Much of web development still relies on a siloed approach in which designers, marketers, and developers work in isolation.
It seems obvious that in-house collaboration would improve outcomes and increase productivity, yet it remains one of the biggest hurdles web development teams face. We recently caught up with Jace Wade, Product Marketing Manager at Webflow, to hear his insights on how web teams can collaborate better.
Websites have more eyeballs and stakeholders than ever before
Websites are the front door to businesses. Potential customers may never interact with a human, and their sole interactions with a brand may happen digitally through your website. With increased eyeballs on the website, more teams within an organization have opinions and requests for website changes.
“Ten years ago, only a few folks worked on the website,” Wade says. “You’d have a web developer and a few content folks to update the copy and messaging. Nowadays, the website is the engine of your brand and more teams have a stake in the website’s success.”
On average, 67 people contribute to a website, according to our State of the Website report. And 77% of non-technical individuals say they need support to build custom experiences for their organization’s website.
The design team is responsible for the structure and build, content owns blog posts and messaging, and product marketing relies on landing pages to fuel the success of product releases. If you have a traditional way of building and updating your website, all of those teams submit requests to one or two people who make the updates. This results in a central bottleneck.
“The ability to give all stakeholders and user types the ability to play their own part and fulfill their own requests on the website in a safe way is huge for speed to market,” Wade says.
Siloed tools are the root of communication barriers
Typically when teams find collaboration or communication difficult, the real problem is that they’re using different tools for the same project. When teams rely on multiple platforms to complete a single deliverable, important details can get lost in the shuffle.
Instead of marketing briefs in one app, design files in another, and developer tasks tracked in separate project management software, a unified approach accelerates release cycles. “What’s most effective is helping everyone speak the same language. That means allowing them to work side by side in the same platform and add comments in real time for other stakeholders to see.”
When people from different teams can see the steps and status updates for a project to be live, they have visibility and can work together, rather than having a cumbersome handoff between teams. With Webflow’s collaboration features, teams can work in parallel and they can see where another teammate is editing the site, reducing barriers to collaboration.
The top two challenges for website collaboration: speed and safety
Many teams have projects waiting in a backlog for the website team to deploy. The first challenge that collaboration solves is slow speed to market for web projects: 48% of web projects aren’t completed on-time or on-budget, according to our State of the Website report.
The second challenge is building safely with quality control guardrails, so teams don’t break the website. Over half (55%) of the marketing leaders we surveyed say they think their current website is both fragile and susceptible to breakage.
Wade shares: “A lot of teams tell us that they want more people to help with the site, but they’re scared to invite them in because they think they’re going to break something.”
Step one of building websites collaboratively is setting the right roles and permissions. This will unblock team members to contribute and work efficiently.
“Roles and permissions are foundational and will determine the success of everything that follows,” Wade says. Webflow has robust roles and permissions based on the level of access needed.
Key ways to collaborate on a website
Create clear roles and permissions
Establishing clear roles and permissions helps every team member know what they’re responsible for and what they’re allowed to access, which removes bottlenecks and empowers teams to work efficiently without compromising site safety. This helps teams move faster and avoid mistakes by giving the right level of access to stakeholders.
Choose a shared toolset
Teams often juggle multiple platforms and might consider adding dedicated team collaboration tools that allow seamless content updates. Using a shared set of tools — ideally within a single platform like Webflow — helps minimize miscommunication and redundant work caused by disparate systems. When team members are working in the same environment with synchronized information, they can collaborate more smoothly and keep progress visible to everyone.
Define a feedback cycle
Defining a regular feedback cycle with structured review points and centralized commenting keeps communication flowing and prevents feedback from getting lost across emails or external tools. By keeping reviews and comments in one place and scheduling timely checkpoints, teams can iterate quickly and make sure feedback drives progress rather than stalls it.
Build better together with Webflow’s real-time collaboration
Building together starts with giving different stakeholders the capabilities and autonomy to create websites that convert visitors into customers. Leaders often are looking for ways to empower their teams, rather than a solution for collaboration.
“Most leaders come to us saying they want to set up their team for success with tools that help them execute quickly with the right guardrails. They’re using legacy solutions that promote bottlenecks, when really, they want to unlock collaboration for their team and empower everyone to do their best work.” Webflow’s real-time collaboration is the solution.
Real-time collaboration allows teammates to work side-by-side — that means everyone can contribute to the same project, at the same time, even on the same page. Real-time collaboration upgrades how teams work in Webflow, no matter your role or skill level. You can expect:
- Faster speed-to-market: Work in tandem with your team on web pages. That means multiple people can work together to get projects done faster.
- Fewer bottlenecks: From designers to marketers, get visibility into who’s working on a web page without waiting for your turn or needing to override permissions that will slow you down.
- Teamwork: Take coworking to the next level by collaborating like a well-oiled machine and see live updates as they happen. Enterprise guardrails make sure you’re building and publishing safely.
Measuring collaboration through speed and conversion
Collaboration isn’t typically a KPI leaders aim for; rather, successful collaboration helps a business achieve its goals. When aligning business goals with collaboration, the two primary metrics to look at are speed to market and conversion rate. If web projects can’t launch quickly enough and development timelines are slow, business growth and innovation stall. As a result, conversion rates decrease.
When more teams contribute to the website and bottlenecks decrease, the company is able to get projects out the door faster. With more teams having insight into changes to the website, they have more brains working on it and can identify what’s working sooner, so you learn from experiments and A/B tests faster. “A product marketer might see that messaging on a landing page converts better. Then, they can suggest the team spin out more similar content or update other landing pages,” Wade illustrates.
Common website collaboration metrics
- Speed to market
- Conversion rate
- Time from request to publish
- Number of concurrent web updates
- Conversion rate trends post-launch
Collaboration never stops
Website collaboration is an ongoing process, and it doesn’t stop once you’ve launched your website. You continually need to work together with other teams to analyze website performance, experiment, and identify efforts that achieve business results.
“Typically, teams are trying to improve the process of building and launching, but they also need to track how the site is performing once it is live” Wade says. “The website requires teams to regularly analyze performance and then improve the site based on tests and experiments.”
These insights reinforce that continuous collaboration builds momentum for ongoing improvements. When each contributor has a clear role and quick access to the right tools, you can keep your site evolving alongside your business goals.
Want to learn the best tips on how to get the most out of Webflow’s real-time collaboration feature? Check out The Webflow Way article.
Build with your team, not around them
Now your entire team can work together in Webflow at the same time — even on the same page — without time-consuming bottlenecks or unnecessary handoffs.
