A well-structured website is more than just a pretty face. It's about creating a user experience (UX) that not only delights visitors but also drives conversions.
One of the most effective ways to achieve conversions is by properly assembling modules and templates in HubSpot's CMS Hub so you have the right foundation to start with. This article will guide you through the strategy behind this process and provide seven important considerations to keep in mind.
Sections of this page:
7 Smart Considerations for Assembling HubSpot Modules and Templates
Optimizing Modules and Templates for Search Engines and Users
Before we delve into the strategy, let's first understand what modules and templates are. Modules are the building blocks of your website, encompassing various "content" elements such as images, text, sliders, and social sharing features. They provide the flexibility to create unique and engaging content for your website. Templates, on the other hand, are the blueprints of your website, ensuring uniformity across all pages. They provide the structure and layout of your website, making it easier for users to navigate and find the information they're looking for.
Consider this...a website's template or theme design is similar to the foundation of a house, concrete and lumber. How the homeowner finishes the building gives it curb appeal. And, how they furnish it makes it a home. To this point, consider templates to be the foundation, layouts to be the finishings, and content to be the furniture. Once we understand that, we see how themes can be crafted into a cabin or a mansion and that while having many similarities, no two are the same.
The strategy behind assembling modules and templates in HubSpot's CMS Hub revolves around creating a user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and conversion-optimized website. Here are seven considerations to guide you:
1. Customization: HubSpot allows for the development of content modules, providing added functionality beyond HubSpot's core capabilities. This enables you to tailor your website to your specific needs, ensuring that it aligns with your brand and meets your business objectives.
Content modules can include anything from multi-part layouts to interactive or animated features, giving you the freedom to create a unique and engaging user experience.
2. Consistency: Templates allow you to establish a user-friendly and consistent global design across your entire website. This promotes usability and just feels good. Consistency in design not only makes your website look professional but also helps users navigate more easily.
When elements such as buttons, links, and menus look and function the same way across different pages and sections of your site, users quickly learn how to use your site, making their experience enjoyable and efficient.
3. Flexibility: HubSpot's CMS Hub offers page-level reconfiguration of modules to allow content creators to add or remove modules and reorder layouts. You can easily adjust layouts as needed, giving you the freedom to dial in your user's experience. This flexibility is particularly useful when you want to test different layouts to see which one performs better in terms of user engagement and conversions.
4. Integration: HubSpot's CMS seamlessly integrates with their Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub. The multi-hub approach allows you to work in a cohesive digital environment, where all your marketing, sales, and service efforts are aligned and working together. This makes all of your team's efforts more efficient.
5. Global Modules: These are modules that appear on multiple templates throughout the website. Use global modules for elements that need to remain consistent across different pages, such as headers, footers, and navigation menus. This not only saves you time and effort in creating and managing these components, but it also ensures consistency across your site, which is crucial for usability and brand recognition.
6. User Permissions: HubSpot allows you to control who can edit/view content (and more) in the back end of your website. Set permissions to maintain quality and prevent unauthorized changes/access. By setting user permissions, you can ensure that only authorized personnel can make changes to your site, avoiding surprises that could disrupt your site's functionality or design.
7. Testing and Optimization: Always test your website for usability and conversion optimization. HubSpot provides robust testing tools to help you achieve the best results. Regular testing allows you to identify any issues or areas of improvement on your site, ensuring that your site is always performing at its best. It's also important to continuously optimize your site based on the results of your tests. This could involve tweaking your design, adjusting your content, or changing your call-to-actions to improve your conversion rates.
User experience is a crucial aspect of any website. It's about making your website not only functional but also enjoyable for the user. Here's how you can incorporate UX into your HubSpot CMS Hub strategy:
1. Simplicity: Keep it simple smarty. The easier it is for users to navigate your website, the more likely they are to stay and convert. A simple design doesn't mean boring; it means making it easy for users to find what they're looking for without any unnecessary distractions or complications. This can involve things like having a clear and concise menu, using understandable language, and ensuring that your content is easy to read. Comprehension is key to conversions.
2. Responsiveness: Ensure your website looks great on all devices. This is especially important as most people browse the web on their phones first, then move to desktop. A responsive design automatically adjusts your website's layout and content to fit the screen size of the device it's being viewed on, ensuring that your users have a great experience no matter what device they're using.
3. Speed: A slow website can frustrate users and lead them to leave. Make sure your website loads quickly to provide a smooth user experience. This involves optimizing your images and videos, minimizing your code, and using a reliable hosting service. A fast-loading website not only improves user experience but can also improve your search engine rankings (Core Web Vitals), as speed is one of the factors that search engines consider when ranking websites.
4. Accessibility: Make your website accessible to all users, including those with vision disabilities or fine motor impairments. This not only improves UX but also helps you reach a wider audience. Accessibility involves things like providing alt text for images, using clear and readable fonts, and having contrasting visual elements.
5. Personalization: Personalize your website content based on user behaviour (think visitor intent) and preferences. This can significantly enhance UX and increase conversions. Personalization can involve things like showing relevant product recommendations, personalizing your email messages, and supporting the languages you work in.
Having a well-structured and user-friendly website is only half the battle. To truly stand out and reach your audience, you need to ensure your website is optimized for search engines, right down to the module code. This involves adhering to Google's search essentials (formerly Webmaster Guidelines) and implementing both SEO and development best practices into your modules and templates.
Optimizing your modules and templates for search engines can significantly improve your website's SEO, leading to increased organic traffic and higher conversion rates.
Module file naming and file organization are really important. File names should be descriptive and follow a consistent naming pattern, making it easy to identify the module's purpose at a glance. For instance, if you're creating a module for a media/text module that repeats in an alternating pattern, a name like "checkerboard_repeater_module" might be appropriate.
This is not to be confused with file naming that uses dashes, such as a URL or image file name. For example, "image-file-name.jpg" connects three words into a phrase. Should you use underscores, it would join the 3 words into a single word, which is not advised.
A combination of a streamlined file structure and thoughtful file naming convention makes your developer environment efficient and organized. It also facilitates the reuse of various components, serving as the building blocks for future custom work.
Preview text is an essential component of your custom module. It provides a snapshot of the content and helps users understand what they can expect. In HubSpot, the Preview Data column shows options available for editors while adding their content. This feature allows content writers to change the look and feel of a section without having to worry about the code.
User prompts are another critical aspect of content modules. They guide users through the process of interacting with your module. In HubSpot, editable fields are created using HubL so that editors can fill them with their own content. This approach ensures consistency across module instances, providing a cohesive user experience in terms of styling and functionality.
In HubSpot, you can add comments to your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. It's a good practice to add comments at the beginning of each module, function, or complex operation. This helps to segment your code, making it easier to navigate and understand.
Remember, the goal of comments is to improve the readability and maintainability of your code. They should not be used excessively to the point where they clutter your code. Instead, use them strategically to provide valuable insights into your code's functionality.
By optimizing your modules and templates for search engines, you can improve your website's visibility, reach a wider audience, and drive more conversions. Remember, SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular testing and optimization, so always keep up with the latest best practices and Google guidelines.
The approach you take to assembling modules and templates in HubSpot's CMS Hub is a strategic one that can significantly enhance your website's conversion potential. By considering customization, consistency, flexibility, integration, global modules, user permissions, testing, SEO, and user experience, you can create a website that not only looks great but also drives new and repeat customer conversions.
Would you like some help designing your website to convert? Get a head start with Kayak's DropZone Pro Theme for HubSpot CMS. It's a complete system of Templates, Advanced Content Modules, and Page Layouts engineered to extend HubSpot's CMS capabilities and grow your conversions.