Why B2B Brands Need to Get Creative with Their Web Builder in 2024

Adobe summarised digital trends in 2023 with the word ‘creativity’ - yes, even in B2B. 

But do you feel your website creatively tells your business’ story?

According to Stanford University research, 75% of users admit to making judgments about a company's credibility based on the design of its website - with over a third of people saying they will stop engaging with a site if the content or layout is unattractive (Adobe). 

It’s a no-brainer that as the virtual shop front for your business, and often the first point of contact for potential clients and partners, having an effective online presence is essential for B2B organisations to thrive (and, arguably, survive).

However, many B2B brands are still operating with outdated website builders, content management systems (CMS) or custom code. 

These legacy platforms limit their ability to adapt to changing market demands and scale their online presence effectively - and, as B2B buyers are looking for the same high-quality, fluid user experience (UX) as B2C buyers, could lose brand credibility and even sales. 

Think of a website as less than a static shop window and more of a dynamic, digital billboard: communicating, championing - mostly visually - who you are, what you do and why you do it. 

If, according to Forrester Research, every dollar invested in UX brings $100 in return, the question about reviewing your website’s functionality - and appeal - should be less of an ‘if’ and more ‘when’. 

This article gets into why - as a specialist B2B content marketing agency - we believe getting creative with your web builder is not only an essential part of your marketing plan in 2024, but a fundamental component of your entire business’ growth strategy.

Web Builder Woes: How B2B Brand Leads feel about their Online Presence in 2024

With an average spend in enterprise companies of $1.6M on website teams and software annually, the website is becoming an increasingly expensive and time-consuming asset to manage - and organisations are struggling to quickly deliver on their customers’ needs. 

60% of marketing leaders believe their current web tech stack is missing the mark, most marketing leaders agree that they need to improve their websites and even change their web builders to achieve their business goals.

This presents a major, ongoing challenge for marketing teams, 93% of whom feel they must continually innovate to remain competitive. 

However, their current stack fails to sufficiently empower their business users to make this a reality.

As 93% of respondents to the same survey as above stated that their exec teams also believe that their websites need improvements, everyone seems aligned on the fact that many sites are no longer delivering… 

So what's up with these websites?

What’s wrong with my drag-and-drop web builder? (Or, the limitations of traditional CMS and custom code for scaling B2B brands)

Traditional CMS platforms and custom-coded websites have served B2B brands well for years with market-dominant CMS providers — like WordPress — promising to make content creation easy by using repeatable templates. But, for modern teams, they come with inherent limitations that can limit agility, stunt growth and prevent true innovation. 

Lack of Flexibility

Traditional CMS platforms or web builders often impose rigid templates and structures, making it challenging to customise the design and functionality of websites according to your - or your customers' -  needs. 

Modern marketing teams need to stay agile and responsive - and this responsiveness needs to play out on a website that smoothly evolves, adapts and improves. But in most enterprise organisations, a reliance on code means two options for the marketing and content teams tasked with producing and publishing content:

• Rely on in-house engineering resources to handle front-end development, or;
• Outsource development work to an agency that can build, implement, and maintain a separate CMS into the overall web tech stack

In both cases, marketing teams are slowed down and a time-consuming development cycle begins to create every single new experience. (And don’t underestimate the compounding costs of continuous overhead associated with making any code change to a developer-reliant website.)

Technical Debt

Custom-coded web builders require ongoing maintenance and updates, leading to increased technical debt over time. This can result in slower load times, security vulnerabilities, and compatibility issues with new browsers or devices… bearing in mind that a 100-millisecond delay in website load time can lead to a 7% decrease in conversion rates. 

Scalability Challenges

As your business grows and evolves, older CMS platforms and custom code may struggle to accommodate increased traffic, content volume, and functionality requirements. This can lead to performance bottlenecks and scalability challenges that impede your ability to capitalise on new opportunities.

Limited Integration Capabilities

Integrating third-party tools, analytics platforms, or marketing automation systems with traditional CMS platforms or custom code can be complex and time-consuming, limiting your ability to leverage data and insights effectively.

The question then remains… what is the solution?

How can B2B brands build better websites?

Over 45.8% of all websites on the internet use Wordpress (and 65% of those that use a CMS), according to W3Techs (2023). 

But if you’re seeing red flags about the shortcomings of traditional CMS platforms and custom code, what’s the alternative to your drag and drop builder… especially given that less than 1% of the world’s population can write code?

Growing B2B brands looking to drive innovation at scale and deliver relevant customer experiences faster need a winning digital strategy - and website - to get them there. 

However, creating truly stunning, agile and creative web experiences is a delicate art that requires a balance of people, processes, and technology.

People

One way to get to that equilibrium sweet spot is to tie together your creative ecosystem with strong bonds between your marketers and your web developers - in fact, 91% of marketing leaders state they could collaborate better with engineers / developers. 

Whether your developers are in-house or an external agency - like Wildtribe - your people need to talk. To do this well, they need to understand each other’s needs and be able to respond to them through clear operating processes. 

In addition, it’s vital that wider stakeholders as well as leaders in the organisation feel that their voice is being heard and any new site is pushing to achieve growth and strategic business goals. 

Processes

How getting things done, should be transparent and facilitate collaboration - and both teams’ creativity: we often see that 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. 

One of the ways Wildtribe can help your website roar is the synchronicity we bring through our tried and tested working processes between our senior marketing and development teams. We work to clear project plans with robust task and document management processes to support visibility, alignment and accountability. 

We also typically operate on a ‘growth-driven design approach’ where we get key pages live, rather than waiting to build out a complete site. This is vital to create instant impact for clients, and evolve the rest of the site as their business grows into its new clothes. 

Technology 

It’s a hard truth, but it might be time to migrate your site away from the tech of the past to a modern, scalable solution. 

At Wildtribe we like to build on Webflow: no templates, just custom design without limitations, ensuring that your brand identity shines through and resonates with your target audience.

On a practical level, the cloud-based platform handles hosting, security updates, and performance optimisations automatically, freeing up your team to focus on strategic initiatives.

We’ve analysed hundreds of enterprise business’ websites from across the sectors we know best - tech, renewables and aerospace - and the most creative and delightful user experiences are delivered on sites that have re-platformed, or moved away from, the drag and drop builders of the past.

If you’re looking to begin your website’s next evolutionary leap, let’s talk. 

In B2B, personalisation of customer journeys is the next stride forward. Buyers are seeking experiences tailored to their needs and a customer experience akin to those they receive from D2C brands. Your aim may well be to deliver this for them - scaling your business through a website that is more creative, agile and personalised. 

We can help build you that site: the foundation from which you will get found, be heard and grow the next iteration of your business.  

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