How HubSpot Manages a Giant Website With a Tiny Team
Imagine this: Your website has nearly one million pages spanning multiple languages and domains. Thousands of customers and leads rely on it daily to learn about your brand and products. And to manage it all, you have a team of…
Just 17 people.
That‘s the reality for HubSpot, the leading inbound marketing, sales and service platform. Despite being a large, publicly-traded company with over 120,000 customers in more than 120 countries, HubSpot‘s core website is managed by a lean global web strategy team.
So how do they do it? What‘s the secret sauce that allows this small group to punch massively above their weight and keep a huge website running smoothly?
As HubSpot‘s Global Web Strategy Director, it‘s my job to oversee this scrappy team and keep our website growing – without growing headcount. Through plenty of trial and error, we‘ve developed a strategic, scalable approach to website management that empowers our whole company while still maintaining a cohesive user experience.
Here‘s an inside look at how HubSpot‘s web team operates and the principles you can adopt to achieve big website results with a small team of your own.
Building a Lean, Mighty Web Team
Great web experiences start with great web teams. But building a high-performing team doesn‘t necessarily mean hiring dozens of people. At HubSpot, we‘ve intentionally kept our core web team small and nimble.
Our 17-person team breaks down into a few key functions:
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| Developers | Build and maintain our site‘s technical foundation, architecture, and functionality |
| Designers | Create compelling, user-centric, and on-brand web experiences |
| Optimization Managers | Analyze web data and run experiments to improve key metrics |
| Project Managers | Oversee timelines, resources, and stakeholder coordination for web initiatives |
| Content Strategists | Ensure our web content is impactful, SEO-friendly, and aligned with customer needs |
Rather than having rigid roles, our team members often wear multiple hats and collaborate across functions. A designer might weigh in on content, while a developer may suggest an optimization idea. This cross-functionality helps us stay aligned and bring diverse perspectives to every project.
Just as important as the roles themselves is the culture and dynamic of the team. We hire people who are proactive, solutions-oriented, and unafraid to take smart risks. Intellectual curiosity, humility, and strong communication skills are non-negotiables.
By keeping the team lean, we can invest in top talent and keep decision-making and execution nimble. Each team member has true ownership and is empowered to think strategically about their piece of the website puzzle.
Leveraging the Right Web Tech Stack
Of course, our small team would never be able to manage HubSpot‘s massive site without the right tools and technology in place. Our tech stack is designed to maximize efficiency and make it easy for the whole company to contribute to the site.
At the center is our own content management system (CMS), CMS Hub. The CMS provides a flexible yet governed environment for creating and updating web pages without extensive coding knowledge. This allows our dev team to focus on higher-level technical priorities.
Some of the key tools we use alongside the CMS include:
- HubSpot Marketing Hub for analytics, reporting, SEO, and conversion optimization
- Figma for interface design and collaboration
- Google Optimize for A/B testing and personalization
- Ahrefs and SEMrush for keyword research and SEO insights
- Hotjar for user feedback and behavior analysis
By using our own platform for the majority of our website needs, we‘re able to consolidate tools and take advantage of seamless integrations. We can easily pass data between systems, automate tasks, and keep everyone working from a "single source of truth."
Where there are gaps, we look for best-in-class integrations to extend our site‘s functionality (like our multilingual plugin for translations). But in general, relying heavily on the HubSpot platform allows us to work smarter, not harder.
Implementing a Scalable Web Management Approach
So how does our small team keep tabs on a million web pages without getting overwhelmed – or slowing down the rest of the company? We use a scalable governance model and a modular design approach to balance brand consistency and team flexibility.
Rather than acting as the sole gatekeepers for every piece of the site, our web team operates in tiers:
| Tier | Scope | Web Team Involvement |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Site-wide elements (navigation, footer, overall design, etc.) | Heavy involvement to ensure consistency |
| 2 | High-priority pages (homepage, pricing, login, etc.) | Collaborative ownership between web team and key stakeholders |
| 3 | Lower-priority and one-off pages | Consulting and enablement, but stakeholders own |
We give other teams direct access to create and update Tier 3 pages using a library of flexible modules and templates. This allows them to move quickly while still maintaining brand standards and technical best practices.
To further systematize our web management, we developed:
- Detailed documentation and training on using modules, templates, and the CMS
- Clear workflows and SLAs for things like publishing, editing, and bug fixes
- Regular web office hours and check-ins to keep a pulse on stakeholder needs
This approach empowers teams to make the website their own while giving our core team space to focus on strategic optimizations and initiatives. It‘s a constant balancing act, but one that gets easier with every iteration.
Driving with Data and Strategic KPIs
At the foundation of our web strategy is an obsession with data and delivering real business value. We‘re relentlessly focused on tracking, analyzing, and optimizing the metrics that matter most to HubSpot‘s growth.
The #1 metric we look at is organic traffic, since it‘s most directly impacted by the web team‘s work (as opposed to metrics like revenue that have many other influencing factors). We use organic traffic as a top-line indicator of the website‘s discoverability, authority, and relevance to our target customers.
From there, we look at more granular engagement and conversion metrics like:
- Bounce rate
- Time on page
- Conversion rate
- Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
- Sales qualified leads (SQLs)
We set clear goals for each metric and track progress using built-in dashboards and reports in Marketing Hub. The web team meets weekly to surface insights and identify opportunities to improve the metrics through new content, design tweaks, technical fixes, and more.
Importantly, our optimization efforts are guided by an understanding of the entire customer journey. We look at how each website touchpoint fits into the broader narrative arc and focus on the highest-leverage points, like key decision-making pages.
By leading with data and connecting our work directly to HubSpot‘s strategic goals, we can clearly show the value of our website efforts and make smart choices about where to invest our limited time and resources.
Optimizing and Iterating Over Time
Perhaps the biggest key to our success is adopting a mindset of continuous improvement. Rather than tackling website updates in one-off projects or massive redesigns every few years, we‘re constantly making incremental enhancements and running experiments to keep the site fresh.
This approach starts with a robust annual planning process. Each year, we meet with stakeholders across the company to understand their upcoming needs and wishlist items for the site. We also come with our own ideas based on site performance data and UX research.
From there, we ruthlessly prioritize initiatives against our web team mission: Make HubSpot‘s website the #1 destination for growing organizations to get inspired, get educated, and get growing.
We typically end up with a manageable mix of growth-oriented "big bets" and foundational "table stakes" in our project roadmap. And importantly, we leave bandwidth for the inevitable fire drills and opportunistic requests that will come up.
But the annual plan is just a starting point. We review and adapt our priorities quarterly (sometimes even monthly) based on new data and changes to the business. By staying goal-oriented yet agile, we‘re able to balance long-term improvements with quick wins.
We also build in time for experimentation. Whether it‘s A/B testing a new landing page design, piloting a chatbot, or trying out a new SEO tactic, we‘re always looking for ways to push the envelope and unlock new growth.
This test-and-learn mentality keeps us from getting too comfortable or stuck in our ways. And while not every experiment is a rousing success, each one teaches us something that makes our next effort even stronger.
Conclusion
Managing a sprawling website with a small team is no easy feat. But HubSpot‘s scrappy approach shows that it‘s possible to drive outsized results with the right strategies, structures, and mindset in place.
For other web teams looking to do more with less, the key lessons from HubSpot‘s journey are:
- Hire curious, proactive, "T-shaped" team members who can collaborate cross-functionally
- Choose a tech stack that centralizes and streamlines web management
- Create a tiered governance model that empowers distributed teams while maintaining brand consistency
- Focus web initiatives around clear, measurable goals that ladder up to business objectives
- Adopt a continuous improvement mindset through annual/quarterly planning and ongoing experimentation
Of course, what works for HubSpot won‘t work for everyone. The right approach for your team depends on your unique business needs, customer expectations, and organizational complexities.
But by ruthlessly prioritizing, leaning on the right tools, and keeping a laser focus on doing what‘s best for the customer, even the leanest web teams can create outsize business impact.
The key is to start small, iterate often, and always be asking: How can we make this experience just a little bit better for our audience? Incremental improvements compound over time into a website that punches way above its headcount.
