a better idea of your total investment to achieve your goals, you can break that down into the appropriate timeline to help bridge the gap between your budget and the website that you want without compromising features or the integrity of the framework that you’re building from.
RELATED: The problem with cheap outsourced web development
\nHiring low budget talent yields low budget results.
\n
A website that takes forever to load due to poorly written code.
A website that is ranking poorly because the developer didn’t populate meta descriptions or other SEO data.
A website whose media library is too big, because the developer failed to resize images.
A website with no capabilities to easy generate content or conversion opportunities.
Did you know that a bounce rate increases by 123% if page loading time takes more than 1 second?
If your website is taking a long time to load, you’re missing opportunity.
Every millisecond matters. An increased bounce rate means less website conversions, which means less sales.
Hiring an inexperienced web developer can literally cost you tens to hundreds of thousands over the lifetime of that website - and you’re going to let a few thousand dollars keep you from the prospect of exponential sales growth?
That’s a lot of power in the hands of your developer and for that reason you should hire an expert.
Some web developers are order takers, but we’ve written about it before: your website isn’t a sub sandwich. You need a web developer that can proactively plan your website with your goals in mind, that understands the complex needs of businesses and the marketers that serve them. Websites go beyond aesthetics and gifted developers understand that the bones and the intricacies of clean code, a kick ass user experience and a back end that marketers love is the secret recipe to meeting your website goals.
Lack of experience can cost you employee productivity.
\n
Just because they didn’t abandon the project and might have taken your website to launch, doesn’t mean your developer served you well. Far too often in the development process, businesses and marketing agencies look at the aesthetics of the front end, but none of the back end user interface.
RELATED: So your developer ghosted you, now what?
\n
Their outsourced developer or freelancer partner will launch the site and make the interface impossible to use for the marketer. The content is all too often not easily modified, or requires some level of coding knowledge to update.
A website should not just be easy for a user to navigate that is considering your products and services, but it also needs to be easy to update. So often we encounter prospects that need better access to their websites or need us to edit or modify things that they cannot access that should have easily been granted to the marketers before the website launched. Lack of access and a poor back end experience lead to frustrated, disengaged marketers.
Why is this a problem?
According to VentureBeat.com, not only are 91% of employees already frustrated with workplace technology but, “a staggering 71% of leaders acknowledge that employees will consider looking for a new job if their current employer does not provide access to the tools, technology or information they need to do their jobs well.” Every new piece of software or technology that you introduce for your marketing team to use should be simpler, user-friendly and efficient. And the top complaint? 51% of the top complaints were related to slow speeds. Frustrated marketers are less efficient. Happy marketers are more productive. Not investing in the right developer can be very costly.
By working with a talented developer, they can proactively discuss what back-end options you’d like to see during the design phase so that once your website is launched you have more flexibility to test different options, change colors, add filters or change content in a truly customizable way. This gives your marketing team flexibility and allows you to create the experience they’re looking for by partnering with a developer that knows how to do that.
RELATED: Developer Utopia - What to expect when you hire an experienced HubSpot Developer
\nBudget efficiency matters.
\n
We want to finish with this one, because we cannot express enough how important it is for you to understand that estimated hours from two different developers are not an apples to apples comparison. What one developer estimates as taking an hour might not include extensive browser and device testing or adding the types of features that marketers like to see in the back end. Effectively you’ve paid for an aesthetic product, but not received one that is also functional for both your customers and prospects and the team that is creating content within it.
The same idea applies to per-hour rates. A developer charging less per hour likely has less experience than a seasoned developer that can code more cleanly with less bugs and still provide you with better functionality that you didn’t even realize you needed.
Losing prospects to budget restrictions is tough for any web development agency, but what’s tougher is when they come back and have to spend even more starting from scratch, or worse, have run out of money and are forced to work with a mess that was left behind by an inexperienced web developer.
Balancing budget in a small business can be difficult, but investing into a powerful, functional website that serves your needs in the long term is incredibly important. There are many ways that websites can be phased over time to accommodate small business budgets and still allow you to hire talented developers.
When you choose your web developer based on experience rather than budget, you set yourself up for success and build the foundation of a powerful website that your customers, employees and executive team will thank you for later.
Don’t know the right questions to ask when you’re vetting developers for your next website project in HubSpot or Wordpress? Check out our blog offering insight on questions to ask when interviewing website developers.
","rssSummary":"
In the world of construction, building a strong foundation ensures the strength of your structure. David Allan Coe said, “It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
The same is true for the framework of your website. It’s not enough to pick a solid platform like HubSpot, you need to have a skilled developer that knows their way around those platforms to build your website for performance, security and conversions. All too often, we see companies held back by their web development budget when it comes to redesigning their website. We’ve had countless meetings with prospects that decide to take a less expensive route to develop their website, thinking that they’re comparing apples to apples in the proposal process only to find they’ve been severely oversold.
Allocating the appropriate amount to your web development budget without being taken advantage of is critical. Your website budget should be proportionate to your expectations for performance, lead goals and expectations for features and turnaround. Every website and business is totally different, so there’s really no wrong answer here - it’s just a matter of aligning your expectations with the budget that you have and choosing the right partner to get you there.