Designing a website isnt easy, especially if you have limited to no coding experience. Its easy to get lost in the lingo, anchor text here, back link that. Please dont be discouraged, there is light at the end of this hypothetical tunnel into the website design abyss. I started my re-design after only being with my company for less than 3 months. In two months time, I was able to develop a website I am proud of with absolutely NOcoding experience. Below you will find a few of the things I learned while re-designing our company website on HubSpot.
1. Devise a plan and if you deviate, it’s okay!
Having a plan prior to starting the redesign is essential to being successful. Before you start, its a great idea to choose your color scheme, fonts, images and map content. I would highly suggest story boarding your website before starting, so you have a clearer picture of what it is going to look like.
Now that Ive said that, DONT be afraid to deviate from the plan. Some of the best design decisions I made were by scrapping the plan and trying something different. The things I thought were great on paper failed to impress in real-time. So, I scrapped the idea and played with other options until I found what worked. In the end, it only made me a more experienced creator. This process forced me to experiment with alternative ideas that correspondingly shortened my learning curve.
2. Not all templates are created equal.
Take the time to research your options. Know what templates are out there, how they function and who created them. Once youve found THE ONE, thoroughly research the creators. Check out their reviews and look at clients who have used their services in the past. Current and previous clients provide the greatest insight into what working with the template provider is like.
On that note, Im glad I did my research and didnt pull the trigger on the first template I fell in love with. Im positive at this point that I wouldnt have been nearly as happy working with someone else. We chose a template pack from Brand Builder Solutions, a HubSpot Partner and new best friend. I worked almost exclusively with Matt, who from the very beginning was willing to go above and beyond what was required to make sure we were happy.
3. Your time line is suggestive, not concrete.
Dont get hung up on your deadlines. Although they are important, you should put quality before making a deadline. If youre not happy with the way something is rendering, spend more time tweaking it until its perfect. Ask for feedback from colleagues or trusted professional relationships. Your boss may get frustrated that you arent on target timewise, but he or she will be impressed with the quality of the final product.
4. HubSpot support is incredibly responsive and ready to help.
The Technical Support Team at HubSpot is bar none. Every person I spoke with (I called A LOT) was willing to sit on the phone with me for as long as it took to resolve my issues. When asked, they would not only fix the issue I was having, but also teach me how to address the issue should I have it in the future. In the rare occasion the technical support genius wasnt able to fix my issue in our call, they always dug deeper to find the answer and follow-up via email in a timely manner.
5. You don’t need to be a coding genius, but it helps to know HTML and CSS basics.
I have never been formally trained as a coder or web developer, but what I was armed with was very special set of skills and the ability to Google. HubSpot has a super user friendly interface that makes web design easy. However, there may come a point in your design or re-design where youre going to need to make changes to your stylesheet or delete things out of the HTML code. It really isnt a matter of if, but when.
There were several times after consulting with Technical support or Matt at Brand Builder Solutions, that I needed to dig in to the stylesheet a bit and make changes. Oftentimes, I merely needed to do a simple Google search to find directions and tips on working with code. I guess you can say Google helped make my website re-design a success. Well that and a pretty amazing team of HubSpot technical support professionals I could bounce ideas off of.
All-in-all, my re-design experience on HubSpot was a positive one. I had my fair share of frustrations, but those frustrations paled in comparison to the amount of support and experience I received.