Innovation is taking center stage

The demand for marketing innovation is undeniable. Despite 93% of marketing leaders acknowledging the critical need for innovation, a substantial 61% of respondents state they struggle to manage their teams' current workloads. 

Moreover, our research uncovers a compelling link between company size and their capacity to stay apace, with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) facing the greatest challenge today.

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The past year introduced more hurdles

92% of marketing leaders believe they must improve their websites to fully deliver on their goals. However, many are struggling to keep up with consumer preferences and market shifts, with 57% reporting it is more difficult to meet customer expectations now compared to a year ago. 

Additionally, a substantial portion of respondents indicated that the current economic conditions have resulted in reduced budgets and workforce reductions.

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Marketing teams are spending too much on web development resources

Despite its immense value in contributing to the top line, the website is becoming one of the most expensive assets for marketing teams to maintain. Not only is technology running up their bill, but so is staff resourcing — from web designers to web developers — with the average organization spending $1.09M on talent alone over the past 12 months.

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Marketing teams are facing pressure from the top down

Not only are marketers facing pressure to keep up with market trends, stay ahead of their competition, and keep pace with customer expectations, but they are also under scrutiny from executive leadership.

Marketing leaders across industries echo this sentiment (93% agree) and also believe their websites have critical shortcomings, with more than half reporting their site is missing the visual mark with how it stands today.

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Customer spotlight

How Fivetran delivers engaging web experiences to its global audience

Fivetran has gone from a humble startup founded out of Y Combinator in 2012 to the standard for automated data movement. The Oakland-based tech company’s full-stack data solution makes it easy to move data out of, into, and across your cloud data platforms so data engineers can conduct queries and analyses to understand what is and isn’t working for a business.

As the company grew, it identified a massive opportunity: to be the premiere automated data movement platform for large enterprises. This new upmarket motion made Fivetran team realize they needed a tech stack that was powerful enough to support their ambitious growth goals.

After they vetted a number of platforms and made the switch the Webflow Enterprise, they hit the ground running, migrating their entire site — as well as building 20 new pages — in under three months. Today, Webflow powers all of Fivetran’s professional websites, and they’ve increased speed to market by 98%, freeing up their time so they can focus on elevating their marketing and web initiatives and deliver more complex and visually-engaging experiences to their global audience.

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The marketer’s website

Marketing leaders are at a crucial turning point — one where they must decide how to effectively drive awareness, communicate their vision, and outrun the competition. It’s up to them to meet this moment — one marked by a uniquely high rate of competition — and it starts by empowering marketing teams with the skills and tech they need to build a stunning website.

In this free ebook, learn how visual development tools are changing the game for modern marketing teams who crave flexibility, autonomy, and the ability to save precious engineering time.

Marketers crave ownership over the website

While the customer experience (CX) is commonly understood as a shared responsibility across multiple functions in the business, our findings show that the vast majority (92%) of marketing leaders believe their marketing team leads CX initiatives at their organization today.

As the champions of CX, this response is consistent with how marketing leaders view website governance, with 88% reporting they believe they should have full ownership over the website.

This, however, is not in-line with reality, with over one-third (36%) reporting they currently do not own their site despite wanting to. 

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Marketers are currently restricted from owning the website

One of the primary reasons marketing teams lack the ability to claim full ownership over the website is because of their current organizational structure.  

81% of marketing leaders state their team is restricted by developers and other teams.

The current cross-functional processes, team structures, and workflows companies have in place inhibit marketing teams from making updates and changes to the website autonomously — signaling that collaboration is a key challenge for the majority of respondents.

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The marketing <> developer relationship is broken

Technical resourcing is not so much the culprit for organizations' inability to deliver on their web goals, with 77% of marketing teams reporting they have dedicated in-house development resources today. 

Enterprise businesses are instead lacking the proper operational foundation they need to set their teams up for scalable success. Without a team structure and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that defines how marketing teams can work with web developers, many in-house teams are struggling to effectively work together. This is top of mind for marketing leaders, 91% of whom admit that their teams could collaborate better with engineers/developers.

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Web collaboration is inevitable

Websites often involve numerous stakeholders due to their multifaceted nature and critical role in modern business operations. In fact, marketing leaders claim that there are 67 people on average working on their website at any given point in time.

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Today, ineffective collaboration is a critical blocker

Marketing teams across the board are not currently empowered to manage the website due to a number of blockers: 66% highlight creative processes as a major inhibitor, 68% blame web development processes, and 63% of those surveyed find IT processes overly restrictive. 

These findings underscore the need for improved collaboration and alignment across the board. Respondents in all industries share these pains, and this lack of effective processes has become a significant barrier for marketings teams as they look to develop more engaging web experiences.

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Organizations are also being held back by their web infrastructure

Marketing teams aren’t just being held back by processes. Currently, organizations lack the tools and technology to be both effective and successfully, with more than half reporting it’s difficult make changes because of their current web infrastructure. 

Without the right systems in place, businesses are paying tremendous costs, with roughly only half staying on time and on budget. So while speed to market can give companies an edge over competitors, organizations are struggling to even make simple copy changes to their websites in less than a day.

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Customer spotlight

How Ponce Bank modernized its website

Most small community banks today use one of three financial technology tools. These solutions offer a most-sizes-fits-all bundle of web offerings, forcing teams to sacrifice agility, quality, and control.

For Ponce Bank, working a traditional CMS meant their marketers and designers didn’t have the power or control to manage the main marketing site and other web properties. The team had to go through a month-long process with developers to make the simplest changes, like replacing an image.

As a bank, website changes often require a two-week compliance review, but what previously took one month to build now takes Ponce two to three days — or sometimes just a few hours with Webflow. This marketing-friendly solution allows the team — now seven in total — to take ownership of their brand narrative, create and publish new pages and content autonomously, make metrics-driven decisions, and support the future launch and growth of a digital bank. As a result, every department across the bank has seen the brand come to life and is now even more invested in its success.

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Running a highly efficient marketing team

As modern businesses look to scale their web presence globally, they must act now and build marketing teams and processes that will future proof their businesses. Successfully doing so requires a total paradigm shift — one where business leaders are proactive so they can overcome hurdles like hiring the right people, securing enough budget, and aligning expectations with stakeholders. Only then can they build scalable,  revenue-generating programs to set their organizations up for sustainable growth.

The technology marketing teams have in place is missing the mark

How teams collaborate and who can actually use their tech stack is preventing marketing teams from delivering on their goals. 

The majority marketing leaders (92%) agree that they need to improve their website in order to achieve their business goals. And while enterprise businesses often look to technology to solve key challenges, many cite their tech stack is currently their primary or a considerable blocker.

60% of survey respondents report their current stack does not meet their requirements, pinpointing three key challenges they hope to overcoming in 2024: 

1. Improve their web infrastructure
2. Empower marketing team members to build new web experiences
3. Accelerate their time to production

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Websites aren’t always the most stable either

Despite the amount of time, money, and resources organizations are pouring into their websites — and how critical of a marketing asset they qualify them as — more than half (55%) currently believe their current website is both fragile and susceptible to breakage.

Respondents’ level on concern with the stability of their website varied according their current platform – with digital experience platform (DXP) users citing the highest belief of risk.

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Technology is holding teams back — and marketing leaders are ready to find a solution

Marketing leaders have a number of key priorities to balance at any given moment, but it’s clear their website is top of mind.

And while companies face a number of challenges when it comes to enhancing the power and impact of their website, many are prioritizing technology above all in 2024. 

The top three priorities shared by marketing leaders today are:

1. The need for technology that helps them deliver stellar customer experiences
2. The need to improve tech adoption at their organization and among their teams
3. The need to adopt a culture of experimentation within their marketing organization

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Customer spotlight

How Wave refreshed their website and gained more flexibility

Toronto-based Wave is on a mission to help service-based freelancers, contractors, consultants, and self-employed entrepreneurs take the fear out of handling business finances and better manage their money.

As the company continued to evolve, it looked to position itself as an integrated, one-stop money management solution and make their brand more approachable to specific audiences within the small business community. As a result, the team was preparing for a brand refresh to adjust its position and build a visual brand that was more approachable and unique. And in order to properly execute this refresh, their brand team needed a website solution that could offer them more design flexibility and would drain less engineering resources.

With Webflow, Wave successfully rolled out their refreshed branding and launched their new site on Webflow, with Webflow Expert 8020. Doing so resulted in a 3x improvement in site speed, a 4% to 21% increase in organic traffic to key converting pages, and a 6% increase in conversions from paid campaign landing pages.

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Supercharge your website with a scalable CMS

An enterprise website is only as strong as the tech stack, and scalability is critical — which all starts with your content management system (CMS). But all too often, competing priorities and disparate technologies get in the way of meeting your website goals.

The future is faster — and it’s available today. Learn why choosing a modern enterprise CMS can help your team consistently deliver content and scale your site.

Marketing teams are already turning to more modern solutions

Organizations’ challenges with technology is driving them to explore new solutions. 65% of marketing leaders report they are already using no-code or low-code website tools, and 33% shared they plan to in the next 12+ months. 

Only 1% of respondents expressed no interest in these tools, a signal that the overwhelming majority are bullish on modern web solutions and platforms.

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Organizations that embrace modern website tools are already witnessing benefits

For the two-thirds of respondents that report they already use no-code or low-code tools, at least half are already witnessing incremental improvements in how they work and what they are able to deliver to their customers. The top benefits cited are:

• A more empowered marketing team 
• The ability to implement more sophisticated or complex solutions
• Improved collaboration

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No-code and low-code users are generating incremental improvements

In addition to improvements in processes, collaboration, and focus, marketing leaders report upward trends when it comes to their workloads, cross-functional alignment, and time spent making site changes after implementing no-code or low-code tools.

80% of marketing leaders feel more in control of their team’s workload and bandwidth, compared to 62% of non-users.

Additionally, these decision makers report significant time savings since adopting more modern solutions.

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Customer spotlight

How NCR breaks down web team silos and accelerates time to launch with Webflow

For over 135 years, NCR has been the world’s leading enterprise technology provider for businesses of all sizes — from local food trucks to the world’s largest corporations. As they began exploring how to better handle increased demand, leadership was invested in modernizing the website and speeding up their web development processes.

They believed a stronger, more flexible web foundation would unlock their team’s ability to build unique web experiences and to spin up more landing pages — something they deemed impossible with their existing digital experience platform (DXP).

Historically, web development at NCR was a long, involved process between designers and developers, who became became pixel pushers, often stuck with some level of guesswork due to disjointed web processes. With Webflow, the team has been able to break down silos between the design and development teams, reduce the number of review cycles needed for new web projects, and cut down time to production by 3x.

Technology is only part of the solution

While the majority of respondents in our survey (92%) report their marketing team owns customer experiences at their organization, there is still plenty of work to be done:

• 36% report marketing does not currently own the website
• 58% find it challenging to make changes to the website due to their current tech infrastructure
• 81% report feeling restricted by developers and other cross-functional stakeholders

In order to truly own and drive customer experiences, marketers need to be able to deliver on their customers’ ever-changing needs. And this all starts on the website. 

To successfully own the website, marketing leaders need to start by bringing on tools and technology that can help provide support and lay the foundation they need to start trending in the right direction. 

Our respondent data illustrates the incremental improvements modern web technology like no-code and low-code tools are generating, from more empowered businesses users to increased time to production. But in order to build a truly powerful website and deliver even more engaging digital experiences, companies need more than just technology that is secure, scalable, and extensible — they also need the right processes.

To overcome the array of website challenges marketing leaders are facing today, they must create a new operating model within their organizations. This means bridging the gap between teamwork and technology, as well as developing a framework that facilitates tech adoption, defines website governance, and improves website workflows. Only then can companies begin to trade incremental wins for overwhelming success.

Recommendations for marketing leaders in 2024

Establish your operating model

Organizations that proactively drive new customer experiences will increasingly pull ahead of the competition. Like with all new technology, bringing in new, modern solutions like low-code and no-code tools can create gray areas when it comes to traditional roles and responsibilities. To come out on top, teams must first break down long-standing silos by building new service-level agreements (SLAs) across teams and establishing a single source of truth where all stakeholders can access what they need to be successful, as well as file new requests (i.e. templates, components, or integrations) from their counterparts. Doing so will provide a solid foundation that enables teams to be more agile.

Empower business users

For marketing departments looking to scale the impact of their websites, empowering non-technical team members is key. To unlock your organization’s full potential — as well as stay on time and on budget — consider integrating modern solutions, like low-code and no-code tools. Not only will it help marketers and designers keep up with web projects, but it will allow them to move quickly with changing market demands and deliver more stunning customer experiences, faster — without relying heavily on engineering or IT.

Focus on extensible web development

The era of custom code and traditional marketing / design / development handoffs is coming to a close. In its place is a more flexible, agile, and cost-effective way to create stunning web experiences your customers have come to expect. Leveraging reusable components and processes for web development (i.e. design systems), marketing templates, and integrations will set  web teams up for scale. Additionally, tech and marketing teams can set up safeguards and provision website permissions — positioning them for success in the long-run.

Prioritize web best practices

Websites are complex, ever-changing digital assets that marketing teams must be able to reliably maintain and scale to support their business needs. Marketing leaders should not only provide marketers and designer with tools and processes that set them up for success, but also implement best practices for owning and managing the website. This includes making sure the website is truly accessible, implementing security safeguards, adhering to GDPR and data regulations, optimizing for SEO and site performance, and ensuring their site adapts to every region they serve.

Customer spotlight 

How Dropbox Sign streamlines development

Dropbox Sign frees up employees from manual tasks so they can focus on more important work like selling, managing relationships, and hiring. 

Behind the scenes, Dropbox Sign’s own internal efficiency was hindered by traditional web development processes that caused misalignment between design, marketing, and engineering. Updating site content became a major bottleneck because every little tweak had to go through product engineers—which meant it would often take at least three weeks to make changes. Marketers were frustrated; designers had no ownership over the brand; and developers had to spend valuable time working on trivial updates.

To bring the website under the full control of the marketing team and free up developers to focus on the core product, Dropbox Sign made the move from an engineering-managed custom-coded build to Webflow Enterprise. The team has since cut down the number of tickets it assigns to developers by 67% and the freed up developers can now focus their efforts on process improvements and technical builds. 

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Reimagining web development teams

Traditional models of web development can stunt innovation and hinder your company’s ability to meet growth goals. That’s why establishing a scalable operating model for your web team is so critical. With modern web tools, businesses can shift how their teams work, starting by empowering marketers and designers to successfully build and manage web projects.

To start tackling key organizational and website challenges in 2024, marketing leaders must establish a strong foundation for how various stakeholders come together to build for the web. In this resource, learn why outdated models of building for the web are slowing down innovation, how moving responsibilities closer to marketing and design can accelerate speed to market, and how visual development enables strong cross-team collaboration.

Geography

Countries represented by survey respondents

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Industry

Industries represented by survey respondents

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Company size and revenue

Company sizes of survey respondent organizations

Company sizes of survey respondent organizations

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Marketing department size

Marketing team sizes at survey respondent organizations

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Marketing functions

Marketing functions represented by survey respondents