GMA Garnet, the global leader in industrial garnet, partnered with Salted Stone to create a new multi-regional website on HubSpot. Find out how a comprehensive redevelopment transformed the user experience.
GMA Garnet Group (GMA) pioneers innovation. With over 40 years of expertise behind its products, GMA Garnet™ abrasives are recognized as the industry standard in sandblasting and waterjet cutting industries. The company serves customers in more than 100 countries and is the only garnet supplier to own and operate its entire supply chain.
But as GMA expanded, so did its website, which eventually outgrew its original requirements and became difficult to maintain internally.
To help achieve its five-year plan, GMA approached Salted Stone to strategize and develop a flexible new website with localized content. Ultimately, it had to affirm GMA’s position as the authority in industrial garnet.
The teams agreed on the following goals:
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- Increase visibility in key markets, particularly Europe and the Middle East
- Improve organic keyword rankings to direct more traffic to the website
- Generate more leads with a UX- and conversion-oriented content strategy
- Build a website that provides a foundation for sustainable business growth.
“When we approached Salted Stone, we had ambitious plans to expand globally. We needed organic keyword lift across multiple countries and languages, and a CMS that could be easily updated. The team brought strategic direction and expertise, empowering us to grow our digital presence in line with our business objectives."
— Anthony Burns, Global Marketing Manager, GMA
The challenge
GMA’s troubles were attributed to its CMS. The website was originally built on Kentico and couldn’t meet the requirements of GMA’s scaling business. Crucially, the website was virtually invisible to search engines in non-English speaking countries. Visibility was lost in many regions.
However, one of the biggest problems was website management. Content updates, whether major or minor, often called on hard-to-source Kentico developers. A number of imperfect modifications were made to bridge the gap, however, continuing to modify the website proved expensive.
That caused extensive inconsistencies in every region’s design, content, and functionality. Over time, the addition of page and navigational elements made it challenging for users to find information, and if they did, the next steps weren’t clear.
And the brief? Deliver more than 30 variations of the new website accommodating regional needs, including languages, product offerings, personas, and market awareness.
Salted Stone subject matter experts together with APAC Regional Director Melanie Phelps Cevik crafted a solution, involving:
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- a refreshed design “look and feel”
- region and language switcher
- development of a flexible module library
- website build, testing, and CMS training.
Our solutions
Every website project at Salted Stone begins with website roadmapping to define the new navigation, sitemap, and information architecture. GMA’s revised navigation now aligns with the brand’s differentiators, products, and industries served.
However, the most important aspect of the solution is the CMS, which had to be easy to use for both visitors and team members. We chose HubSpot CMS Enterprise (now part of Content Hub) for its flexibility. GMA was immediately onboard. They were already using Marketing Hub, and understood HubSpot’s power and intuitiveness.
Today, GMA’s website prioritizes UX while localizing its content. A custom-built module library with multiple variations accommodates regions’ different content and languages. Plus, whenever GMA wants to create a page, they can tailor styling with detailed settings.
Some backend modifications to the hreflang tag and other elements now signal to search engines that a local language website is available. For instance, if a user in Germany searches for the website, they are served the German variant instead of the English default.
We then customized a HubDB region and language switcher (below) catering to visitors in any part of the world. Interacting with the tool allows users to tailor their experience. HubDB also stores information displayed on product pages for ease of use, as well as serving up 130 locations on our custom interactive map. GMA now updates different content unaided, saving time and money.
To further solve for users, we centralized blogs, product sheets, and other resources on a new HubSpot blog, filterable by category and topic. Each asset has properties, like region and type, in the back end. This organizes GMA’s burgeoning library of assets such that users can find persona- and country-specific content, and teams better manage it. A product selector on HubSpot further enhances the user experience.
Finally, we set up region-based lead notification workflows triggered by form submissions, ensuring automation helps manage incoming leads.
The results
Removing Kentico’s limitations was a boon for GMA. With HubSpot, Marketing is empowered to manage its entire website in-house. GMA's Campaign and Digital Marketing Specialist David Sullivan explains: “The user experience saw a drastic improvement, and we've been able to provide information in engaging ways that are easy for users to comprehend, as well as simple for us to maintain as our team grows.”
GMA’s Global Marketing Manager Anthony Burns echoes this sentiment: “Utilizing HubSpot has been a game-changer for us, allowing us to execute with unprecedented speed and scale,” says Burns.
Since launch, visibility lifted thanks to growth in organic sessions and a 105.5% improvement in keyword rankings. Local SEO saw a dramatic boost, with impressions increasing by hundreds of percentage points in Türkiye, Pakistan, India, Canada, and the UK.
Visitors enjoy a personalized website experience, with a strong understanding of GMA’s offering — but they also convert. The website works harder than ever, filling the pipeline with high-quality leads.
Phelps Cevik couldn’t be happier. “Collaborating with GMA has been an incredible journey and we are proud to have played a role in their success,” she says. “By strategically leveraging HubSpot, we created a scalable solution that significantly improved brand visibility.”
For GMA, HubSpot has been transformative. Implementing a user-first solution has helped put them on track to achieving its five-year plan. The next few years will see GMA continue to grow with HubSpot.
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