Blog Redesign for Blog.HubSpot.com
As an enthusiastic partner of HubSpot’s, we at LyntonWeb have built our share of websites and blogs on the HubSpot software. We were therefore particularly thrilled when the HubSpot team tapped us to fully redesign and customize their blog, which was growing in popularity.
HubSpot started blogging before their software was even released to customers. They used their blog to generate inbound traffic, leads, and interest in their software. HubSpot is a great proponent of “eating their own dog food”, and their blog is no exception. As HubSpot was breaking new company records throughout 2009 and 2010, they wanted to push their blog to the limits. Their goals included generating more trial requests, increasing subscriber count, and rising to the top of the AdAge Power 150. LyntonWeb was up to the challenge.
The Solution:
We started by wireframing a completely new architecture to the blog, with clean navigation, streamlined sidebar, and plenty of room for calls to action. We worked through several variations of mockups until we arrived at the final version, shown here.
Once the designs were approved, our development team was presented with the challenge of heavy javascript coding to highly modify the user interface of the blog. Some of the features we built included:
- A custom subscribe module which included subscribe by email and social media follow buttons for RSS subscription, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz
- Custom Call to Action buttons for the end of blog posts, including a custom Call To Action Button Generator for HubSpot blog authors to automatically generate their CTAs (include an image of a CTA button)
- Modified standard blog article listing to display blog post previews with thumbnail image and preview text
- Integration of Google Ad Server for banner ads
Additionally, the top 5 most recent posts were featured on the blog’s home page, and the design featured a user-friendly two-column layout with top navigation and modules on the right side.