Today, we’re discussing website design and dissecting the critical design components that ensure we deliver the most effective, functional and beautiful websites possible to our B2B customers. We’ve distilled this methodology down into eight simple principles.
This is our list of non-negotiables; every website we design ticks these boxes.
HubSpot website design guru Max Allen, more officially known as Aamplify’s Director of Product, is on deck with an insightful Q&A about how these design fundamentals translate into our award-winning HubSpot websites. So, without further delay, over to Max!
A: “The key here is alignment with your goals, which ultimately positively impacts your business. So, essentially, we look at your business goals, business strategy, marketing goals, and brand strategy but also consider the future purpose of your website. We want to make sure that we can build a website that will be fit for purpose as your business matures. We know you've got a strategy for your business, but we understand that that might change over the next six months or a year.”
A: “We craft websites that cater to an audience's unique needs, pain points, and preferences. We understand that audiences are value-orientated and seek detailed information and solutions to specific challenges. So, we like to design websites with this in mind, paired with best-practice user experiences.
“Things like making sure that the navigation is intuitive, that there's clear messaging, and that resources are easily accessible and catered to the user’s needs. This content must speak to audiences at different stages throughout the decision-making process.
“So whether that's educational content, use cases, or social proof validating credibility, we’ll structure the website around those elements depending on what the customer journey looks like.”
A: “We build user-friendly websites from an interfacing point of view—what the visitor of the website will experience—but we also build them to be user-friendly for the people who are actually going to be optimising and building out the website content.
“Utilising HubSpot’s CMS and the tools available there, we build everything to be really user-friendly. It's easy for our clients to update and maintain their websites moving forward without touching a line of code and often without using a developer.”
A: “HubSpot has a tool called HubDB, essentially a centralised database in the back end of HubSpot. It looks like an Excel spreadsheet and enables you to store and manage information and have that information flow through to different modules throughout the website.
“A typical use case for this might be a list of customer stories. You would grab that information from the list, transfer it to HubDB, and have it flow into a resource hub on your website that houses all those customer stories. You might have an image, a title, a link to the case study, or maybe even a video. You can have all that information in the HubDB list and then easily pull it through to the customer listing page.
“HubDB also serves as a central source of truth for all your resources. If you update that content source, it will automatically update across the entire website. You don't have to go through a manic process of updating the same module in tens of different places throughout the website because it’s in one central location.”
A: “They go hand in hand, really. The other cool thing about using HubDB is that you can also tag that information. You could tag a location or a specific service or product. Therefore, you can start seeing how you can deliver more relevant information based on where each user is on the website.
“So if you were on a specific product or service page, for example, you could only show quotes from clients using that specific service or product. You can start imagining various types of applications. Thinking about educational content, you can start serving up different pieces of information with these tags, depending on where people are on the website or their specific pain points. But as always, it comes down to how good your data is to get the maximum leverage out of the HubSpot CMS.”
A: “With every website, we build a suite of modules, and each can be configured in multiple ways. Whether it's changing around the orientation or updating the colours, many different optimisations can be made to the overall look and feel of the website.
“That being said, we design things to sit within a specific design system. So, although you can make a lot of tweaks and changes, you’ll be locked into a design system that you can't paint too far outside of. I'm very keen on empowering marketing teams to create beautiful-looking digital experiences by themselves, so we’re giving them the tools to do that.
“The other level to this customisable point is the need for optimisations within B2B marketing. Whether it's leveraging analytics and tools like that, conducting A/B testing, or swapping around the layouts and doing various tests, all of these modules allow you to create different experiences. You can start optimising, testing, and continually improve your website's performance.
“Again, we work to empower teams to do this internally without the need for designers or developers.”
Ready to future-proof your website and set up your B2B business for success?
Get in touch with Max and the Aamplify HubSpot experts here.
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