Episode 44 - 3 Shifts in Web with Luke Summerfield

Companies have to invest in digital experiences now when physical experiences are off the table. You need an agile website, especially in times of crisis, to make rapid changes. We talk with HubSpot’s Luke Summerfield about the paradigm shift in the web industry and what to look for in a website CMS your business (and website) can respond quickly.

3 SHIFTS IN THE WEB INDUSTRY

The paradigm shift in web is not a new story. We’ve seen this same story play out in the world of software.

Once upon a time, CD-Rom was the standard. 2-yr cycles of releases, think Windows 95, 98, etc.

Behind the scenes, there was a shift in culture, process & tech in the software industry as a whole. They shifted from massive CD releases every couple years to a SaaS model we see today where the product is always updating and improving.

This is a good case study that illustrates what we’re seeing in the web industry.

CULTURE

How does a company think about the website?

Old culture: “Business expense” - a necessary evil, static brochure type of website, what looks pretty, what does CEO want

New culture: Growth investment - invest time and energy into their website, it’s a product and they think about it as a business product, free product but also paid - subscriptions, academy, training. Using data instead of guesses or what the boss wants to see.

Ways to encourage this culture shift internally within your company

PROCESS

How to accomplish it?

Old process: months-long projects, set and forget, mimics CD-Rom days, hope it is effective in the end.

New process: customer-focused strategy, empathetic of the world of our customers, we know it’s not perfect but we have to get it out there to see people interact with it and get data from that to make improvements.

We took all of these concepts and repackaged into a process called growth-driven design at HubSpot, launched in 2015.

Shifting format of how you get work done. From wireframing and client/agency "tag" to workshops.

Wireframing:traditionally spend days wireframing all the pages and client would review, back and forth during review stage. Days/weeks spent in sign off during wireframing.

Workshops: finding ways to fit in workshop formats, everyone in a room for ½ day and the top 5 pages are signed off on at the end of the day. Saves so much time and gets to better end product. Number of places you can insert these workshops into the web design process.

TECHNOLOGY

Shift in culture & process should inform how we think about technology

Technology invisible quote (LOVE)

Traditional CMS has been all wrong for this shift, clunky, hard to manage, pulls attention away from thinking about customer, security is an afterthought and always updating, time spent maintaining. Gatekeepers are needed - IT, Dev. Slows everything down and they’re focused on the wrong things.

“One size fits none” - Lack of personalization

ROI is fuzzy

HUBSPOT, A MODERN CMS

• SaaS-based system solves maintenance issues
• Empowers marketing to get work done fast
• Free dev’s time up to work on the next big problem to solve w/ tech, not updating fonts and colors
• Personalization, prove ROI
• These are the criteria in the modern CMS world
• All of this came together with GDD and CMS Hub

CMS Hub Pro

• Experience for the marketer and the dev
• 1-size-fits-both Design Manager that dev/marketer could both use, too dumbed down for devs
• 2 experiences now for Dev and Marketers to give them what they need
• Dev tool? - devs can geek out with the tech/code, set up guardrails
• Themes - package of assets that let Marketers play with all the colors/fonts/buttons visual no coding/css required. Drag-n-drop editing.
• These work hand-in-hand.

CMS Hub Enterprise

• Build powerful and personalized web apps on top of the website
• LMS, Calculators, Memberships
• Serverless functions - devs can store apps directlky in the CMS, don’t have to go out to AWS, baked in, connect into the list/email tools that makes it easy for marketers to use

What does it mean for a website to be agile?

How to reframe your boss’s expectations about a website redesign?

What should marketers look for in a website CMS?