Overcome poorly built websites: how to fix and optimize your CMS

This article breaks down why your current setup might be holding you back, and how to rebuild without reinventing everything from scratch.

A poorly architected website slows down global teams, fractures the customer experience, and makes even small changes feel like major IT projects. Over time, the website becomes a digital liability, bloated, fragile, and misaligned with the needs of the business.

As digital expectations rise across every market and business unit, websites need to be agile, secure, and strategically integrated, not just functional.

The cost of a poorly built website

A poorly built website is a structural weakness that impacts scalability, security, speed to market, and overall digital performance. It holds back transformation efforts and makes it harder to adapt, compete, and innovate.

Here are the most common pain points we see — with real-world-inspired examples that show how these challenges manifest at scale:

1. Hard to update and overly dependent on developers

Example: A global retailer wants to roll out a Black Friday campaign across 12 regions. Marketing teams must rely on developers to update product pages and create localized landing pages. Due to a backlog in IT, the campaign launches late in multiple markets, missing peak traffic, costing $2M in missed revenue and $50K in developer costs.

2. Custom code and legacy decisions introduce complexity and fragility

Example: A financial services firm updating its homepage causes an unintentional crash in its payment portal. The root issue? Old, undocumented custom code. The outage lasts 48 hours, costing $500K in lost transactions and $15K in dev hours to fix.

3. Delays in launching strategic initiatives

Example: A pharmaceutical company delays the launch of a new drug microsite due to manual localization processes. It misses a key industry event, losing $10M in early sales and incurring $200K in dev outsourcing costs.

4. Security risks and compliance challenges

Legacy builds often lack structured governance, leaving critical updates or patches unaddressed. For multinational firms, this is compounded by regional regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

Example: An e-commerce brand suffers a breach due to an unpatched plugin, exposing 50,000 user records. The fallout includes €1M in GDPR fines, $500K in settlements, and $2.5M in lost revenue from customer churn.

 

5. Disconnected systems and broken integrations

Websites that can’t connect seamlessly with CRMs, ERPs, or automation tools force manual workarounds, stifle personalization, and limit data insight.

Example: A B2B manufacturer relies on manual lead entry because its site doesn’t integrate with Salesforce or Marketo. Labor inefficiencies cost $26K/year, while a lack of personalization reduces conversions, totaling $1.2M in lost sales.

 

6. High ongoing costs and inefficiencies

Developer reliance, fragmented tools, and duplicated systems inflate costs. The result? A bloated ecosystem that's expensive to maintain and hard to evolve.

Example: A hospitality chain spends $120K annually just to add hotel pages, plus $30K in redundant analytics tools and $4K in training overhead. A modern CMS could cut these costs by 70%, but the legacy build blocks progress.

These problems are recurring, measurable issues that drain time, budget, and opportunity. The solution lies in modernizing the CMS stack with platforms built for agility, scale, and enterprise-grade functionality.

Modern CMS platforms enable:

• Non-technical content control for marketers
• Modular architecture to reduce technical debt
• Streamlined integrations with CRMs and ERPs
• Built-in governance for security and compliance
• Cost-efficiency through automation and consolidation

Organizations that modernize their web infrastructure unlock speed, resilience, and competitive advantage, instead of letting their website become the bottleneck.

Key considerations before rebuilding your website

Navigating the complexities of modernising a CMS ecosystem requires a clear strategy, a focus on scalability, and the right technology partner.

Here are the key steps to guide you through the process:

1. Assess your CMS needs beyond content management

Your CMS is the central hub for customer experience, data, and digital transformation. Assess your CMS based on the following criteria:

• Scalability: Can your CMS handle the growing demands of your business as you expand into new markets, integrate new technologies, and scale your operations?

• Flexibility: Does your CMS allow your teams to make content changes quickly without heavy IT involvement?

• Integration capabilities: How easily does it integrate with your CRM, sales tools, analytics platforms, and other core systems?

A modern CMS should fit seamlessly into your tech stack and support a broader digital transformation agenda, ensuring smooth workflows and data-driven decision-making across all departments.

2. Focus on security and compliance

With increasing cybersecurity threats and data privacy regulations, ensuring your CMS is secure and compliant should be a top priority. Your CMS must adhere to regional security standards (like GDPR, HIPAA, etc.) while safeguarding customer data and maintaining compliance.

Invest in a CMS solution with built-in security features, regular updates, and support for compliance frameworks. Partner with agencies that can ensure a secure migration process, monitor system vulnerabilities, and provide ongoing support for compliance requirements.

3. Plan for long-term scalability

The CMS you choose must be able to scale as your business grows. This includes not only technical scalability (handling more traffic, users, and data) but also operational scalability, ensuring your teams can manage content and assets across regions and departments.

As part of your CMS modernisation strategy, consider tools and platforms like HubSpot CMS Enterprise that are designed to run a business at scale, offering modular, flexible solutions that grow alongside your operations.

4. Streamline integrations and eliminate data silos

Fragmented systems lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities for optimisation. Your CMS must integrate smoothly with your CRM, marketing automation, customer service tools, and other essential platforms. Look for a CMS that allows for seamless integrations with the tools your teams rely on, creating a centralised data hub and a unified customer experience across all touchpoints.

At Huble, we specialise in designing custom integrations that connect your CMS to your broader tech ecosystem, enabling your teams to work smarter, not harder.

5. Involve stakeholders early and often

Digital transformation requires buy-in from multiple departments. Involve key stakeholders from IT, marketing, sales, and customer service early in the process. This collaborative approach ensures that the CMS you implement meets the needs of all teams, is aligned with your business goals, and supports a consistent and effective customer experience.

6. Continuous optimisation and support

Once your new CMS is live, the work doesn’t stop there. Ensure you have a plan in place for ongoing optimisation, monitoring, and updates. Regular audits, user feedback, and performance tracking are critical to keep your CMS running smoothly and evolving in line with your business needs. At Huble, we provide continuous post-launch support, ensuring that your CMS adapts as your business evolves, keeping it secure, fast, and fully optimised for your users.

For CTOs overseeing complex digital environments, every decision made now will either compound your technical debt or lay the groundwork for a more agile, resilient infrastructure. 

Before the next rebuild, ask the hard questions, challenge legacy assumptions, and make sure your next website isn’t just functional, but future-ready.

Huble’s approach to fixing and optimising Enterprise CMS Ecosystems 

At Huble, we specialize in transforming complex, underperforming websites into scalable, secure, and integrated digital platforms, primarily leveraging the HubSpot CMS.

Our approach is designed for organizations undertaking significant digital projects, where timelines are crucial, and systems must perform reliably across diverse audiences and technical requirements.

1. Discovery & strategy
   Every CMS project begins with a comprehensive Discovery Milestone. We evaluate your existing technical setup through audits, understand your goals via client questionnaires and collaborative workshops, and analyse content workflows and SEO performance.
   
   This phase identifies critical requirements, defines user journeys, and informs the sitemap and navigation. The result is a clear roadmap and core wireframes, ensuring we address immediate needs while building a foundation for long-term success.
   
   
2. Designing a scalable, future-proof architecture
   Based on discovery findings, we design a HubSpot CMS architecture that is modular, compliant, and adaptable. For the typical website project, this involves creating a unified framework to support multilingual requirements, manage brand consistency, and reduce technical overhead through hosting consolidation.
   
   We develop reusable content modules and custom templates to enable faster rollouts, streamlined collaboration, and a platform that can evolve.
   
   
3. Intelligent integration with your broader stack
   We ensure your HubSpot CMS website functions as a central part of your digital infrastructure. We focus on integrating essential HubSpot tools like forms and email marketing.
   
   Our approach builds secure connections that enhance functionality and data flow, ensuring your CMS becomes a strategic asset.
   
   
4. Migration & launch without disruption
   Our execution milestone incorporates an enterprise-grade migration and launch methodology designed to minimise disruption. We handle complexities like consolidating multiple domains and rebuilding site structures while ensuring data integrity and preserving SEO equity through meticulous URL mapping and redirect strategies.
   
   We conduct rigorous Quality Assurance (QA) and Testing, including cross-browser and cross-device checks, to meet performance and security benchmarks before the final go-live.
   
   
5. Enablement & ongoing support
   A CMS is only effective if your teams can use it confidently. Our Deliver and Train Milestone focuses on empowerment. We provide structured CMS training sessions, tailored documentation, and support for Content Population.
   
   We ensure your internal users can manage and update website content independently, maximising the value of your investment long after launch.

Huble doesn't just build websites. We deliver enterprise-grade HubSpot CMS ecosystems that consolidate your digital presence, empower your teams, enhance your customer experience, and support your long-term digital transformation goals.

How Huble rebuilt Dicker Data’s website infrastructure

When Dicker Data, one of Australia’s leading technology distributors, approached Huble, their CMS ecosystem had grown fragmented, outdated, and difficult to scale.

Their site was struggling to support evolving business needs, with siloed content management, inconsistent branding, and limited flexibility for regional teams. Worse still, their internal teams were spending too much time on workarounds rather than delivering value through innovation.

Dicker Data needed to modernise their website infrastructure as part of a broader digital transformation strategy.

They were dealing with:

• A rigid, legacy CMS that required development resources for even basic changes
• Multiple disconnected tools and systems creating data silos
• Poor user experience and limited self-service functionality for partners and customers
• Security and scalability concerns as the business expanded into new markets

Their leadership team knew that the website was no longer just a marketing asset. It was a core part of their digital customer experience, sales enablement, and brand delivery across multiple regions.

The transformation strategy: rebuilding for the future

Huble partnered with Dicker Data to redesign and rebuild their CMS ecosystem using a modern architecture centred around HubSpot CMS Enterprise. The new platform was designed to be:

• Modular and scalable, allowing internal teams to easily manage content across different business units
• Deeply integrated with their CRM and partner tools, streamlining data flow and removing silos
• Built with performance and security in mind, ensuring enterprise-grade governance, fast load speeds, and regulatory compliance
• Designed for the user, offering a cleaner, more intuitive interface for both internal teams and customers

Throughout the project, we worked closely with their IT, marketing, and executive stakeholders to ensure alignment at every step, from technical architecture to change management and training.

A scalable, integrated digital ecosystem

The result was a high-performing, flexible website that now serves as the digital foundation of Dicker Data’s business operations. Internal teams can make changes quickly without relying on developers, and the integrated data ecosystem provides real-time insights that support decision-making across departments. Most importantly, the site is now ready to scale with their growth, not hold them back.

This project is a prime example of how a well-executed CMS transformation can remove operational friction, improve customer experience, and create a stable foundation for long-term innovation. 

Read the full case study here.

Turn your website from a liability into a high-performance asset

At Huble, we rebuild enterprise websites for global businesses that can’t afford to be slowed down by legacy infrastructure.

Our team combines deep HubSpot CMS expertise with a strategic approach to architecture, governance, and integration, so your site stops being a bottleneck and starts driving business value.

If your current CMS is holding you back, it’s time to rethink what your website should do. Let’s build something that’s fast, flexible, secure and actually fit for the future.

Talk to us about rebuilding your website the right way.