HubSpot CMS Migration: An Easy 4-Step Guide

Migrating your website to HubSpot CMS can transform how you manage your digital presence.

Unlike its competitors, Hubspot's user-friendly interface, robust integration capabilities, and extensive customisation options make it an ideal platform for businesses aiming to enhance their website's performance and functionality.

Migrating to this CMS enables you to consolidate your marketing tools and data whilst providing a better user experience for your visitors.

Our 4-step guide will walk you through the essential steps to ensure a smooth migration process, discuss various approaches you can take to migrate to HubSpot CMS and highlight the key benefits of doing so.

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How to Migrate Your Website to HubSpot

In order to migrate your website from any CMS into HubSpot, you will need to:

• Audit your website
• Define the Design Elements you want to Carry Over
• Break Sections of your Pages into Modules
• Redevelop and Implement

1. Audit Your Website

Before diving into the migration process, take stock of your entire sitemap and website metrics.

This crucial step will enable you to answer the following questions:

• What pages can you get rid of?
• Which pages don’t contribute to a seamless user journey?
• What pages are essential for guiding buyers through their buying decisions?

This stage of the process, while not always imperative, is crucial if your website requires a thorough clean-up.

By auditing your site, you gain a clear plan and sitemap that will serve as a foundation for effective reporting and monitoring of metrics like conversion rates and traffic.

A cluttered website with redundant or irrelevant pages can make reporting unnecessarily complex and create challenges in maintaining the site effectively.

Another thing to consider at this step is user journey mapping. This allows you to identify essential pages that support the buyer’s journey and discover high-engagement pages.

To create an effective user journey, you need to begin with detailed research on your typical customer or buyer persona.

This includes understanding their goals, motivations, challenges, and pain points, as well as building a profile of their overall character. The more comprehensive your insights, the better equipped you will be to tailor your website to meet their needs.

Once your research is complete, map out the user journey as a series of logical steps leading to an outcome. At each stage, consider the user’s context, progression, functionality, and emotional responses.

For instance, think about where users are accessing your site, what devices they are using, and what external factors might influence their behaviour. Ensure that every step facilitates progression with clear CTAs and intuitive functionality, while also evoking positive emotions to drive engagement.

There's no one template for conducting and displaying user journeys. It’s for your personal business use, so as long as it communicates your ideas well, any way you want to present it is fine.

Pages that do not meet these criteria should be considered for removal, ensuring your website is both streamlined and purposeful for its intended audience.

2. Define Page Elements to Carry Over

Decide which design elements and features should transition to the new CMS. This step balances aesthetics, functionality, and user experience.

You should consider:

• Identifying user-friendly graphical elements that enhance navigation and engagement
• Highlighting outdated or frustrating design aspects to eliminate.
• Ensuring alignment with your brand identity and messaging.

This may depend on how much your brand has evolved or simply a feeling that your website is no longer on-trend or aligned with current best practices.

However, you can make informed and quantitative decisions about user experience by leveraging tools like HotJar. HotJar allows you to assess critical aspects of your site, such as identifying visitor drop-off points, analysing scrolling behaviours and interaction patterns, and uncovering areas where users may experience frustration or confusion.

If you’re migrating directly through HubSpot’s service, note that your existing design will be migrated like-for-like.

If there are aspects of your existing site you would like to change before migrating, consider making changes to the design of your website within your existing CMS before beginning the migration process.

3. Break Sections of your Pages into Modules

HubSpot CMS employs a modular structure, dividing content into sections for streamlined editing and greater flexibility.

Breaking down your website into these modules involves analysing each page’s design and content layout to ensure it aligns with HubSpot’s modular framework.

Each section of your site—whether it’s a header, body, or footer—should be thought of as a standalone module that can be reused and customised.

Below is an example from our home page. Each section on each page has been split into an individual module, which gives the page structure.

This structure not only simplifies updates but also enhances consistency across your site. By breaking your design into individual modules, you’ll gain greater control over content editing, improve adaptability for future changes, and reduce the technical barriers often associated with traditional CMS systems.

A way to keep on top of all the modules that will be being created is to utilise a naming convention. In the backend of our website, every module is numbered, enabling easy access within the drag-and-drop editor and removing ambiguity with the naming of the modules.

4. Redevelopment and Implementation

This section, as you can imagine, is fairly self-explanatory.

The technical implementation of HubSpot CMS involves creating and coding modules in HubSpot’s Design Manager. This process includes adapting your modules for HubL, HubSpot’s markup language, for:

• Front-end customisation.
• Drag-and-drop functionality.
• Easy content updates.

The implementation of these modules builds a library of reusable templates and sections to speed up future development for website and landing pages.

Effective redevelopment ensures that your website not only migrates successfully but also takes full advantage of HubSpot CMS’s flexibility and ease of use for future content.

All of this is good, but how do you approach it properly? What are your options?

3 Approaches to Tackling a HubSpot CMS Migration

Approach 1. DIY Migration

This method requires using internal resources, such as developers, copywriters, and designers, to migrate your website.

Advantages of a DIY Migration

• Control - Insourcing all the work allows you to retain complete control over your migration. You can work alongside your internal team to ensure the migration is completed to your specific requirements.
• Cost - Ignoring the costs accrued in hiring the personnel in the first place, you spend less of your budget outsourcing to external agencies/vendors. The only cost is the time it takes to complete the migration.

Disadvantages of a DIY Migration

• Technicalities - HubSpot is an incredibly unique tool. There is a requirement for your team to be trained and specialists in the software to complete the migration and to not run into any technical issues or problems.
• Time Intensive - This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. If you’re not specialist in the software, you will experience time creep with your migration. It also requires an incredible amount of resources to ensure that this is done correctly.

Approach 2: HubSpot’s Direct Migration Service

Another option is using HubSpot directly.

They offer a direct migration service, transferring your website onto their CMS using their internal team.

Advantages of Using HubSpot

• Cost-effective option - If you don’t have the time or resources to migrate internally, but also don’t have a large budget to use an agency, then utilising HubSpot is ideal. It ensures you have experts in the software doing the migration and that you won’t run into any technical difficulties.
• Quick like-for-like migration - Suitable for businesses with minimal customisation needs and that won’t need a complete overhaul of design elements when moving to HubSpot.

Disadvantages of Using HubSpot

• Limited flexibility - Relies on existing themes and design elements from your existing site, which may not align with your goals. As we’ve mentioned throughout, the Hubspot Migration service only creates a like-for-like migration. It doesn’t open the opportunity for a redesign or optimisation of certain features.
• Minimal customisation options for advanced functionality - If you need your modules to have advanced functionality, then you may need to consider a HubSpot Solutions Provider that can enable you to a more bespoke solution. HubSpot will only migrate your modules over, not place any more functionality than needed within.

Approach 3: Partnering with a HubSpot Solutions Provider

If you need a more complex migration and require more design changes, engaging a HubSpot Partner may be more beneficial for you.

Advantages of Using a HubSpot Solutions Provider

• Customised migration - With a partner, your migration doesn’t have to be like-for-like. If you require more customisation throughout, a solutions partner will afford you this luxury. They will allow you the flexibility in design and functionality to align with business goals.
• Training - When being onboarded onto HubSpot, your users probably don’t have a clear understanding of how to use the software. Any solutions provider worth their salt will help train and onboard users so you can use the CMS efficiently.

Disadvantages of Using a HubSpot Solutions Provider

• Cost - HubSpot Solutions Providers will enable you extra flexibility and aftercare for the migration - but this comes at a cost. Using a partner is the most costly of the three approaches due to the depth of service.
• Control - Of course, by outsourcing, you give up some of the control you would otherwise have over your website project.
  
  Importantly, however, you will still be in complete control of how your website looks and functions at the end of the project. It’s also important to note that your migration will be in the hands of experts who use the software day in, and day out.

Migrating to HubSpot CMS with Axon Garside

At Axon Garside, we specialise in seamless HubSpot CMS migrations.

Whether you need a like-for-like transfer or a bespoke redesign, our team ensures your website migration aligns with your business goals.

We also provide ongoing support and training, empowering your team to make the most of HubSpot CMS’s capabilities. Download our Pricing Guide to explore how we can make your HubSpot CMS migration a success.