According to Kissmetrics, a marketing technology stack should include at least 23 tools. Some marketers even use more than 31. However, with multiple platforms, marketing efforts and lead tracking can become extremely fragmented. With more than one tool to locate information, it can difficult to measure ongoing marketing performance accurately.
Often, this day-to-day friction leads to an all-in-one solution such as HubSpot. With HubSpot, you can centralize your marketing and sales efforts. If you migrate to HubSpot's CMS (Content Management System), you get even more benefits, such as better reporting, mobile responsive web pages, and increased speed and security.
The decision to migrate to HubSpot may seem like a given, but it's not a fix-all solution. A lot of teams move to the platform to resolve ongoing marketing and website problems. That's why it's crucial to understand whether or not your site is ready for migration.
Planning For A HubSpot Website Migration
A migration to HubSpot can be very beneficial if you already have a few key assets in place. These assets typically include:
- A website that's already performing well
- An ongoing marketing strategy
- Regular content production and distribution
- A strong, unique value proposition statement (UVP)
- Lead and customer data in one place
Without these assets, there's work to do. For example, if you need a new website design, or don't have an inbound marketing strategy, pause the migration plans. Here are additional ways to assess whether or not you're ready for migration.
Step #1: Current Website Performance
The first step in preparing for migration is making sure your website is in the best possible shape. There are a few sure-fire ways to tell that your site needs work and isn't ready to migrate, such as:
- A majority of website visitors are unqualified
- High bounce rate and low conversions
- Leads not responsive to offers and engagement tactics
- Decreased traffic to the site
If you're experiencing these challenges, it's not necessarily a deal-breaker for a migration. You can gain more insight by performing a site audit and asking a few fundamental questions, such as:
- What's your growth rate? Determine your QoQ and YoY trends, in regards to organic traffic, total traffic, leads, MQLs, SQLs, and Opportunities. On the conversion pages that you're not getting a minimum of 10% per quarter, you may need to make some changes.
- How impactful is your messaging? On every page, are you making a promise to our customer? Is that promise clear, compelling, and actionable?
- Why should your customers hire you? To answer this, look at your current customers. Why did those customers choose you, and why do they keep you? Is this information communicated on your website, in testimonials or case studies?
- What are your customer's most significant concerns? Do you talk about all of the concerns a customer could have about your product? Where are those concerns located?
- How does your website support the customer? At every stage of the funnel, how does your site provide support to your customer? What information are you offering them?
- What are your website goals? Again, you can't just make a change (such as a website migration) and expect results. You need to have specific, measurable goals for your website. What are those goals, and how close are you to hitting them with your current site?
- Are you keeping customers? Stats like exit rate, time on page, and pages per visit give an understanding of whether or not you’re engaging customers and moving them forward.
If you're still not sure where you stand, take our Website Health Examination. By answering 12 short questions, you can assess where your site is at, and whether you should consider a redesign or refresh.
Step #2: Current Customer Experience
Before you move to the HubSpot CMS, make sure your current website experience is top-notch. You can assess how well customers are navigating through your site by with our customer journey map exercise. In the process, you'll answer questions about your website, such as:
- How do my visitors turn into leads and customers?
- Which website pages do customers visit in what step of the buyer's journey?
- What actions do my leads need to take to move forward in the buyer's journey?
- What challenges do customers face on my website?
- How could I provide more support to customers at every stage of their journey?
After completing this exercise, you can identify every point of friction for your customer. From there, you can select the pages to update before your migration.
Step #3: Reasons Behind Poor Performance
Without a data-driven approach to why pages are losing traffic or have a high bounce rate, you'll be taking a shot in the dark. There are a few resources we use to identify reasons behind poor website performance.
- Heat Maps and Screen Recordings: These reports tell you how to understand your users. You collect how users are consuming content on particular web pages. We recommend using Hotjar, one of our go-tool tools.
- Google Analytics Stats: How much time are visitors spending on your pages? What's the bounce rate? There's a lot of data to pull from Google analytics to assess possible reasons for poor website page performance.
- Split Testing: When you have enough data to make hypotheses about performance, you can conduct split testing or A/B testing.
With all of the information in hand, you can make high-impact changes to the website pages that need it the most.
Step #4: Your CRM
When choosing to migrate your website, don't forget about your customer data. Will you use a third-party CRM and connect it to HubSpot, or will you use HubSpot's CRM? If you're undergoing a website migration to HubSpot anyway, the CRM is a good choice. The platform is free, tracks customer interactions, and connects to all of your marketing and sales initiatives.
If you set up the HubSpot CRM before you migrate to HubSpot, you can start putting HubSpot to work right away. There are a few steps to set up the CRM, such as:
After setting up the CRM, your entire sales and marketing team can familiarize themselves with the platform before the migration takes place.
Step #5: Bad Links and Bugs
After making necessary improvements to your site and setting up the CRM, there are a few quality checks to conduct before a migration. You can resolve your site speed or broken forms with a switch to HubSpot. However, broken links, bugs, or additional technical issues may still exist after the migration.
When conducting our QC, we use a tool called "Integrity" from Peacock Media. Integrity will scan your website and flag all of your bad links, as well as any other issues.
Making The Final Decision About Website Migration
The choice to migrate to HubSpot comes down to one thing: whether or not your site is ready. Otherwise, you'll waste a lot of time and resources moving a website that won't drive results. The time and energy you invest that unnecessary migration could be used for a website refresh or redesign instead. And to use HubSpot to the fullest potential, you will need an exceptional website.
Then, after the migration, you can take advantage of HubSpot's sales and marketing tools. If you're still unsure whether or not you're ready for a website migration, check out our Game Plan Offer.
As an Inbound Writer for Lean Labs, Melissa writes about high-converting websites and customer-centric marketing. She's an avid traveler, with trips to Iceland, Ukraine, and Portugal under her belt. She currently resides in Wilmington, North Carolina with her dog, Morrie.
