Unlocking Digital Success: Echidna Partners with HubSpot to Create a Best-in-Class Experience for Specified Technologies, Inc.
What does success look like for a client partnering with Echidna on a HubSpot implementation?
Written by: Michael Braun, Echidna CXO
As a leader in experience strategy and user experience design, I’m frequently asked by our incoming clients about what success entails. And most of the time, each client expresses their current status as a company that feels woefully behind in their digital ecosystem and customer experience efforts. Often, the client will want to discuss end-game or relaunch results as success metrics, but initial success often hinges on key aspects of the client’s approach & preparedness for the project itself:
- Ensuring key stakeholder buy-in
- Establishing a point of contact for the business, marketing/design, and technology teams
- Ensuring the client’s comprehensive understanding of the new tool(s) and their capabilities
- Establishing a realistic view of the day-to-day activities and roles that the business will need to participate in
- Identifying available self-service capabilities for the business
- Understanding of the level of participation needed to set up the system for success at the required detailed level
All in all, we aim to integrate a system that seamlessly blends with our client’s current processes while maximizing self-service capabilities and value for each contributing role. HubSpot has served as the foundational platform for both Echidna and our clients.
A great example of this is our recent launch of Specified Technologies (STI), an industry leader in developing fire stop solutions for various applications and environments.
Given Hubspot’s robust capabilities, we correlated our discovery & elaboration results to ensure STI’s utilization of the platform. We considered several key questions:
- How can we create connections to ensure that the digital experience guides users into the lead flow?
- Which internal systems can be integrated with the new platform?
- What routine maintenance tasks from the business, marketing, and content teams can be self-serviced to reduce the impact and effort on the technology and development teams?
- How can we automate product and solution updates to be ingested into the shop, browse, customer support and resource components of the experience without requiring IT development?
- Which mobility functions require a unique device-specific experience?
- What levers and usage analytics information within the online sessions would point us to tangible leads in the funnel?
By addressing these questions, we aimed to streamline (and mimic) STI processes and enhance their user’s digital engagement.
What did STI’s Hubspot Implementation project look like?
Pre-Sales Stage
We aim to understand the core business needs, issues, and opportunities, and to outline the expected rhythm and level of effort from the business throughout the project. Our pre-sales engineers and leadership collaborate extensively with the client’s key stakeholders to evaluate requirements, identify gaps in technology and marketing processes, and highlight potential opportunities.
We often offer Site Audits (covering UX Heuristics, Technology & Infrastructure, SEO/Digital Marketing) to delve deeper into potentials. UX Heuristics have shown to provide a 4-7x return on investment.
Additionally, we encourage clients to allow us to facilitate contextual inquiry interviews, enabling us to engage with site users (internal and external) in their day-to-day interactions with both the client and the digital tools. The amount of information and context derived from these sessions is incredible - learn more.
Specified Technologies was eager to provide their initial needs gaps in the current experience and workflow; and we were able to provide deep insights into how the platform could integrate or solve the needs. A curious client is the best client! Along the way, we challenged STI to consider methods to improve user self-service (product and solution resources & asset retrieval, chat initiators) before ever-busy Sales Engineers were bogged down with mundane solution and product inquiries.
Kickoff & Discovery
We create a comprehensive calendar outlining the timing and topics, ensuring all relevant parties understand the commitment required for success. Our attention to detail in defining deliverable requirements significantly reduces the occurrence of delays and overages often experienced with other partners. By determining the templates to be utilized by the business teams, we ensure the maximization of HubSpot’s capabilities.
With STI, we had a great forum of participating technical and business stakeholders. While adhering to pre-planned topics, we were also able to seamlessly shift gears and provide qualitative advantages or anecdotal insights without pressure, as well as set aside capabilities to be added to future scope. Having stakeholders and technologists who understood their current processes, as well as having business leadership that could speak to future intentions, provided an efficient project routine.
Elaboration, Design & Construction
We break our project into design and development sprints, ensuring that our client stakeholders have a clear understanding of what is being delivered piece by piece. This approach minimizes surprises days before the launch.
STI quickly adapted to reviewing and commenting on the site map, visual strategy guide, and individual page designs provided via Figma, as well as approving user stories via Jira. By week 5 of the project, the STI team already had a comprehensive vision to share and coalesce on the design, tooling & navigation. As well, they were prepped on the core content templates at their disposal for post-launch additions. With a predetermined emphasis on intelligent search and product comparison, we developed a spec and facet-based tool in addition to typical shop & browse functions, all aimed at providing users with for self-service learning and initiating contact. Our project was organized into 3-week sprints, allowing STI to expeditiously review the developed pages to ensure pixel-perfect development.
Go-Live
After completing HubSpot training, user acceptance testing, and SEO and technical preparations for merging two STI URLs, the relaunch of the experience proceeded smoothly. 24/7 launch monitoring provided assurance to STI that we were prepared to address any issues that could arise.
“Our user acquisition via direct and organic search is up by over 76% and 27%, respectively, in the 30 days post-go-live. Additionally, we have observed a decrease in basic product questions and an increase in product page activity as customers find what they need without having to contact one of our Support Engineers.”
- Justin Pine, Senior Manager, Software & Services at STI
We eagerly anticipate monitoring site usage and activity to ensure maximum engagement from both new and current customers. We also encourage our clients to inform us about their post-launch workflow experiences, as we are constantly seeking ways to ensure that HubSpot's capabilities are fully utilized, both in terms of content creation and customer relationship management. With a comprehensive understanding of their business, processes, and roadmap, our next step is to continue innovating with mobile apps, internal customer tools, and more. The sky is the limit!
“Our experience with the Echidna team has been very positive. The whole team felt invested in our project and that our success was theirs. It was refreshing to work with such an engaged team that not only did what we asked but went above and beyond with other recommendations or suggestions on fixes that we had not considered. Their contributions and outside perspective enriched the user experience, and that attention to detail has shown through in the increased customer engagement and positive reception of the final site.”
- Justin Pine, Senior Manager, Software & Services at STI