What the Heck is HubSpot COS Development Anyway?
If you find yourself asking, “What’s a HubSpot? Can I eat it?” or, “What’s a COS? Do I have it?” then here’s a little primer.
HubSpot is an integrated marketing communications content management platform (CMS). It brings email marketing, email marketing automation, contact list management and website management under one consolidated roof. More recently, it offers a dynamic sales pipeline management system that is also integrated with every aforementioned feature.
If you’re doing that kind of thing—AKA some serious inbound marketing—then HubSpot is definitely for you.
HubSpot is magical because when you’re using it at its full potential, you can track users down the sales pipeline in a very dynamic way. For instance, if you fill out a contact form identifying info points, the entire website has the potential to change around you. This is all to better serve you since your information is now logged. This makes the experience and additional content more relevant.
The HubSpot COS
So that’s HubSpot in a nutshell. The HubSpot Content Optimization System (COS) is the website portion of HubSpot. On the top level, it’s like any CMS you’d recognize—it can have templates built from HTML, JS and CSS to determine content layouts. It allows you to create pages, blog posts and the like within an organized structure. It even generates its own sitemaps and allows fields for page titles, metas and more.
With the HubSpot COS, you can custom design and develop a website from the ground up. This website is then directly integrated with:
- Your contact management system
- Your sales pipeline
- Your marketing automation systems
- Smart Content
The HubSpot COS Wields Smart Content
You know how you’re on Netflix rating and watching shows? Then suddenly the next time you log on you notice a batch of relevant recommendations?
That’s what Smart Content is like. When set up, you can cause significant content fields on a website to change upon form submission. For example, you could leverage a field to have the person’s first name or company appearing in noticeable places.
For the sake of moving someone down the sales funnel, you can also change content offers to be the next several in the pipeline.
It’s pretty slick.
Should You Build a Website on the HubSpot COS?
If you’re leveraging a HubSpot account properly then in short, yes—you should build your website here as well. There is a decent back-and-forth between WordPress and HubSpot for things like embedding contact forms and updating contact info, but you can just about only get Smart Content with the COS.
But really, HubSpot was built for full automation. If you’re on board, and inbound has been proven to effect your bottom line, you might as well go all in to get the full effects.
Associated Costs
If you were to take an exact same website and say, “WordPress” or “HubSpot COS” the prices would be different. Given its younger nature, and a smaller pool of those trained to do it, developing on the HubSpot COS is more expensive than WordPress.
Looking to Develop on the HubSpot COS?
If you’re looking to develop on the HubSpot COS, we’d be happy to lend an ear to see if we’re right for your next project. Get in touch if you fancy a chat and see if we can make magic happen.