Every business needs a good-looking and performing website to ensure its success nowadays. With over 1.2 billion websites out there, there are numerous platforms and options for business owners to choose from. However, at JDR Group, we believe that HubSpot is the frontrunner in website design.
In this episode of the Digital Prosperity podcast, our host Andy Gibbins is joined by Charlotte Thornton, our head of operations and website expert, to discuss all things website, and more specifically, the benefits of building your website in HubSpot.
Google looks at a variety of criteria called core web vitals to assess the efficiency of a website.
Amongst those figures: speed, video content and messaging, technical SEO.
Our head of operations, Charlotte Thornton, said: “One of the key factors of your website, so that’s something you should definitely be looking at and a lot of that comes down to the platform.
“I would also say video content and having clear messaging, as if you think of it, in today’s day and age, everyone is on TikTok, so I would be looking at having a lot of video content on your website so you can get your message across quickly.
“Lastly, one of the biggest factors of a truly performing website is the technical SEO, which no business needs to understand on a deep level, but you should at least be working with a company to help.”
If you would like to discover more about SEO, listen to our podcast episode featuring Daniel Baker, our SEO expert.
The elements listed are fundamental to ensure your website works successfully.
Especially since a nice-looking website is not going to help you generate leads or ensure your business is found on Google. A lot more elements are at play to get you the results you are looking for and to perform the way a website is meant to.
To further help facilitate this process, we recommend using HubSpot to build your website.
Around 43.6% of all websites in the world have been built on WordPress as of 2025. However, as the platform is hosted on a server, websites built on WordPress suffer higher security issues.
According to our head of operations, those websites are not as good for SEO and are also difficult to edit.
Charlotte said: “Many people have challenges with editing; you have to have some code knowledge and functionality as well.
“I would say if you are on WordPress, that would be a big reason to look at changing your website in 2025.”
Despite WordPress being one of the biggest platforms out there for building websites, with technology evolving, most of those websites have been built and designed to look good, rather than for conversion and lead generation.
At JDR, our website is built in HubSpot, and we have been building HubSpot websites for the past three years and consider this platform to be our frontrunner.
One of the main benefits of using this platform is editability. HubSpot websites are drag and drop, making it the perfect option for anyone, whether they are technical or not, to edit the website.
Miss Thornton said: “We work with a lot of businesses where their marketing teams have so many ideas and things they want to do to the website, but they can’t edit it, and they have to go through developers or the hosting company, which means they can’t do as much as they want to with their marketing.
“At the moment, I am working with a business, and we are setting up the website with HubSpot, and her eyes just lit up when we showed her how you can edit it.
“She was like, I have so many ideas, and now I can do it.”
Another important benefit business owners would get from building their website in HubSpot is the fact that it is cloud-based. This makes your website secure, which is a key factor for Google.
HubSpot website also integrates seamlessly with HubSpot CRM, making it easy to integrate your sales, marketing, etc.
Our head of operations stated: “HubSpot is essentially a CRM and the website is just a small part of it, so for any business that’s already using HubSpot for sales or marketing, etc, you should have it in HubSpot because you can tie in all those different things.
“Even if you’re not using HubSpot, you can start to move everything: the CRM, your forms, your contacts, etc.”
HubSpot websites offer another very important benefit, which is the fact that you get access to multiple other features, like AB testing and Smart Tools.
Watch the full episode here:
AB testing is a tool that allows you to create a copy of a page to discover which one performs best. HubSpot would automatically show half of your visitors one version of the page, and the other half the edited one. By analysing details such as how long people stayed on each page, how many people converted, and how many leads were received off the back of them, you would be able to determine which page is giving you the best and most results.
Charlotte said: “Essentially, you can make an educated decision on the changes you’re going to make on your website.
“A lot of business owners have WordPress websites and might be using HubSpot as their CRM, and think, we’ll use the HubSpot plugin on WordPress, but you need to have the website in HubSpot to be able to do that, as the integration between HubSpot and WordPress will just link the traffic, not the editability.”
“All the features and benefits we’ve just been through are all HubSpot website platform exclusives.”
At JDR Group, not only are we HubSpot Elite partners, but we also have experience using and working with both HubSpot and WordPress websites. What we have noticed is that WordPress websites are not only a lot harder to edit, but they are also a lot more vulnerable. At the beginning of 2025, two of our clients got their websites hacked due to the plugins installed.
Our Head of Operations explained: “A lot of the time, they’re hacking the plugin, not necessarily the company, and this can affect multiple business websites that might be using the same plugin.
“It can completely break the website to the point where it doesn’t show anymore, or what happened with our two clients is that all of the blog posts were changed to have random wording.”
As the hacks can look different depending on your website, you might not necessarily realise it, which could penalise you from an SEO perspective.
We understand why business owners would consider WordPress websites. Not only are they an open source platform, but 9 times out of 10, they will also be cheaper than the subscription cost of HubSpot in the long run.
However, despite this, HubSpot still offers you a greater number of features, such as editability, blogs, landing pages, traffic, dashboards, etc In addition to that, you will also obtain better results from the marketing as well as longevity.
Charlotte said: “Most businesses will be in a cycle of probably redoing their WordPress website every two to four years and have to rebuild most things from scratch because the plugin stops working or the platform needs updating.
“What happens is you end up having to find another designer to build that website every three years, whereas with HubSpot, it’s future approved, you can build the website, and you basically get a website for life.”
For those of you who use HubSpot as your CRM but do not have a HubSpot website, you could get significant benefits from migrating your website, as everything will be hosted under one platform. For example, since all your forms and CTA’s are hosted in HubSpot, you will no longer need to use integrations; you can just drag and drop them anywhere on the website. This will ultimately lead to better quality statistics.
Charlotte said: “It means you can have it all in one place, it all talks to each other, and you just need to log into one thing for your marketing, sales and website.
“It also means that you get AB testing, landing pages, your website, and your blogs, all in one place.
“If you’re using it for marketing or sales, you have all your contacts in there, so you customise your webpages for the different demographics of people in your database.”
If you are already using HubSpot as your CRM, a HubSpot website could allow you to make each page more tailored to your ideal customers or the people in your database without needing to have multiple websites.
One of the biggest downsides of HubSpot currently is that anyone selling online is still unable to do so through a HubSpot website; hence why for any e-commerce, we would usually recommend using Shopify as your website hosting company.
Charlotte added: “HubSpot are rolling out the e-commerce Hub, so they’re gradually getting there, and I think in the next few years they will have an e-commerce platform, but for now Shopify is the best option.”
At JDR, we have built more than 1000 websites and helped over 3000 businesses. We can help make your day-to-day life easier by ensuring that your website not only attracts the right people but also “talks properly” to the people you are trying to convert into customers. You can listen to the full episode on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube, and for more information on this, make an enquiry today. Do not forget to subscribe to the show to be notified once our next episode is released!