Need Help Choosing Website Style for Cake Business Migration to HubSpot

[DBar3]

Hi HubSpot Community,

I have a cake website currently built on WordPress, but I’m planning to migrate it to HubSpot. Right now, the site looks more like an eCommerce store with direct product listings. However, I realize that before customers make a purchase, they need to be educated about cake flavors, colors, designs, and customization options.

I’m wondering if I should switch to a service-style page that focuses more on educating customers about our offerings, showcasing design inspirations, and guiding them through the customization process before leading them to place an order.

Would this approach work better in HubSpot? Should I still keep some eCommerce elements or shift fully to a service-based design? I’d appreciate any suggestions or examples from anyone who has faced a similar decision.

Thanks in advance!

[Anton · Accepted solution]

Hey @DBar3, 

You got the right idea/approach! 👍

In the HubSpot/marketing world the technical term for this is "lead-nurturing"(Might help you learn more about this).

In my opinion, a service-style page always makes a lot of sense, since you provide knowledge and might get a lot of benefits out of it. Better SEO, positioning your business as a well known "Knowledge resource" in your area, increase word-of-mouth advertising... Also you shouldn't think of "Option A" or "Option B". You can(and should) do both to get the most of it. Provide info pages and some eCom features.

In terms of website - there are several ways how you can get the desired result. 

If you get some sort of Starter tier package, you could build "info" pages for all the informative and "learning" topics and then use the blog function with a custom blog template to build your cake "library" with some ordering functionality, utilizing the products object. 

With a Professional tier package, there are a ton more options which will make your life way easier. For instance you'll get membership areas, which allow you to create real membership pages like "Your account", "your orders" with some help of a developer if you want something special... You could create a whole ecom area on your page. Also you'd get HubDB(Marketing and CMS pro) which would allow you to create custom pages and manage content somewhat easier than the blog function. HubDB can also be used for managing global content - think of FAQs...

An Enterprise tier package will give you everything HubSpot has to offer and there are almost endless things you can do. For instance you get serverless functions which allow you to create your own custom functions that otherwise would require some sort of server like AWS/firebase... Or custom objects. Super powerful tool that allows you to create and manage own objects(like the default "contacts", "companies", "quotes"...)
Not needed for starting out, but if you want to really want to go 1000% in, think about it. 

In terms of page creation and user-experience(you) - there a plently of good themes in the marketplace.

From my experience a lot of free themes are based on the boilerplate which is not a bad thing but it all comes down how much effort the theme provider has put in.

Paid themes, especially the "big" ones can be somewhat of a double side sword. They give you a ton of options and are very well developed but they might come with a lot of code that you won't use and therefor might have an impact on your tech. SEO(if you want to get the best out). 

The last option you can think about is to hire a theme developer who will create a completely custom theme only for you. As a theme developer myself, I'd say this might be the best option most times but it will be more expensive than a paid theme from the marketplace. 

In the end, it all comes down to what you're looking for and most importantly: You can always switch in the future. This means: You can start super simple with a Starter tier and a free theme and once you grow, you can upgrade to Professional, a paid/custom theme... The only important thing to keep in mind is: Themes might not be compatible with each other. So if you decide to switch the theme at a later point it's def. possible but it might require some time to switch and might not be "plug-and-play". This is because a lot of themes have so called "theme-modules" that are developed specifically for it. Switching the theme at a later point might make those theme-modules unusable. 

hope this helps

best, 

Anton

[Jaycee_Lewis]

Hey @DBar3 👋 Welcome to our community! Thank you for your thoughtful post. I have a few questions to help give our community members more details.

• What's your typical customer journey like? 
  • Do most of your customers already know what they want? 
  • Or do they need guidance on designs and flavors before deciding?
• What are your main goals for the site redesign? 
  • To reduce back and forth communications?
  • Increase custom cake orders?
  • Better showcase your portfolio?
  • Something else?
• What HubSpot features are you already using? Chat, email marketing, or forms, for example?

Thank you very much for the additional details! — Jaycee

[DBar3]

Hi @jaycee,

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Customers need help choosing cake designs, flavors, and custom options before ordering. I want the new site to showcase cakes better, reduce back-and-forth inquiries, and simplify custom ordering.

We’re not using any HubSpot features yet but plan to add chat, email marketing, and forms after migrating. Would a service-style site focused on education and customization work well for my site?

Appreciate your help!

[Jaycee_Lewis]

Thanks for the details @DBar3 😊 Hey @Kevin-C @elizheleva @Anton do you have any feedback or suggestions for @DBar3?

Thank you very much for taking a look! — Jaycee