HubSpot CMS Hub

Your website is often the first and last stop for potential customers; whether they are coming across you for the first time or are ready to buy, managing that entire journey is what your CMS is all about. Your CMS is the tool you use to create, manage, and deliver your website without needing to code every element from scratch.

Building your website, choosing the layout, the navigation, the content, the Calls to Actions - can be one of the most important projects for any organization. And it all starts with choosing how you’ll build it, and while you can code everything from scratch, chances are your first choice will be deciding on the CMS that will best meet your needs.

So, What Is CMS Hub?

A CMS, or Content Management System, is primarily the platform or tool that is used to create, build, manage, and share a website. A typical CMS will reduce or remove the need to code the elements of your site, although a good CMS will give you the flexibility to use code and build or edit what you want without requiring you to do so. HubSpot CMS is one such tool, offering a wide marketplace of existing designs, themes and modules (we’ll get to those in the components below) that allow anyone to quickly have a functional website up and running while still customizing the content, colors and branding. At the same time, if you want to develop very customized designs and functionality on your site, HubSpot CMS allows you to do just that.

The Components of CMS Hub

Exploring a little deeper into HubSpot CMS Hub, let’s look at the core components that help your teams accomplish their goals and make your CMS powerful with this acronym: STAMP - Structure, Time Savers, Automation, Measurement, Performance. 

Give Them Intelligence 2

Structure: Web Pages and Blogs

The core tools within CMS Hub are the Web Pages and Blogs; these components come together to deliver a great visitor experience and direct your potential customers along the path you have designed for them to take.

Webpages

Webpages are, as you can imagine, the very core of HubSpot CMS. At the end of the day, your CMS is there to help you build and deliver a website, a collection of webpages. While we look at the components of those pages under modules, it’s worth looking at the pages themselves. Within CMS Hub, you’ll have easy access to things like the page title, meta description, featured image, and URL. You can also set the accessibility of any given page - for both definitions. In regards to the usability elements, like setting Alternative Text, but also in the privacy of your pages, allowing you to create password-protected or login access only pages. 

You’ll also have use of the drag-and-drop tool when building your website, allowing you to easily add, move, or delete content from your site without having to so much as see a single line of code. 

Blogs

Within HubSpot CMS Hub, Blogs are separated from your Website pages for a number of reasons, though they do offer much of the same functionality. One of the great things about this structure is that you have a much deeper level of control when it comes to permissions, approvals, and publishing content on your website. You can give your content creators access to add the latest blog without giving access to any of your other web pages.  Your blog will also leverage the SEO optimization tools to make recommendations right on the page as you build it, helping your blog to reach more and more of your intended audience.

Pipelines Abstract-1

Time Savers: Modules and Content Assistant

Your CMS should be taking the work off of your plate, helping you to create and publish your site not only faster, but in a way that delivers a better result than you would have had without it.

Modules

Think of modules as a block you can drag onto any webpage that is already coded for you with a particular function in mind. Many of those functions you’ll already be familiar with - a video player, an image, a text block, but you’ll also find ones that display your content in particular ways, like in an accordion dropdown or a series of text blocks that will show up as a table on your site.

Modules are a great way to customize your site to look and function how you want. Modules are also an example of a part of CMS Hub where you can, of course, make use of the options provided to you out of the box, but you can also make use of developers to create modules just for you to do exactly what you want on your unique site.

Content Assistant

From individual elements like page titles to the complete copy of a blog, HubSpot’s Content Assistant uses AI to help you create search-optimized content and deliver engaging messaging to your target audience. Content Assistant won’t replace your entire team, but it can definitely take some of the load off and allow you and your team to hit that classic goal - doing more with less. Whether you are utilizing it to generate a new webpage (that’s right, an entire webpage) or a blog on your latest topic of focus, you may not have a finished product out of the gate, but you’ll definitely have a great starting point that your team can use their expertise to bring home to the finish line.

Automation: Personalization, Chatbots, A/B Testing and Dynamic Content

Automation is a powerful factor in any tool, and your CMS is no exception. When we talk about automation in your CMS, though, what we are looking at is the ways in which you can deliver personalized experiences at scale while also being able to run automated tests to again, deliver the best-converting options to your audience.

Personalization

Personalization is one of the key factors that utilizing a combined CRM and CMS tool gives you that other stand-alone platforms are missing. You are able to add personalization elements to your web pages, showing your visitors completely customized content, from displaying their name and welcoming them to your site to mentioning their city; any data point about your contact that is in your CRM can be used to show a personalized version of your site.

While you can, of course, get as specific as saying, “Hi Jenny”, you may also want to show different CTAs or language on a page based on who is viewing it, allowing you to put the most relevant information directly in front of the people that it will best influence. With Smart Content, you can do just that, showing a variation on your webpage based on whatever segmentation you have set up within HubSpot.

Chatbots

Engaging effectively with your website visitors is crucial, and that's where HubSpot's Conversational bots come in. These bots provide an instant, interactive communication channel, offering personalized responses and assistance to your visitors 24/7. By automating initial interactions they not only improve the user experience but also free up your team to focus on more complex requests. With Conversational bots, you can efficiently guide visitors through your site, answer FAQs, and even qualify leads, all in real time. This leads to enhanced customer satisfaction and a streamlined process for capturing and nurturing leads. Over time, you can actually refine the visitor experience, making your website not just a source of information but a dynamic engagement tool.

A/B Testing

Being able to test your content, understand what is having an impact, and just as importantly, what isn’t, is a key factor in optimizing and improving your website. With A/B testing, you are able to create variations on your web page that will, in turn, be shown randomly to visitors. Once enough visitors have seen your page, you can select the variation with the better performance. You can continue to run variation tests on a single page, optimizing different elements and copy over time.

Dynamic Content

When you are looking to streamline your website updates, whether it's for event listings, product catalogs, or employee details, HubSpot CMS Hub simplifies this process beautifully. With Dynamic Content, any team member, especially marketers, can effortlessly update information that is stored in your HubDB table or a CRM object. And the best part? You can publish these updates across your site with just a few clicks wherever the data appears.


Plus, each dynamic page you create has its own SEO-friendly URL and offers detailed, page-specific analytics. This feature lets you track the performance of your content just as easily as any other page on your CMS Hub, giving you valuable insights to enhance your online presence.

Stamp Abstract-1

Measurement: Reports and Dashboards

As they say, knowledge is half the battle, and understanding the performance of your website requires a lot of knowledge. Not only in the numbers, the visitors and bounces, but in manipulating and digging into those numbers to tell the story of your website.

Traffic Analytics

Understanding your website performance starts, of course, with gathering data about your visitors and their actions while on your site. HubSpot CMS Hub provides you with a great view into what visitors are doing on your website, from pages visited and just how long they stayed on each page to where they come from in the first place and at what point they exit or convert. You’ll also have dozens of out-of-the-box reports on the traffic for your website to get you started on analyzing those patterns of behavior.

Reports and Dashboards

While you always have access to those great out-of-the-box reports, where you’ll often find the answers to the big questions through the use of customized reports and dashboards. You’ll be able to delve into various aspects of your website performance, such as traffic analytics, user engagement, and the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns. You can then bring together those pre-built and custom reports to tell the full story of your website and the actions of your visitors, both to improve that performance and to optimize the flow of your audience on their journey to become customers.

Workflows Abstract-2

Performance: Security, Domains and Themes

The performance of your site is about more than the content and design that we’ve looked at above; it’s also about having a secure site with a consistent brand throughout. 

Security

Your customers show great confidence in your brand when they choose to engage with you, and it's essential to value and protect that trust. CMS Hub has got your back with round-the-clock threat detection and malware scanning, meaning your website and your customers' data are safeguarded every moment of every day. Plus, with premium hosting included at no extra cost, you get a secure and robust platform as the foundation for your fantastic business website.

Domains

Whether you have a single domain or are managing multiple domains across divisions, having those all be connected and managed within your CMS is a must. You are able to connect and host your domain with HubSpot, ensuring your brand is maintained, while, at the same time, making use of the HubSpot CRM to deliver that personalized experience your audience is looking for. 

Themes

The whole idea behind using a CMS is reducing or removing the need for coding, but that should never be at the expense of having a beautiful, user-friendly, and of course, branded experience. That's where the HubSpot template marketplace comes in. You can choose a website theme that aligns perfectly with your needs or at least gives you the building blocks to begin. Customize it to reflect your brand's unique style with just a few simple clicks to change your fonts, brand colors, and more across your entire website. If you do want to dive deep and get into the code, you have the flexibility to create a theme of your very own or build off an existing theme and create the elements and modules that you need for your specific situation.

CMS Hub: What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)

Your website is at the core of your digital marketing efforts. It is the air traffic controller for all your activities and the many paths and journeys your potential and current customers can take with your organization. Seeing as it is such a central part of your brand, it can be surprising to see how many company websites take a backseat to newer or shinier channels that seem like they could deliver quick wins. However, your website is often the point of conversion for your contacts; many organizations are using an outdated, difficult-to-use CMS.

Your team and your website deserve better.

CMS Hub is a CMS that allows you to build and manage your website, from functionality to design and content. But it is much more than that. CMS Hub is designed with both developers and marketers in mind, meaning devs have the control they want and need to create, optimize, and structure pages best, while marketers can use drag-and-drop tools to quickly and easily build and update content. With built-in SEO tools, optimizing your site to current standards is easy.

HubSpot CMS Hub is more than just your CMS; it connects across the rest of the platform to deliver a seamless experience for your contacts. Whether you are an organization with a dedicated development team building your site from scratch or a marketing team of one trying to get a website launched by yourself, CMS Hub offers the flexibility to meet your website needs.

Choosing your Hub Tier

CMS Hub comes in a few different tiers - understanding which one is right for your business is a crucial aspect of building your HubSpot portal & website. Let’s take a quick overview of the main differences you can expect between CMS Hub Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

Please note that at each level, CMS Hub is sold by the Core Seat - which gives those users the capability of having full edit access within the Hub. You can also get an unlimited number of View Only seats, which allow certain users to just view reporting, CRM and day-to-day activities.

Starter

With Starter, you can access the essential tools needed to create and publish your website. You will be able to host your website, access the theme marketplace and utilize the drag-and-drop editor to create your pages. You can have a single website domain, like bizzyweb.com, one subdomain, that is something like tutorials.bizzyweb.com, and one blog, like marketing.bizzyweb.com. With Starter you will also be able to create up to 3 language variation versions of your pages to help service a wider audience.  This tier is best for smaller organizations that have a simpler website, maybe 1-15 pages, that really just need to have their website online, looking good and being accessible to potential customers.

Professional

At Professional, you will unlock most of the primary tools of HubSpot CMS Hub. Besides creating and publishing your website, you’ll gain access to dynamic personalization, smart content, SEO analytics, custom reporting, and up to 10,000 web pages on your site. You’ll also be able to build custom chatbots with advanced targeting and branching logic for both your website and Facebook Messenger. This tier is used by most small to mid-sized businesses and is a great fit for most organizations that have a single domain/business unit.

Enterprise

Enterprise is the tier of choice for organizations needing deeper flexibility and control. What you’ll find here are features such as custom objects, adaptive testing, membership logins, multiple domains, and web apps, like calculators, event systems, customer portals and learning management systems. Enterprise allows you to connect up to 10 domains, with unlimited subdomains, up to 500 custom reports, and much deeper control regarding access and permissions you give to your internal teams. This tier is best suited for larger organizations with multiple business units or deeply customized website and content requirements.

Play Well with Other (Hubs)

Like the other Hubs within HubSpot, you can purchase CMS Hub on its own. While you will still end up with a great website, easy to update and boy does it look sharp, you’ll be missing out on those opportunities to take the next step with your visitors directly, moving from conversion through the entire customer journey. 

Marketing Hub

Paired with Marketing

Pairing CMS Hub with Marketing is a match made in digital heaven, especially since your website is such a vital part of your marketing strategy. Having both in one convenient location is a no–brainer – leading to a more unified and effectively measurable approach. With CMS Hub integrated into HubSpot, updating your website becomes a breeze, just like any other HubSpot feature. This empowers your marketing team to independently modify and optimize content. Plus, by harnessing the tools in Marketing, you can build upon the foundations laid in CMS. Imagine seamlessly transitioning from personalized content on your website to creating custom email messages or landing pages, all contributing to a smooth and engaging journey for your audience with your organization. It's all about creating a cohesive and impactful marketing experience.

SalesHub_Icon_Gradient_RGB_24px

Paired with Sales

Knowing the full journey of a potential customer is a huge advantage for any sales team, and having the activities and behaviors of your contacts shown right in HubSpot is the way to get that advantage. While this is most valuable for your inbound sales teams, even outbound teams can be surprised by the impact of the data and the cohesive experience being delivered to your audience. By having everything in a single system, you also reduce not only chances for errors when managing lead handoff, but deliver a faster, more seamless transition for your customers as well.

ServiceHub_Icon_Gradient_RGB_24px

Paired with Service

Your website isn’t just there to attract new customers; it is also in place to support and maintain your existing customers as well. Having your knowledge base linked to your main website can be a huge lift in not only customer retention but can even help potential customers to convert by giving them answers to their pressing questions right away. Really it’s all about providing a single source of truth for your visitors, giving them everything they need to make the decision to become or stay a customer. And, of course, it never hurts for your customer service team to have that same level of insight into the pages and content being viewed by your customers to serve them better.

Operation Hub

Paired with Operations

While Operations Hub may seem to connect more with the other Hubs, you’ll still find value when pairing it with CMS Hub. From cleaning data as it enters your system from the website, in turn allowing you to provide cleaner dynamic content experiences, to super charging the number of reports you’ll have access to - 3,100 with Operations Hub Pro, for example, you’ll find plenty of ways to make these two hubs sing in harmony.

Commerce Hub (crappy)

Paired with Commerce

The ability to make a purchase on a website is a huge component for many organizations when selecting a CMS. With HubSpot’s free Commerce Hub, you’ll be able to take payments from right one your site. You’ll also be able to send quotes, proposals and invoices to contacts once they’ve come in on your website to convert them into customers. You’ll also be able to make use of your Product Library with this connection, listing all of your products or services within HubSpot and then making those accessible on your website for visitors to purchase directly!
*Payments are only available within the US currently.

HubSpot Logo

Paired with Multiple Hubs

As you can imagine, bringing these various Hubs together is when HubSpot shines brightest. Having everything in one place allows for deeper reporting, smoother handoffs, and the ability to utilize complementary tools for every team that lives within other Hubs, like automatically creating a sales opportunity and sending a welcome email when a contact books a demo with your team off the website. As you continue your HubSpot journey, you will continue to find more and more ways to combine the Hubs and the many amazing things you can accomplish with CMS Hub and the rest of the platform.

Hexagons-Warm Yellow

We know HubSpot

Ready to learn more about the rest of HubSpot and how you can get started with your own implementation?

HubSpot CMS Onboarding from an Accredited HubSpot Platinum Partner

If you’ve made it all the way to the end, you probably are thinking: “this sounds complicated.” HubSpot is a powerful tool - and it takes a lot of time, effort and careful planning to unlock its full potential. 

BizzyWeb is a HubSpot Platinum Partner and we offer full-service HubSpot onboarding, clean-up and strategy for all hubs. Our team has over 191 certifications in HubSpot (and constantly growing). No matter what your HubSpot needs are, our team is ready to handle them.

Plus, we’re one of the handful of agencies in the world that holds the brand-new HubSpot Onboarding Accreditation AND we are the only agency in Minnesota with a Platform Enablement Accreditation from HubSpot!

What We Do

  • We work with you to learn your business, needs and goals - BizzyWeb is actively invested in making a solution that works for you, not just a standardized tool or an off-the-shelf install.
  • Onboard, implement, and build - Once we’ve reviewed your systems and current data, we put our plan into action.
  • Individualized training and reporting - When your setup is done, we’re not. We make sure you know to use your new HubSpot system, at your pace.
  • Digital and inbound marketing programs for rapid growth - Make the most out of your HubSpot account with our digital marketing and/or inbound marketing services.

Related Content: When to DIY or Hire an Agency for HubSpot Implementation

Learn More About HubSpot

Talk to a HubSpot expert - no fee, no strings attached. Get your questions answered. Someone from our team will reach out to you.