Hubspot is an amazing platform that has made life and productivity easier for marketers, and recently, even sales teams. It is one of the few all-in-one platforms which provide an array of functions that often make using any other marketing software unnecessary for most companies.
However, functionality and user experience are not the same. User experience is about making it easier, simpler and delightful for users to complete tasks without requiring external help, invariant of how many or how few functionalities a platform offers.
And this is what we at Trymata wanted to explore- how well does Hubspot, a platform used by millions daily, stands up when seen from a UX perspective. In order to do so, we created a test scenario for test users at Trymata and we let them tell us how they feel about the user experience.
And here is what we found out!
Hubspot user experience (UX) review
We asked UX testers to do the following activities and give us a score card:
- Signup for the free trial account
- Explore the dashboard and its functionalities
- Add an external sales lead into the platform
- Bulk import existing contacts
- Sending out marketing email to contacts
- Integration with other marketing platforms
The User Experience Test Report
Task 1. Free trial signup
Score for usability: 6.67
Score for duration: 3:27
Score for completion: 100%
The score for usability for this task was the highest among all other tasks at 6.67 with a somewhat average score for time required to complete the task. All test users were able to complete the task.
Task 2. Dashboard exploration
Score for usability: 5.33
Score for duration: 4:25
Score for completion: 100%
This task took more time and effort but landed a decent usability score of 5.33. The task took more time but completion rested at 100% for all test users.
Task 3. Ease of uploading existing sales leads
Score for usability: 4.67
Score for duration: 2:51
Score for completion: 66.7
This was the task where test users for the first time had difficulty in completion with a third dropping out. The lower test duration is indicative of test users being unable to complete the task, while usability score declined as well to 4.67.
Task 4. Bulk upload company contacts
Score for usability: 5.67
Score for duration: 1:50
Score for completion: 100%
Test users certainly found this task to be easier with 100% completion, a higher usability score and a significantly reduced duration for completion.
Task 5: Sending out marketing emails to uploaded contacts
Score for usability: 4:50
Score for duration: 1.50
Score for completion: 66.7%
This task once again saw limited completion rate, down to 2/3rd like in task 4. Usability score also took a toll for the same reasons as users found it difficult to send out the marketing emails.
Task 6. Platform integration with other marketing tools
Score for usability: 2:00
Score for duration: 1:34
Score for completion: 0%
This was rather surprising as no test user could figure out how to do this task without any external help. The usability score also declined to just 2.0.
Conclusion
While Hubspot scored very well for DIY in simple tasks, the usability declined for more complex marketing operations, especially for emails and setting up integrations with other martech platforms.