New in HubSpot: Image Galleries!
Slideshows that Work on EVERY Device!
by Dave Maloney
Just this week HubSpot announced a new feature available in the HubSpot CMS: an Image Gallery module!
Up until now, the simplest way to add a slideshow was to create a photo album on a site like Flickr and embed the code on your HubSpot page. And that had its drawbacks: not much freedom as far as design went, you get what you get. Being Flash based, they wouldn't play on all devices, so Ipad and Iphone owners, as well as many others only see that your page with a big black hole in it. And more importantly, your page isn't gaining any SEO benefit from it, because Google doesn't see any crawlable content there either.
Now adding a HubSpot image gallery is easy - just click "New Module" and choose "Image Gallery." A window will open and prompt you to give your gallery a title and description, which you can edit anytime later. Click "Next" and you'll be asked to upload your photos from your computer. Remember it's best to optimize your photos for the web. (Even if you already have the photos you want to use in your HubSpot File Manager, you'll have to upload them again.)
Now here's the fun part: for each photo in your slideshow, you can type in a title and description which will be displayed with each image. Make sure you get some keyword phrases in there, as each image description offers another shot for your page to rank in search engines! You can go back in and edit these whenever you want also.
Now, the really fun part: HubSpot gives you two style options for your Image Gallery, both a slideshow version and a lightbox view. You can choose your background color for either, so your gallery blends perfectly in your page design. The slideshow display lets you choose how quickly you'd like the images to change. The slideshow begins automatically as soon as your page is opened, and the titles/decriptions are displayed when you click the "I" icon in the corner.
The lightbox view displays a grid of thumbnail versions of your images, and you can customize how they appear. When you click on any small image, a larger version expands in the center of your screen with title and description beneath.
View both versions of HubSpot Image Galleries on Pagetender's CMS Website Design page.
Now when you're meeting with a potential customer and they ask if you can show any samples of your work, you can call up your website on your Ipad and proudly display your portfolio slideshow - but only if you did it in a HubSpot Image Gallery!