Who should I hire for B2B SaaS HubSpot website design?

A software product is hard to see, so the site has to explain it. Lean Labs' article on B2B SaaS website design advises a clear product message, navigation people can use, a layout that works on a phone, a way to measure results and a defined path from first visit to conversion. Those are jobs for a strategist and a writer as much as for a designer.

Suppose you sell scheduling software to outpatient clinics. An operations manager finds you through a search, reads the homepage and wants to know what the product does, whether it connects to the clinic's records system and what it costs. Assume the next step you want is a demo request, sent by a form to your CRM for a sales rep to pick up.

That path sets the brief. The homepage needs a message a clinic manager understands in a few seconds, which is a writing job. The integrations and pricing pages have to be designed, and the demo form has to be built so the request reaches the right rep with the facts sales needs. The firm you hire should be able to show each of those in a site it has already launched.

Lean Labs puts the message and the design first. Its article on the three stages of growth-driven design describes a launchpad of the three to eight pages that matter most to the buyer's decision, built in messaging, design and development sprints. The design sprint is the Design Blueprint, which redesigns one important page to set the visual direction for the rest. That offer is worth a conversation if the clinic software company's main problem is that visitors don't understand the product. Ask whether the blueprint fee is counted inside the build range, and give the firm your full page count if you need more than a launchpad.

SmartBug Media describes a wider set of services. Its web work includes moving content to HubSpot, WordPress or Shopify, along with design and development, integrations and maintenance. That range is relevant if the website is one part of a larger project, such as a move from another CRM that also has to connect to your product data. Ask it for a price and a timeline for your scope.

Neither description is a promise that every task is included in one price. A published scope shows what a firm offers, and only your agreement says what it will do for you. We compare these firms and a third in SmartBug, New Breed, or Lean Labs for a HubSpot website.

An agency's portfolio shows what the firm has done. Your project will be done by a few specific people. Ask who would write, design and develop your site, and ask to see a SaaS site those people worked on. Then walk through it as the clinic manager would. Check whether the homepage says what the product does, whether you can find integrations and pricing, and what happens after you submit the demo form.

Then talk to the client behind that site. Find out who edits the pages now, and whether demo requests arrive in the CRM the way sales wanted. A company like the one in our example will change its pricing page and add integration pages many times, so it needs a site its own marketer can update.

The agreement should name the work that is easy to leave out of a quote. Start with copy. Agree who writes each page before layout begins, since the layout of a product page depends on what the page has to say. The scope should also state how many rounds of review are included.

The same goes for the parts that touch HubSpot. The scope should list the modules to be built, the forms and where their submissions go in the CRM, and any content being moved from the old site. It should also say that you own the theme and the design files when the project ends, and that your team gets trained to edit the site. For the clinic software company, that means the agreement names the integrations page template, the demo form and its routing to sales, and the migration of its existing blog.

Two quotes are comparable once they cover the same list. If one leaves out copywriting or migration, add that work back before you compare prices. We work through the budget in how much a B2B SaaS HubSpot website redesign costs and the planning that comes before the brief in how to plan a HubSpot website redesign.

HubSpot's partner tier is a weak guide to design skill. HubSpot's explanation of partner tiers says a tier combines points for the subscriptions a partner sources, assists and manages with other requirements and training. That measures a partner's HubSpot business. A high-tier firm can still be a poor match for a SaaS site, and a small studio or a freelancer can be a good one if the work it shows you matches yours.

A smaller team makes sense when the brief is narrow, and we compare those options for early-stage companies in who should build a HubSpot CMS website for a startup. If the clinic software company already has its message and its designs, and needs someone to build them as a HubSpot theme, an independent developer can do that job. Hold that developer to the same tests you'd apply to an agency.