Walker & Dunlop has been a pioneer in the commercial real estate (CRE) industry for over 87 years and counting. From its roots as an early Fannie Mae DUS® lender, Walker & Dunlop has grown into one of the largest CRE finance and advisory services firms by building and acquiring complementary businesses to create a seamless solution for clients along their commercial real estate journey.
To create a unified brand and better communicate their broad range of services, they needed to evolve their digital presence. “Our website plays a huge role in shaping how people understand what we do,” says Senior Vice President, Creative Director Matt Cabral. “It’s not just a marketing tool, but a business asset that supports everything from deal flow to investor relations to thought leadership.”
As Walker & Dunlop continued to expand and refine their visual identity, their previous website struggled to keep up. Rigid and difficult to maintain, it failed to showcase their evolving business lines and hindered their ability to respond to changing priorities. A more dynamic and scalable solution was needed: one that would allow Walker & Dunlop to innovate, engage, and lead in a digital-first world. “It’s critical that our digital presence matches the strength of our brand,” says Matt.
Breaking free from technical limitations
Webflow gives us the power and flexibility of something headless, without all the engineering overhead. Plus, our technology team loves the fact that there are modern best practices built in for safety, security, and privacy.
- Kokko Tso, Vice President of Digital Marketing, Walker & Dunlop
To transform their website into a true brand awareness and sales enablement asset, Walker & Dunlop needed to improve efficiency, enhance stability, and ensure their digital presence fully showcased their expanding portfolio of business lines. Their previous CMS was cumbersome and heavily reliant on developer support: Simple website projects often took months due to technical bottlenecks, and features like mobile optimization were lacking, limiting visibility and negatively impacting user experience.
“We had developed a strong visual identity, raised our design standards, and advanced our brand story,” says Matt. “But the site lagged behind.” To break free from these challenges, Walker & Dunlop turned to Webflow’s Website Experience Platform (WXP). “We looked at both headless and open source CMS platforms, and found that Webflow was the best medium between the two — and it’s been a game changer for us,” says Kokko.
Webflow’s visual-first CMS significantly reduced the learning curve for Walker & Dunlop, allowing the marketing team to execute campaigns and update content quickly. “Thanks to Webflow, I know our website is stable. I no longer worry about downtime, and I can respond to stakeholders much faster. We’re now able to support our businesses in ways we couldn’t before,” says Kokko.
Webflow Partner, Edgar Allan, and dedicated enterprise support feel like an extension of the team
Enterprise support — our customer success manager, the sales team, technical support — has really given us the confidence that we have the right partners in Webflow and Edgar Allan to build our clients a first-class experience.
- Kokko Tso, Vice President of Digital Marketing, Walker & Dunlop
As they welcomed a new era of innovation, Kokko and his team knew they could rely on Webflow’s WXP. “We had to go beyond the traditional website, and Webflow’s WXP provided that roadmap for us,” says Kokko. “Webflow is looking forward to that next generation of websites and empowering us to build more cohesive, personalized experiences. It also makes the translation between design language and developer language a lot easier.”
But choosing Webflow wasn’t just about the functionality. “We love Webflow the platform, and we love Webflow the people,” says Kokko. “That partnership has been critical in every stage of our Webflow journey.”
With Webflow Enterprise, Walker & Dunlop now has a dedicated account team to lean on as an extension of their own team. Their CSM acts as an advisor, proactively providing strategic guidance and optimization tips on how to continue improving the site. “It’s some of the best technical support and ongoing feature enhancements we’ve seen, both for the platform and our implementation,” says Kokko.
Walker & Dunlop also worked with Webflow partner Edgar Allan to ensure a seamless migration and ongoing support: They played a key role in the site’s wireframing process, balancing creative vision with practical execution. “Whether it’s small fixes or bringing big ideas to life, they’re there every step of the way,” says Walker & Dunlop’s Senior Digital Marketing Manager Allison Phillips. “We can hop on a call for quick support or collaborate deeply on major projects. Their flexibility — being hands-on when needed and stepping back when not — makes them an invaluable partner.”
The results speak for themselves. Year over year, traffic from organic search increased by 23%, contributing to a 40% rise in overall sessions. Average session duration grew by 18%, with certain high-converting channels, such as email, seeing increases of up to 250% in time on site.
Beyond the build with robust website optimization and native analytics
Combined with Webflow’s visual-first platform, Optimize and Analyze empower our teams to evolve with our clients, experiment and pivot quickly, and, ultimately, create more personalized digital experiences.
- Kokko Tso, Vice President of Digital Marketing, Walker & Dunlop
Walker & Dunlop’s website transformation redefined how their teams build, manage, and optimize their website. With Webflow’s WXP, landing page builds went from three to four weeks to just three to five days — no developers required. They now push 10-15 content updates daily, reducing request turnaround from a month to under 24 hours. With developers more focused on building core product, the team has also accelerated product velocity – delivering nine major feature releases, compared to just two the previous year.
With a strong foundation in place, the next step is continuous optimization. “Webflow Optimize and Webflow Analyze really got us excited — to the point where our CMO said, ‘We’ve got to get this, and we’ve got to get this now,’” says Kokko. Using Webflow’s AI-powered insights and a unified view of site performance, Walker & Dunlop is able to leverage real user data, tracking where visitors go, where they drop off, and how to optimize content for maximum engagement.
The ability to launch tests and gather insights directly inside Webflow, without relying on third-party tracking scripts or landing page builders, has empowered the Walker & Dunlop marketing team to focus on conversion rate optimization. “We want to test ideas with a control group before rolling them out broadly, allowing us to iterate and personalize the experience for users we know more about,” says Kokko. One example is the Small Balance Lending page, where the team is using Optimize to increase quote requests and drive more leads.
In addition to Webflow Optimize, Walker & Dunlop uses Webflow Analyze as a key lever to reduce costs, use better data, and scale the impact of their team. “Recently, we realized we didn’t know how often a certain navigation bar button was used, so I hopped into Webflow Analyze and had the answer in 10 seconds” says Allison. “Being able to use those kinds of insights so easily and in real time is huge.” And according to the company’s annual survey, internal stakeholder satisfaction has grown by 10%, with employees feeling more positive about how their business lines are showcased on the website. “With Webflow, we’re able to unlock our creative potential — and our teams are happier,” says Kokko.
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