Driving rentals, investor relations, and community involvement through a HubSpot website redesign
OVERVIEW Umbraco to HubSpot CMS Enterprise: Engineering a Dynamic, Mobile-First Web Experience to Accelerate Direct Bookings
Boardwalk stands as an industry leader in property management and real estate investment. Operating across diverse geographic regions throughout Canada, the organization is committed to driving superior bottom-line ROI for its investors while providing elevated residential and booking experiences for its renters. Through an intentional focus on environmental and social governance (ESG) initiatives, rebrand projects, and high-value new development acquisitions, Boardwalk sets the standard for enterprise-scale real estate portfolios.
CHALLENGE Overcoming Cumbersome CMS Technical Debt and Fractured Data Management
Boardwalk’s digital foundation was restricting its market agility and failing to match its reputation as an industry innovator. The foundational obstacles centered on legacy platform bottlenecks and isolated data structures:
- The Umbraco Bottleneck: The legacy Umbraco CMS had become extremely cumbersome to manage. The internal team lacked control over their content, leading to unnecessary operational overhead whenever modifications were required.
- Stagnant User Experience & Branding: The 5-year-old website infrastructure failed to communicate Boardwalk's newly elevated brand positioning, lacked critical regional content nuances, and lacked a mobile-first design strategy required to capture modern booking conversions.
- Segmented Property Assets: Managing extensive property details and digital assets while keeping investor-facing sections current required a rigid, developer-dependent workflow. The team needed a way to leverage their external property management system data while establishing a dynamic, high-performance experience within HubSpot.
THE INSTRUMENTAL SOLUTION The Architecture—Engineering a Dynamic HubDB Engine for Boardwalk
To dismantle legacy system limitations, Instrumental deployed its signature Pioneer's Approach, engineering a resilient digital engine on HubSpot CMS Enterprise. The technical deployment was built for maximum internal autonomy, localized asset delivery, and programmatic page assembly.
The structural implementation included the following precise SOW deliverables:
Ground Up Website Redesign Strategy
- Current State Audit: We evaluated the current site structure, content markup, assets inventory and performance analytics.
- Holistic Site Strategy: New sitemap architecture that aligned with optimization framework and defined conversion paths.
- Persona development: Audience identification and lifecycle journey mapping for Renters, Investors and Property managers.
- Technical Requirements: Module usability, site scalability planning, and functional requirements developed to support future growth.
Configuration & Master Theme Development
- Master Theme Style Sheet: Coded global style sheets to establish default parameters, brand colors, typography, buttons, forms, and responsive viewport parameters across the entire application to maintain brand integrity.
- Dynamic Layout Framework: Built page layout templates embedding native drag-and-drop elements paired with custom modules to support layout modifications without code deployment.
- Unique Page Designs: Developed distinct, high-fidelity custom page design mock-ups, turning core user experience pillars into functional prototypes.
Database & Relational Integration Architecture (HubDB)
- Centralized Relational Database: Configured HubDB tables to store resource listings and asset tags, creating an institutional data warehouse that manages all properties, buildings, units with related amenities.
- HubL Content Integration: Programmed HubL (HubSpot Markup Language) to pull records from HubDB into sandboxed pages, automating live data feeds for Resource Listing and Resource Detail pages without manual layout editing.
- Ad Hoc Object Configuration: Administered dedicated support time to execute custom property and object configurations for asset images, virtual 3D tours, and associated rich digital media.
The result being that we gained considerable control over the various ammeneties and variables that spanned units, complexes and properties. By managing the data structure in an organized fashion on the back-end, we were able to build a scalable foundation that was easy to manage and update without the need for developers or IT support.
Migration, Technical SEO, & Copywriting Production
In addition to improving the overall management of the content, we needed to take this opportunity to improve the overall optimization, go-to-market messaging, and overall technical site health.
- Non-Dynamic Multi-Language Pages: Generated non-dynamic multi-language pages per language variant, implementing dedicated URL syntax parameters to support French translation requirements.
- Page Clone & Stage Operations: Staged secondary layout infrastructure across the ecosystem, optimizing metadata and on-page formatting.
- Double XML Blog Migration: Executed automated XML imports to move historical digital libraries into two distinct HubSpot blog frameworks: Corporate Press Releases and the core Brand Blog.
- Technical SEO Auditing: Performed a comprehensive organic search audit, applying metadata syntax formatting, 301 redirect mapping for legacy paths, and Google Search Console indexing validation.
- Conversion-Driven Copywriting: Created buyer personas, client journey maps, and fully optimized marketing copy across 8 primary high-conversion pages.
RESULTS Unleashing Speed-to-Market and Seamless Asset Governance
The transition from Umbraco to HubSpot CMS Enterprise delivered immediate operational and commercial benefits to Boardwalk's ecosystem:
- Elimination of Developer Friction: The marketing team shifted from a restrictive legacy codebase to a visual drag-and-drop system, cutting down page-build timelines from days to minutes and eliminating ongoing developer overhead.
- Centralized, Automated Data Scaling: Decoupling layout styles from property information via HubDB and HubL enabled Boardwalk to execute global property updates instantly inside centralized data tables, liquidating manual duplication errors.
- Unified, High-Conversion UX: The launch provided a unified, mobile-first, multi-language experience that lowered bounce rates, improved organic findability, and optimized conversion paths across all regional audiences.
- Improved Site Health Metrics: Due to HubSpot's superior hosting platform, improvements in page speed, Core Web Vitals, and accessibility were visible at launch.
SUMMARY Sustained Agility Through Elite Platform Engineering
By replacing Umbraco with HubSpot CMS Enterprise, Boardwalk unlocked a highly scalable platform built to sustain long-term digital growth. To protect system stability and empower internal staff, the deployment smoothly transitioned into a structured Premier Maintenance and optimization phase.
This continuous engagement focuses equally on human enablement (learning) and architecture preservation (stability):
- Technical Domain & Security Stability: Routine monthly management of sub-domains, complex redirect strings, security profiles (HTTP/HTTPS transitions), and DNS configurations to secure the global tech stack.
- HubSpot CMS Health Auditing: Ongoing configuration of new CMS add-ons, feature releases, and immediate platform updates to ensure the instance remains cutting-edge.
- Performance & Core Web Vitals Scans: Proactive monthly performance profiling across 5 critical web assets, tracking script speed, uptime trends, and mobile usability.
- Regulatory Alignment & Compliance: Systematic monthly audits of data privacy parameters, validating proper code execution for WCAG/ADA requirements via accessiBe, alongside CCPA and GDPR constraints.
- Growth Strategy: With a solid digital foundation in place, the focus shifts toward driving new bookings and improving investor relations that drive meaningful business results.