CMS Hub UX Benchmarking Initiative

Project Overview

HubSpot CMS Hub is a cloud-based content management system designed for marketers and developers to build, manage, and optimize websites without coding expertise. It offers drag-and-drop editing, SEO tools, personalization, and integration with HubSpot’s CRM for a seamless marketing and content experience.

Problem: We wanted to become the #1 CMS in the mid-market. In order to get there, we need a lovable CMS experience across multiple personas.  The question was: how do we know if the CMS is delivering a high quality user experience to our customers? 

Approach:

Conducted persona research to better understand who we were serving.

  • Introduced a UX quality initiative: Previous UX research was ad hoc, qualitative-only, and lacked synthesis across data sources, making insights difficult to act on. There was no organizational alignment on key UX metrics
  • Developed a systematic, repeatable UX measurement process, triangulating qualitative research, analytics, and industry benchmarks. Partnered with product teams to identify critical tasks for Starter and Pro tiers.
  • Conducted 12 unmoderated usability sessions with a SUS survey, then triangulated findings with CSAT, NPS, 30-day activation, and engagement data. Graded tasks as Excellent, OK, or Poor using a composite score from attitudinal and behavioral data.

This approach ensured data-driven decision-making and stronger alignment between UX and business goals.

Outcome:

  • Our research uncovered that non-technical users found the onboarding process overwhelming and often abandoned setup within the first 15 minutes. Our research identified a key friction point: users didn’t understand the relationship between themes, templates, and modules, which led to confusion and frustration. As a result, product and engineering prioritized a new guided onboarding experience with real-time tooltips and a simplified template selection process. In collaboration with the design team, we ran design sprints where the idea of an AI-powered Growth theme came up, was piloted and beta tested. Post-implementation, we saw a 30% increase in successful site setups and a 15% reduction in early churn. This experience reinforced my belief that great UX research isn’t just about gathering insights—it’s about storytelling, influencing stakeholders, and driving measurable business impact.
  • Persona work helped us move forward with the expansion of our CMS product to serve microbusinesses so our CMS Free Tier. She was an MBA intern who is now a Director of Product at HubSpot, driving the company’s freemium and product-led growth strategy across acquisition, adoption, and monetizing.Partnership with the Growth Hub UX research team to dig deeper into the VSB market segment. This cross-collaboration helped us further amplify the voice of the user.