New Website FAQs

Background of the current website

Whilst there have been significant improvements made to the current website over the last few years there are some inherent issues that persist with our current setup.

This includes:

• Being on a system that is hard for the primary content managers (marketing team and other non-technical AC staff) to use.
• With a legacy of two platforms (Django and Wagtail) the interface and ways to manage content can be very cumbersome and confusing
• The very DIY approach for the website is a blessing in that it can be highly-customised to our needs as a unique business. This is also our “Achilles Heel” as it means we rely on a sole IT web developer to know our code base, have bandwidth to both troubleshoot and develop website elements as well as the ability to translate abstract marketing ideas into reality with a very good understanding of design, UX etc. Also, it is on our web developer to keep up with the latest industry trends, best practice, security patches etc. This is a lot of work to say the least if we want to have a website that performs well.
• Current website layout is a redesign of page templates, content blocks and styling which happened 2019-2020. This was a long process with lots of “lost in translation” between the vision that was had with marketing and what could be accomplished due to lack of resourcing, skill, time etc for both IT and marketing. Example: It cost $10k to redesign the course pages for the current website and in the end still didn’t serve the needs for our variety of courses properly and lacked in sophistication.
• Website permissions is currently convoluted and weighed down by sheer volume of historical users and very specific use cases. People who used to be responsible for certain parts of the website don’t know what to do with it, aren’t qualified to use it, have lost permissions or changed roles etc.
• Lack of ability for A/B testing of pages and content
• Cannot serve dynamic, personalised content based on customer segments/personas
• Website doesn’t support “produce once, publish everywhere” very well which means we have to spend more time and effort reinventing wheels and fixing errors
• Not very mobile friendly although we know that the vast majority of users are mobile-first.
• Doesn’t support content managers in creating SEO-friendly pages which makes it harder for us to rank well in google search results
• Seemingly small tasks (e.g. inserting an image) can take an hour instead of two minutes on wagtail not because the task itself is hard but because the tools available in the website backend don’t serve the purpose and either make it look too big, too small, oddly positioned, not right on mobile, etc. and generally means there is a large amount of time devoted to raw coding.
• Example issue: new blog template was sought for marketing to use to help boost SEO and thus click-through to website and increase lead generation. After approximately 2 weeks of creation from scratch by IT team there were still elements that meant the template wasn’t worthwhile for going public with. This means there was a sunk cost of 2 weeks with no positive result from this effort.

What would a new website bring?

• A new website would bring clarity to the quagmire that is the current experience.
• Infrastructure that supports the vast needs of experienced web developers and doesn’t inhibit their abilities to code and supports them in extending the abilities and sophistication of the website.
• Supports the non-technical users with a dummy-proof interface that allows for on-brand pages and content to easily be deployed and managed.
• Permission sets that are easily set up and managed so that only the people who need access have it and data/pages/content is kept consistent.

• Hubspot is geared for marketing. It cannot be overstated how much this software has helped the marketing team do their jobs since it was implemented Feb 2021.
• Hubspot integrates analytics, SEO, website, blog/content marketing, emails into one system which helps to deliver a coherent experience for the customers and target audience (i.e. students) and leverages the unique customer segment profiles through its CRM interface that can help power parts of the website.
• The marketing team has been using HubSpot for creating landing pages for the past two years (i.e. the one-page websites we use for sending our ads to on the study.ac.edu.au domain) as well as recently creating 75.ac.edu.au and have found the ease of use as well as powerful features to be worthwhile having access to for a whole website. It has been highly trustworthy.
• There is really good customer support where specific problems are worked through with HubSpot’s army of customer service people who are available in Asia Pacific for calls, emails, zooms etc.
• There is extensive documentation of how to use HubSpot on the web and a massive community of Hubspot users who help each other with coding solutions
• Hubspot coding language (HubL) is a python-based language that means our current website developers will have no issue understanding how to code.
• Features list for HubSpot available here (see CMS Hub Enterprise column) this is in comparison to basic features available with wagtail here. Main features that stand out are: drag and drop website builder, integrated CRM data, advanced blog maker, easily configurable chatbot for assisting customers, multi-language support, custom report building, payment integration (e.g. donations), Contact attribution report builder, Dynamic content, Advanced SEO recommendations, Personalization through smart content, Single Sign On, Adaptive testing, Membership logins (e.g. student portal, alumni members site), custom web applications.

Almost nothing. The cost of the website infrastructure has basically been complimentary with our Hubspot subscription level. With the pricing arrangement of the not-for-profit discount we have as well as the other parts of Hubspot we were already paying for and using, the website infrastructure was in a sense, included in the package cost whether we used it or not.

• This would not be able to move forward as a project without agreeance from IT.
• We need IT’s expertise in coding and infrastructure management to make sure what we do is as efficient, scalable and robust as possible.
• Whilst marketing team members have rudimentary coding skills and have the ability to mostly use and maintain a website hosted on Hubspot fairly independently, the IT would be able to mainly help support by increasing the ability of the marketing team to serve target customers better through greater personalisation and bespoke problem solving rather than the current need for basic tasks which could be solved by marketing alone if a better system was used. This is also not the best use of the limited IT resources.

Like Salesforce, we cannot change the underlying codebase of Salesforce as it is a proprietary system. This means that unlike wagtail which is open source there is a limit to the flexibility and ways we can present or structure the data in the backend. Whilst there is this limitation its important to note that currently there is the ability for Hubspot to achieve the same goals as our current setup on wagtail.

Furthermore, since we aren’t responsible for the codebase, this means that we can leverage the power of HubSpot with their massive team of developers, security team, etc who make sure the codebase and infrastructure is safe, reliable, up-to-date and innovative with new features and extensibility coming out all the time.

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Because of the above, yes, Hubspot is not only keeping up with the market but also setting industry trends. It could be argued Hubspot set the gold standard for content marketing and also aspire to big goals like being the first AI-powered CRM.

Using Hubspot for our website would mean:

• Ability to create, change, update webpages faster
• No dependence on IT for basic website changes e.g. overwriting styling of default buttons
• Being able to get rich analytics from website interactions
• Integrating automated workflows
• Easier delegation of work/page ownership with easier oversight of marketing to keep things on-brand

Yes, there is API access just like wagtail but also an app marketplace where high-quality and highly vetted plugins increase the interoperability of the platform.

All of our organisational data can be migrated and isn’t locked into HubSpot’s system. Everything is exportable and uses open file formats. We don’t anticipate this would be something that needs to be considered in the foreseeable future. The system is also very scalable and is able to handle data for large and complex organisations.

• Academic/research reporting
• New features- e.g. ai – ChatGPT-powered CRM, reporting, etc integrated into Hubspot.
• Have a dedicated chatbot to help steer people in the right direction for courses, subjects, timetables, fees.

Yes, this has been tested and report-building is a process that can be done by anyone with access as opposed to the current system where IT have to build reports for users.

None. Like Microsoft or Salesforce keep updating their cloud products, Hubspot continually updates the features available in their system as well as keeping on top of any security issues etc. There is essentially no maintenance issues or needs compared to the self-hosting we currently do for Django/Wagtail.

• Staff would be assigned permissions to just the areas or specific pages that they need to access. This would be a limited group of people (to keep permissions management manageable). Permissions is as easy as sending an email invite to them.
• Some basic training would be needed but with an intuitive interface and lots of supporting documentation, there is a high degree of confidence this will be a less frustrating and more intuitive experience than wagtail.

Once the current website functionality and content is ported over to Hubspot there would have to be a little bit of time to let the dust settle and people to feel comfortable with the system but after this would like to improve the features and here are a few of the current ideas:

• Create a student portal where all current student info can be housed i.e. an intranet where current student comms, campus info, community info, etc can be housed.
• More dynamic and personalised content served on the web pages. E.g. Course pages to change information shown if an international student clicks on the page vs domestic.
• Aligning our customer journey e.g. prospective, current student, alumni, etc with our website content so we can be highlighting or tailoring content for them so as to increase engagement.
• Creating spaces for content marketing of our subject areas to increase our reputation in the marketplace and generate more leads.

• Support from executives and support from CIO for migration. e.g. moving ac.edu.au main site to hubspot.
• Need help with creating elements users can interact with e.g. filterable/selectable timetable display
• Test user permissions for different people e.g. access to timetable for admissions, access to subject, course and policy areas for Nadine, access to people pages for faculty and faculty ops.
• Put in all the content and thoroughly test at scale

Optimistic timeline would be that a usable website could be implemented by start of Q4 2023 and conservative timeline would be end of 2023/start of 2024.

Talk to Luke or Michael.