Moving to the HubSpot COS? Here's What to Expect

This is a follow-up for anyone who read the posts on planning for a HubSpot COS migration, as well as launching on the new COS. Many HubSpot customers are migrating to the new COS platform. Here are a few words of wisdom from our experiences so far.

Be Flexible

It is important that you consider how your content will work on the new flexible, responsive framework. The COS responsive framework means your content will now scale down and stack to adjust for various screen resolutions. This doesn’t mean all your content will magically become responsive. Make these adjustments when your content is on the COS:

Videos

If you are using the YouTube embed, change the embed code so the “width=100%”. You can edit this via the </> button in your editor.

For Wistia, be sure you check the “use video foam” when embedding the video files. This allows you to leverage Wistia’s custom responsive solution.

For other video players, check out their documentation or ask their support team if the videos do not scale down correctly by default.

Modify the Google maps embeds with “width=100%”.

Other iframes

Check with a developer for each iframe instance. In most cases, you’ll have to work with the source provider to give you the responsive functionality for content in that iframe.

Tables

3 and 4 column tables, using the built-in tools with the CMS, will not work well when scaled down. They will “squish” instead of “stack”. Here’s an example:

Move content out of tables where you can. Alternatively, content put into multiple columns will stack – so edit your template to split columns using the Design Manager.

HTML Emails

This is rare, but if you are embedding HTML emails into your website pages, that content will not be responsive by default. Consider taking this content outside of the email HTML and adding directly to the page.

Headers

Not all header areas will stack in a desirable way, depending on how many links, buttons, icons you are trying to squeeze in the header area. If something doesn`t look right, reach out to a designer and developer to edit these areas.

Lengthy Text

Consider what content is actually useful for your users. Re-write lengthy text.  Just because it stacks, doesn’t mean it is an ideal responsive user experience.

It takes a village

Be prepared to collect a team and collaborate to meet your migration goals. If you are working directly with the HubSpot support team to migrate, you should still identify who should be involved from your team. I speak about this a bit more on the planning post as well. There should be one point person responsible for the migration within your company. They should own:

• Resource list
• Status
• Schedule
• Objectives
• Strategy (especially if you are trying to tackle COS personalization right away)

A special note here, keep in mind you may want to redesign your website and migrate at the same time. Collect outside resources that specialize on the COS like a HubSpot partner.

Learn the platform

This may seem obvious, but to be successful you should learn the platform. This is true even if you work with a HubSpot partner. A couple resources to help:

• Get certified.

• Subscribe to blog updates on the customer blog.

• Check out the designers blog, full of up-to-the-minute updates.

What tips do you have for other HubSpot customers? Feel free to drop a comment, we're eager to learn how everyone is doing. If you need help migrating to the HubSpot COS, click here to chat with someone today.