automation-software

For members of that team — including myself — the goal is to build robust and reliable systems that developers can depend on to successfully serve data to and from external applications that may be in use across hundreds of thousands of websites.

A key method of communication between platforms and third-party applications includes the usage of webhooks to maintain near real-time data synchronization across systems. For large content management systems, webhook events can contain large unbounded amounts of data that can be difficult to propagate due their size.

Below, read more about how our team overcame the SQS client’s payload constraints by extending its interface to process and deliver sizable events for our webhook domain needs.

The SQS client payload limitation

AWS’s Message Queueing Service (SQS) powers many domains and services that exist within Webflow’s backend. To interface with SQS, we use Amazon’s SDK client which has a maximum payload size limitation of 256 kilobytes per message. Given these constraints, our team was quickly blocked from delivering large webhook data events whose content was packaged and enqueued in a SQS message intended to be processed downstream by a webhook queue worker.

Some of our engineering teams had previously circumvented the SQS client limitation with custom-built solutions that included storing pointers to resources in the message contents to be queried from a datastore at a later time. However, given that webhooks are a snapshot of an event that might only exist within a given period of time, it was important for our team to find a better way to store the event specifics to ensure the data integrity of the webhook event remained intact.

Data storage considerations

When evaluating datastores to store large message contents, we looked at three options already in use in our environment:  S3, Redis, and MongoDB. Storage size was the main thing we were looking to solve, and S3 was a clear winner in comparison to the other options when it came to having a  large storage capacity for cardinal data. 

Other deciding factors for our team included data durability, scalability, and cost concerns  — all areas where S3 shined. We were less concerned with datastores with high throughput or low latency which was the strength of another one of our options, Redis. Additionally, utilizing an Amazon managed service like S3 meant we did not have to worry about manually managing the datastore’s infrastructure specifics to maintain consistency, availability, and data partitioning.

Solution approach and implementation

Our approach to storing large message payloads in S3 is not a novel idea, as Amazon open-sources extended clients in both Python and Java to achieve the same functionality. However, Amazon did not have a library offering that matched our tech stack language, so we opted for writing an in-house solution.

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To get started, we extended our batch SQS client interface to store a message’s payload in S3 if and only if it exceeded the size of 256KiB. We also updated large messages’ headers with a reserved keyword key-value pair whose value was a pointer to the location of the message data in S3. This made it so that when any message is read off the queue, the client first checks if this key exists in the header to determine whether the message payload must be pulled from S3. Additionally, all of this implementation was abstracted away so that no SQS message producer or consumer across all of our products had any inclination to the data storage specifics. 

To offload the deletion of S3 entries for large SQS payload messages, we configured a S3 lifecycle policy to automatically handle deletions of messages whose lifespan exceeded the SQS message retention period. By doing so, we simplified the client’s implementation by reducing a roundtrip network call to S3 when successfully reading and processing a message. This resulted in improved performance and removed S3 retry handling when dequeuing a message as compared to if the client had to perform S3 deletions.

Some initial success metrics that we collected after doing a phased rollout of the extended client included successfully delivering over 13,500 large payload webhooks with a 100% success delivery rate. What’s even more notable is that we delivered a solution to all of our application queues and jobs that prevents future engineering bandwidth costs to be invested to overcome the SQS client’s payload limitations.

Our ongoing commitment to optimizing our technical infrastructure 

After releasing an initial solution to support large message payload sizes within our queueing system, future optimizations remain and have been roadmapped to improve the implementation. For example, data compression and decompression of SQS message payloads is not ubiquitously performed in the queuing process. Certain data compression algorithms can have a compression ratio as high as 5:1 which can improve network latency performance, reduce S3 storage costs for stored documents, and decrease the number of messages stored in S3 since raw data payload sizes can be greater than 256 kilobytes.

Enhancements like this are part of the dedicated effort that Webflow embarks on to provide dependable infrastructure that third-party developers can build on, and we’re excited to continue uncovering additional opportunities that allow us to ship the best possible products and solutions.  

If you’re interested in joining our growing product and engineering organization, check out our careers page to learn more about Webflow and explore our open roles.

Building a website is just the beginning. As tech stacks evolve and security standards shift, your website must keep up.

Site migration plays a crucial role in achieving this. It’s a comprehensive process — you’ll need cross-functional collaboration between all company departments and must consider budgets, timelines, and resources.

But when done properly, the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term challenges. Site migrations can improve performance and user experience while updating technologies and security protocols to align with current accessibility and safety standards.

And from a design perspective, migrations can bring more modern designs, faster page loads, and smoother navigation. Overall, it prepares your site for long-term scalability.

4 common types of site migration

Before implementing a website migration, start by understanding four common migration situations and how they could affect your site:

1. Moving to a different domain

Rebranding, shifting the business direction, and acquiring a more suitable domain name are all possible motivations to switch domains. When migrating, you must redirect old URLs to the new domain to preserve existing search engine rankings and brand visibility.

2. Replatforming

This migration type occurs when switching your site’s underlying platform or content management system (CMS), like moving from WordPress to Webflow. Replatforming affects the site’s structure, URL syntax, and tech stack.

3. Switching servers

One of the most common site migration approaches is moving your site from one hosting server to another. You might do this to improve loading speeds, increase security measures, or scale resources to accommodate more traffic. While the URLs might not change, your site’s IP address will, which can impact performance and search engine optimization (SEO) if done poorly.

4. Consolidating subdomains

You may wish to merge multiple subdomains into a single, more cohesive domain. This offers a smoother user experience and consolidates SEO equity under one domain but requires careful planning regarding redirects and URL mapping (linking URLs to webpages).

When to migrate your site

Consider a site migration if you plan on undertaking any of the following changes or improvements.

Implementing top-level site changes

To make significant changes to your site’s core functionality and features, like moving from an on-site server to a cloud-based solution or switching web domains, you might first migrate to an advanced hosting platform. That way, you have the necessary infrastructure to support these extensive changes.

A site migration lets you:

• Integrate with new tools. Using a more modern tech stack means you can integrate advanced third-party services and tools. If your existing site can’t support a new email plugin, for instance, migrating to a new platform lets you implement this plugin.
• Enhance site security. New platforms often come with enterprise security and risk management protocols that offer stronger protection against emerging cybersecurity threats.
• Improve scalability and flexibility. Modern platforms handle increased traffic and evolving user demands more effectively. And cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions like Amazon Web Services (AWS) offer scalable infrastructure that allows your site to accommodate traffic growth and content changes without degrading performance.

Redesigning your website

Sometimes, a website migration is necessary even when your current infrastructure isn’t outdated. If you plan to redesign your website but your current development platform no longer aligns with your evolving business needs, brand messaging strategies, and in-house team capabilities, you need to migrate your site to make your desired changes.

Replatforming or switching servers during a website redesign empowers you to:

• Update branding and design elements. Website migration is an excellent opportunity to update branding elements, like typography, colors, and images, to align with current trends and your evolving brand identity. This ensures your site looks modern and resonates better with your target audience.
• Improve accessibility and usability. As part of the redesign, you can improve accessibility features like mobile responsiveness, text readability, and navigational clarity. Enhancing these aspects makes your site accessible and user-friendly to people with varying accessibility needs.
• Implement advanced functionality and interactivity. A website migration lets you add features and interactive elements that your current platform might not support. This could include sophisticated sales features, hyperpersonalization powered by artificial intelligence (AI), and interactive media. Moving to a platform that supports these modern web functionalities lets you create a more dynamic website that improves user engagement and retention.

Restructuring your website

Site restructuring involves changing the site’s back-end and front-end architecture to handle current and future growth, be it increased traffic or website content. When restructuring, migrate to a platform or server that supports extensive changes and your operational needs.

Migrating during a restructure lets you:

• Develop a flexible site architecture. Moving to a new platform allows your site to accommodate different content types and interactions. You can structure your site to support various layouts and user pathways that ensure a personalized experience for each visitor. An adaptable structure also enables smoother updates so you can keep your site responsive to changing trends.

Implement internationalization features. A flexible site architecture lets you support variable content. This adaptability establishes the foundation for internationalization so you can seamlessly share language-specific content as needed to cater to global audiences.

Website migration checklist: 6 steps for a successful site migration

Every migration is unique, but these six website migration best practices provide a solid foundation to start your journey.

1. Define the migration type and set goals for teams

Outline the type of migration and the reasons behind it. Whether it’s boosting performance by upgrading to a faster server or improving engagement with a new layout, clarified motivations help guide your migration team to meet these goals.

Once you understand your broad aims, make these goals specific and measurable. For example, to improve site performance, set a quantifiable target like increasing page loading times by 20%. And if engagement is a goal, compare metrics like visitor interactions before and after migration.

Having clear goals ensures every step contributes directly to them. You can then assign team objectives related to the migration project’s overarching ones. Here are a few typical roles and responsibilities you’ll need during a site migration:

• Web developers adjust and monitor the site’s structure to ensure performance and scalability.
• Designers align the site’s visuals and navigation with their ideal user experience (UX) and brand identity.
• SEO specialists focus on preserving and improving on search rankings.
• Product and marketing teams keep site users apprised of upcoming changes.

2. Assess existing content and preserve metadata

Create a comprehensive catalog of all site content by organizing files into Google Drive folders or similar platforms for streamlined management. By indexing and backing up your content, you reduce the risk of losing important information during migration.

Changes in content, like adjusting alt text and headings, can alter critical SEO elements and negatively impact your search rankings. Carefully documenting and preserving this metadata during migration helps you keep these SEO elements intact.

3. Preserve site traffic and search optimization

It’s common to experience a temporary drop in site traffic when moving to a new domain because the process changes your domain authority and links. To preserve your site’s SEO during site migration, follow these best practices:

Audit and benchmark current site performance

Before migrating, evaluate your current site’s performance. Identify high-performing pages using SEO tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to avoid drastically changing these areas. Conducting a full site audit helps assess overall site health, monitor keyword rankings, and record existing traffic. This creates a baseline for postmigration comparison so you can accurately measure the migration’s impact.

Clean up SEO before the site migration

Use the website migration process to address SEO issues identified in your audit. Focus on:

• Redirect mapping. Ensure you redirect all old URLs to their new URLs to preserve link equity and maintain rankings.
• Site performance. Optimize your site so it loads and responds quickly. Improvements in site speed also positively impact the UX, and faster websites tend to have better SEO performance.
• Accessibility and indexing. Ensure your new site structure doesn’t have crawl barriers (like broken links or duplicate content) so Google’s bots can freely crawl and index webpages.

Plan a postmigration audit

Schedule an audit of the fully migrated site to identify errors before going live and continue monitoring traffic after migration to assess the site’s efficacy. This comparison lets you confirm that changes achieved their intended benefits. It also helps you identify and make necessary postmigration adjustments, like metadata optimizations, to further improve SEO performance.

4. Maintain backlinks

Actively maintaining backlinks during site migration preserves your SEO equity and safeguards your online authority. Backlinks are vital for SEO because they signal your website’s credibility and relevance to search engines.

Document all current site URLs using SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs. This record is essential for site migration because it allows you to implement redirects accurately and avoid 404 errors.

You might also need to update links in marketing materials like ads, social media posts, and templates. If these links lead to outdated or nonexistent pages (resulting in 404 errors), it confuses visitors and disrupts the user journey, potentially reducing engagement. Directing all links to the correct locations preserves your marketing campaigns and maintains your website’s traffic levels.

5. Migrate your content

Effectively migrating your content is crucial because it’s the primary driver of user site traffic. Follow these steps to ensure you successfully move it over.

Use a CSV file for migration

Take an organized approach by exporting your content into a CSV file. Uploading this file to your new CMS is generally less error-prone than manually uploading each page or using copy-paste methods. It also makes content transfer easier.

Preserve your content structure

Implement an XML sitemap on your old and new sites during the migration. This sitemap helps you verify that all content and site structures migrate accurately by letting you cross-reference and verify each element. And it helps search engines like Google index your site. This map details a site’s content and structure so crawlers understand where to place content in Google’s index (and this placement affects where you show up in results pages).

6. Measure the impact of your site optimization strategies

Gauging your website’s performance after migration helps you pinpoint areas for further improvement and validates the efficacy of your optimization strategies. Concentrate on key performance indicators such as:

• Page loading times note how quickly users can access your site. Higher site speed scores keep users engaged and prevent them from waiting so long that they decide to leave.
• Time to interact measures the duration before visitors begin actively using your site. A faster interaction time means users engage with your site quickly — you’re hooking them right away.
• Visual element stability during loading and interaction is key to a good UX. Stable visuals prevent elements from shifting unexpectedly as the page loads and users interact, which can be disorienting and frustrating.

These insights are invaluable in guiding future website enhancements. By understanding how your changes affect UX and site performance, you can make better-informed and data-driven decisions about where to focus optimization efforts next. This could involve further refining sections that already show improvement or addressing new areas that your data reveals need attention.

A smooth transition for your site

A site migration is a time- and resource-intensive process that can seem daunting — even if it offers many benefits. Check out how Webflow, a powerful visual web development platform, transforms your migration experience. We provide integrations to port your existing site from WordPress and other CMS platforms with the click of a button.

Learn how to migrate your site to Webflow and boost your site performance. Get started with Webflow Enterprise today.

While there’s nothing wrong with multipage site, a well-designed one-page website can really pack a punch. Whether it’s a personal website, online portfolio, or business microsite, single-page websites can provide a smooth and simple user experience.

Why make a single-page website?

The concise nature of a one-page design can work in your favor. Single-page websites typically provide faster site speed and performance. Fewer pages means less real estate to consider, so you can focus all your creativity and content into a single captivating experience. Whether you build from scratch or use a template, you can incorporate animations and visual motifs, and strategically use typography, color combinations, and spacing throughout your design. 

If you’re building or designing a website with a lot of information or products, a multipage website may be the best route. But if you’re creating short-form content or designing an online portfolio, a single-page website gives you the opportunity to showcase your storytelling and brand. Effective single-page websites combine beautiful design, usability, and compelling messaging.

11 one-page website examples to inspire you

Here are 11 standout one-page website examples featuring eye-catching design and structure — each made with Webflow.

1. Get Structure

Founded by Mike Rowan and Isaac Saldana, Get Structure is a financial operations and bookkeeping SaaS start-up that “helps early-stage businesses achieve operational excellence and growth.”

Brilliantly designed by the creative agency Digital Surgeons, Get Structure is a beautiful one-page website, an ideal example to draw inspiration from for start-up and business websites in the financial or software sector. The one-page layout, sans serif fonts, color scheme, and pastel, glass-like 3D visual elements evoke a sense of balance and effortless ease in the site visitor, prompting the idea that “with structure comes excellence (and relief).”

The copy’s brevity, click-to-toggle headers, click-to-reveal, and hover-to-reveal body copy add to the one-pager’s sense of structure and ease, further evoking the brand’s positioning of helping businesses achieve operational excellence and growth.

2. Actor’s Portfolio (Webflow cloneable)

Reminiscent of works by painter Piet Mondrian, Actor’s Portfolio is a bold and fun single-page Webflow cloneable. The portfolio website’s one-page layout, stark lines, typeface, and color scheme create an eye-catching design, incorporating playful undertones often associated with theater and improv; this is an actor’s portfolio, after all. 

The logical flow of Actor’s Portfolio is simplistic and straightforward, with different sections for About, Resumé, Gallery, Reels, Testimonials or Press, and Contact. This single-page website is ideal for any creative looking for a portfolio website with an eye-catching yet uncomplicated design.

3. ACID

The Amsterdam Chemistry Innovation Day is an annual event hosted by the Amsterdam Chemistry Network, the University of Amsterdam, and AIMMS, Amsterdam’s molecular research accelerator.

Designed by the incredibly talented strategic design studio Creative Mules, this single-page event website is a standout. Featuring a cheerful periwinkle-and-white color scheme and sans serif fonts, ACID’s one-page website feels youthful and forward, reflecting both its audience and initiatives. A rotating 3D gemstone overlays the center screen of the initial fold, enticing appeal while creating quite a memorable impression.

Including interactive elements such as a dynamic navigation menu, on-hover micro-animations, and scroll-triggered parallax effects further enhances the site’s dynamism and event’s allure. This design approach makes the site and, thus, the coming event feel exciting and worthwhile, an event worth attending for the aspiring student chemist.

4. Juan Mora

Juan Mora’s portfolio functions as a perfect “placeholder” website for individuals or agencies within the creative domain. Whether you’re an agency or freelancer, your site is under construction or coming soon, or you simply need a one-page website to consolidate your work from other platforms, let Juan’s one-page portfolio website inspire you.

Upon redirecting to the one-page website, a brief bio and credentials greet site visitors with Behance, Dribbble, and Instagram linked below. Juan’s approach to design and inclusion of on-hover microinteractions and scroll-triggered animations wonderfully demonstrates his creative expertise, with an added touch of personal flair. Give this one-pager a scroll to see Juan’s cheekily designed, scroll-triggered copy, animations, vector illustrations, and more.

Juan shows us that your site’s design can still retain your branding, personality, work samples, social media, and more, even if the site is still a work in progress. 

5. Microinteractions.co

Microinteractions.co is a ready-to-use microinteractions library designed and developed by Ireland-based Webflow designer and developer Hafiz Manzoor.

The library’s landing page features a single-page layout with a stark black-and-yellow color scheme and sans serif typography. The opening folds lay out the what and how behind the platform, with calls to action to “Get Lifetime Access” accompanying graphics, iconography, and copy. Testimonials, a section for pricing, and FAQs follow, concluding with a final CTA.

If you have a digital or single product that needs a landing page, let Microinteraction.co’s one-page website design inspire you.

6. Ribalta

Ribalta is a beautiful single-page restaurant website with every visual element having a place in this clean design. A smooth parallax scroll provides micro-animations and movement, drawing the eye to images of a beautiful, brightly lit restaurant and delicious pizzeria dishes. 

The chosen color scheme, typefaces, and fonts tie the design together, and the added load screen furthers the site’s tasteful look and feel. The team behind the Ribalta website design did a fantastic job maintaining simplicity without compromising on design.

7. DesignCraft

DesignCraft is a premium design and creative service provider led by Product Designer Jennifer Janosi. While the one-pager’s layout follows the standard landing page formula — about, what, work, pricing, FAQs, and closing CTA — what truly stands out is Jennifer’s attention to detail.

The chosen color palette feels affirming, fun, and trustworthy; the colorful, misshapen circle motifs further cement this feeling. The scroll-to-reveal navigation menu, click-to-reveal drop-downs, and header toggles allow the single-page website to maintain a clear structure and order without compromising on design.

The sans serif typography, micro-animations, and other on-hover and scroll-triggered interactive elements further this notion, demonstrating Jennifer’s creative talent and expertise in a single design. DesignCraft is an excellent one-page website example from which to draw inspiration for design and other creative services, agencies, or studios.

8. Master Gorgeous UI Design

The team behind Pablo Stanley’s Master Gorgeous UI Design landing page doesn’t just talk the talk; they walk the walk, and it’s wonderfully demonstrated in this one-page website example’s delightful design.

A true visual treat, Master Gorgeous UI Design features a clean layout with scroll-triggered parallax effects and on-hover microinteractions. The copy is concise, with each fold depicting the course’s offer and instructor’s credentials, concluding with testimonials, social proof, and a CTA image overlay.

The white space is beautifully balanced with colorful accents and the occasional emoji, creating excitement around the site’s design and, by extension, Pablo’s upcoming UI design course.

9. Musab Hassan

If you’re looking for a one-pager portfolio website with a more reserved yet sophisticated look and feel, let web developer Musab Hassan’s portfolio website inspire you.

Musab’s arrangement of white space, copy, and imagery, along with stylized imagery, serif headers, scroll-triggered parallax effects, and soft charcoal-and-white color palette, elevates the one-page website design, creating a portfolio that feels not only professional but ethereal.

Essential portfolio elements, such as work samples, are readily available, neatly side by side, with the content tucked away behind a “View” CTA.

10. Atoms

Based on James Clear’s New York Times best-selling book, Atomic Habits, the Atoms app landing page boasts a beautiful, familiar design. Optimized for web and mobile, the stripped-down, minimalist design uses white space, interchanging serif and sans serif typefaces, rudimentary illustrations, and simplistic language to appeal to the app’s target audience while explaining its why.

Scroll-triggered micro-animations add a sense of love and care to the landing page’s design. Boulder-like illustrations serve as visual motifs, representing building blocks, a nod to the book and the now app’s branding. If you’re designing a landing page for an upcoming app and need some inspiration, you can draw a thing or two from Atoms’s design.

11. Café Frida

Cafés and other artisan brands can take a page from Cafe Frida’s book, as their one-page site is quite the beauty. Upon redirecting to Café Frida’s website, illustrated daisies blossom onto your screen with the café’s stylized logo tucked neatly in the center screen. As you scroll, the daisies recede to the four corners of your screen, framing the one-page site while serving as a visual motif.

Co-owners Gabrielle Cossette and Emmanuel Salib’s passion for the arts and food is evident through the single-page website’s visually pleasing color scheme, high-quality cuisine photos, and detailed food descriptions — the added load screen coffee illustration furthers this notion.

If you’re looking for creative ways to build a start-to-end brand experience, take a page from Cafe Frida’s book. From finding their website via social media or Google to the actual in-person visit, Cafe Frida isn’t just a place to stop for a meal; it’s an experience, and that experience starts with this beautifully designed single-page website.

How to create your one-page website (and what to include)

Whether you build from scratch or use a template, you should first define your one-page website’s purpose, audience, goals, messaging, and visual structure. Next, determine your site’s color schemes, typography, and imagery. What visuals best support the site’s message and narrative structure? How will you appeal to your audience visually? What colors capture your site’s messaging and branding? Questions like these can allow you to determine your site’s visual identity and branding.

Once your site’s visual identity and branding are determined, you can begin constructing its narrative structure. Determine the different sections of your site’s narrative structure or folds by circling back to your site’s overall purpose, audience, and goals.

Feeling inspired?

The key to a beautifully designed one-page website is the effective use of white space and page structure. Create a consistent balance by anchoring links, using click-to-reveal and on-hover toggles, swatches, and so on — again, the sky’s the limit with one-pager websites.

If these beautiful one-page website examples sparked some ideas, why not get started on your own design? Use this as an opportunity to challenge and surprise yourself and use your creativity. Grab a one-page website template or cloneable to get going, or start building from scratch with Webflow.

It’s no secret that your website is your most critical marketing channel. But in order to truly deliver on ever-evolving customer needs, organizations need flexibility to build more powerful website experiences. 

Last year, we introduced the next generation of Webflow Apps — a signal of our commitment to our belief that integrating with best-in-class third-party tools is essential to helping businesses thrive. And today, we’re excited to share that our own App —  available through the HubSpot App Marketplace — was named an Essential App for Marketers by HubSpot. 

Below, read more details on what this distinction means and learn how marketing teams can start using the Webflow App alongside HubSpot’s best-in-class CRM capabilities to build and effortlessly deliver relevant content experiences. 

What are HubSpot Essential Apps for Marketers?

HubSpot is the world’s leading customer platform with a Smart CRM, engagement hubs, and a connected ecosystem that enables customer connection. With the HubSpot App Marketplace, teams can integrate their existing tools and find the right apps to grow their businesses. 

‍HubSpot’s Essential Apps for Marketers are 22 featured apps — of 1500+ available apps for marketers — that help marketers create rich, unique, and relevant content experiences through an all-in-one content management platform.

The power of the Webflow App

With the Webflow App, marketers and site owners can easily connect their Webflow site directly to HubSpot using the HubSpot Certified App. This means customers can enjoy the best of both worlds: a high-performing site powered by Webflow that connects seamlessly with HubSpot’s robust customer platform. 

Integrations like these are more important than ever because the role of content has evolved beyond lead generation. Consumers now demand more engaging and personalized experiences, and it’s up to marketers to deliver rich, expertise-backed content in different formats, across channels — and keep it all up-to-date.

How marketing teams can deliver best-in-class content experiences with HubSpot and Webflow today

Managing content across channels is often a major challenge for marketers. This partnership, however, helps solve this problem. Integrating Webflow’s visual development capabilities with HubSpot’s Smart CRM and engagements gives marketers the tools they need to create, manage, and optimize best-in-class content experiences for new and existing customers. 

This connection also makes understanding customer behaviors — and building compelling web experiences informed by them — easier than ever. A few activities marketing teams can do with this integration include:

• Simplify data sharing between Webflow forms and HubSpot
• Visually style HubSpot forms to match your site’s design inside Webflow
• Easily add HubSpot assets, chatbots, and tracking to your site

Building more powerful customer experiences, together

We’re honored to be part of a select class of apps for today’s marketing teams, and we’re excited for a bright, more integrated future with our partners. Together with HubSpot, this App makes understanding customer behaviors — and building compelling web experiences informed by them — easier than ever. To learn even more about the combined power of Webflow and HubSpot, watch our latest webinar, Unifying web design and data. And to get started today, simply install the Webflow App and start building. 

Creating documentation is essential when working with an application programming interface (API), but writing it is initially daunting. However, all it takes to get started is time, a sound process, and answers to a few basic questions. You identify who your API documentation is for, why they need it, and how you can fulfill those needs. Then, you define and implement a robust process that slowly but surely shapes your documentation into a thorough guide for its users.

Learn how writing and maintaining effective documentation can enhance user success and streamline your company’s internal knowledge management.

What’s API documentation?

An API is a software interface that enables programs to exchange information like traffic and survey data. API documentation is similar to a how-to manual — it serves as a comprehensive guide for programmers forming queries to the API.

Although many APIs use the standardized OpenAPI specification, no two APIs are the same. That’s why you need to maintain documentation so your users can properly interact with an API. If a user queries for data in an unrecognizable format, the API won’t recognize it and will return an empty response.

An API example is the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS), which makes weather data publicly available to everyone for free. Weather apps like Weather.com query the NWS database in real time to provide weather information to their users. To accomplish this, they program their application to query the database in adherence to the NWS API documentation’s standards.

The benefits of documenting APIs

Documentation’s primary function is to describe your API’s features and how to work with them. Without it, no one but you can use your interface.

Beyond this, keeping thorough API documentation also provides the following benefits:

• Rapid onboarding. Proper documentation accelerates onboarding time for new users, whether they’re employees in your organization or third-party developers picking up your API for the first time. Providing a resource about what to expect from your API helps users quickly determine whether your API suits their needs and how.
• Efficient user support. If your documentation is comprehensive, you can direct users to it for quick and clear answers to their questions. You only need to send them a link to the relevant page and let them problem-solve independently.
• Enhanced user journey. The user experience improves when users have a go-to resource where they can learn everything they need to know about your API. Samples show the API in action, tutorials guide them through setup, and all the reference material is there to answer their questions. And great documentation uses cross-links, indexes, and glossaries that provide relevant information, like methods and definitions when and where needed.

Types of APIs and their target audiences

The first thing to identify before writing your API documentation is who you’re writing it for. If your API is strictly for in-house developers, it’ll look very different than an open API meant for a broader audience. Here are some distinct user targets for your API and its documentation.

Internal APIs

Data-sharing APIs, communication channels, and analytics platforms are all common examples of internal APIs. They tend to be exclusively for your organization’s use to distribute information and programs in a dependable, fast channel. Typically, these APIs use an intranet connection to share and exchange data securely.

Partner APIs

Companies develop partner APIs so their clients can interface with their data and programs. Examples include payment processing services like Google Pay and big data firms like Oracle. These companies provide services, databases, and programs that clients can access by calling their API with a voice request. The organizations’ documentation is highly detailed to help specific clients troubleshoot potential error codes.

Open APIs

Open APIs are accessible to anyone with the know-how to use them (the NWS is an excellent example). These services and databases exist for a broad audience, so they may lack strict security and clearance regulations. Open APIs need thorough and straightforward documentation because there’s no telling who will use them.

Things to consider before writing API documentation

Before you commit to writing your own documentation, consider your audience.

If your API is only for your internal development team, your documentation has a narrower scope, so it’s worthwhile to write. But if you’re hosting an open API for a wider audience, you might need to use an API documentation tool to ensure your documentation is thorough and accessible to a wide audience. And partner APIs typically need their documentation written in-house because they often use proprietary authentication methods and expect unique variables from their clients.

Next, assess whether you have the resources to create your documentation. Even if you leverage automation, documenting takes considerable time and effort from at least one developer. You also need to maintain the documentation in the long term, which often requires a dedicated writer.

If you don’t have the time or staffing power to create and maintain your own API documentation, consider alternative solutions. Some services like Stoplight and ReadMe automatically generate, host, and maintain documentation so you can avoid the hassle.

But if your team has the bandwidth to write their own documentation, it’s a worthwhile process that bridges the gap between your development team and their audience. API documentation maintained by the developers themselves is often more accurate, detailed, and useful. As with anything, the closer a writer is to the source material, the better the outcome.

How to write API documentation: 8 steps

Before creating your own documentation, familiarize yourself with typical API structures. Here are a few well-established examples to help you understand how yours might look and feel:

When you’re ready to begin, follow this eight-step plan for guidance.

1. Create an outline

Start by developing a detailed document outline. Consider it the table of contents and include headings you expect to write for each section. Add as much detail as you feel confident covering at this point. Try not to include anything that’s still in flux, like references to error codes or functions that might become deprecated soon.

A typical outline includes the following parts:

• Introduction
• Samples
• Tutorials
• Authentication
• Endpoint definition
• API reference
• Troubleshooting

Pro tip: Use a style guide for your documentation to refer to while writing it. You can make your own or select one from a well-established brand like Google or Apple.

2. Select a platform

Typically, developers opt to keep their documentation on a website that they share internally or externally. This is a great option when striving to impress partners and third-party developers. Consider using Webflow’s tools and resources, which make it easy to craft reliable, impressive websites at any scale.

Pro tip: If you aren’t familiar with HTML or Markdown, don’t fret! Webflow offers visual development solutions to kick-start your site without a single line of markup.

3. Write the introduction

On your chosen platform, write an introduction that addresses the audience and clarifies the documentation’s goals for both this audience and yourself. Make sure to mention use cases for your API, highlight its features, and describe the documentation’s intended use. Remember, your writing doesn’t have to be perfect yet — you’ll return to polish it later.

Pro tip: Often, over explaining concepts makes them less clear to readers. Opt for simple, straightforward explanations that describe what you mean in the fewest possible words.

4. Create samples and tutorials

Next, collect working examples of your API in action. Grab all the code snippets you need to demonstrate precisely how your API functions and how to integrate it. Then, write some tutorials that explain how the samples work.

Pro tip: Use interactive examples that guide the user through writing their own queries, which can help build confidence.

5. Explain authentication and endpoints

Now that you have working samples, consider the details of how your API handles authentication and what endpoints it expects. Provide examples and use plain language. This should be as concise as possible so users can quickly find and understand the necessary answers.

Pro tip: If documenting a partner API, include a table where partners can look up how to write their unique variables like gateways and merchant IDs. This will allow them to copy and paste what they need, reducing the possibility of common syntax errors.

6. Write the reference material

Your API reference material is where you detail the functions, classes, and arguments that make your API work. Keep it simple and searchable, and use anchors that help users easily navigate the content. Your aim is to reduce the time the user spends scrolling the page for a particular section.

Pro tip: Use consistent formatting to make the page easier to scan. For example, if you’re writing in HTML, use the

 element to ensure all your JSON, XML, and Python snippets appear orderly.
7. Troubleshoot
Document all the common issues you expect users to encounter, like syntax errors and query failures. If your API has known issues like incompatibilities or strict rate throttling, also devote a page to those. This section doesn’t need to be extensive yet. When your documentation is live, you’ll undoubtedly receive suggestions on what to add.
Pro tip: Refrain from creating an FAQ page. If a question is common, you should make the answer easy to locate in the documentation. This encourages users to look for answers in the right places.
8. Clean it up
Now that all your pages are in place, clean up sections that need polishing or expanding. Revise every section to add context where needed and remove anything redundant. At this stage, you can add cross-links to help users navigate the document more efficiently, and include helpful hints and notes where appropriate. Imagine you’re reading the content for the first time, and add anything you think would make the experience smoother.
Pro tip: Before you launch your documentation, ask your peers for feedback. Their fresh perspectives will be invaluable to discovering any errors or improvement opportunities.
Finally, you can launch the documentation and introduce it to your audience.
Maintain your API documentation with Webflow
With your documentation live, it’s time to craft a maintenance plan. Maintenance plans differ based on how many users the API has and how quickly it changes. These factors determine how regularly the documentation needs updating and how your team will capture takeaways from common support cases.
You’re in good hands if you host your documentation with Webflow Enterprise. The platform provides powerful features that simplify updating and maintaining your site, like page branching, Quick Stack elements, and reusable components. And the many documentation templates available make pivoting your site design quick and seamless.
If you want a helping hand, Webflow University hosts all the guides and support options you need.

PPC is a paid search strategy where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This approach contrasts with traditional online advertising, where you pay for ad space regardless of performance.

Taking a pay-per-click approach focuses your online advertising efforts and helps more people see your brand, which, in turn, builds revenue potential. 

If you’ve been focusing solely on SEO, you have the chance to expand your digital marketing efforts by adding another approach to your toolbox. PPC strategies can transform your site visibility — and grow earnings.

In this article, we’ll explore:

• An introduction to PPC strategies
• Key elements of a PPC campaign
• How to create an effective PPC campaign
• PPC strategies to try out

An introduction to PPC strategies

Since PPC tactics operate on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, this approach provides a cost-effective way to reach audiences who are expressly interested in your products and services. 

How it works: You bid for ad placements on social platforms and search engine results pages (SERPs). The ad auction determines which ads appear for specific search queries and audience members. This dynamic, real-time bidding process enables precise targeting, and you retain control over your advertising spend.

PPC versus search engine optimization (SEO): PPC is distinct from SEO in its approach to increasing website visibility. Although both use SERPs in some way, with SEO you’re focusing on optimizing your content to rank higher through content, keywords, and site structure, and PPC involves paying for top placement in search results. PPC offers immediate visibility and can quickly drive site traffic, whereas SEO is a long-term strategy that builds sustainable, organic growth over time.

Key elements of a PPC campaign

While every PPC campaign has unique goals and target audiences, the following core elements are crucial for success.

Search engine marketing (SEM)

SEM encompasses all online marketing done on search engines, like Google. This includes paid and unpaid efforts. In PPC campaigns, SEM usually refers to paid advertisements that place your ads on SERPs. But PPC campaigns aren’t limited to just search engines — they’re also effective on social media platforms, such as Instagram and LinkedIn.

Ad rank

Ad rank is a vital metric in PPC analytics, since it affects your ad’s placement and visibility. It’s calculated based on your bid amount, your ad’s quality score, and what ad extensions you use. Achieving a higher rank means your ad is more likely to appear in a prominent SERP or social platform position, leading to increased click-through rates (CTR) and better engagement opportunities.

Quality score

Quality score is a key metric used by Google Ads that evaluates your PPC ad’s overall, well, quality and relevance. It ranges from one to 10, with higher scores indicating better quality. It’s influenced by several factors, including: 

• Expected click-through rate: This measures how likely users will click your ad when it’s shown
• Ad relevance: This evaluates how closely your ad content aligns with the keywords you’re targeting
• Landing page quality: This gauges the relevance and user-friendliness of the landing page linked to your ad

Google calculates these metrics based on ad performance using the same keywords over the past 90 days. (This includes your ads as well as your competitors’ ads.) It rates each component as either “Below Average,” “Average,” or “Above Average,” which contributes to your overall quality score. A high quality score can lead to better ad rankings and lower cost-per-click rates. That’s because search engines reward ads that provide relevant, high-quality content. In other words: Quality content leads to more favorable ad placements and increased exposure.

Bidding strategy

Your bidding strategy determines how much you’re willing to pay for each click on your ads. You can choose from various options, such as cost per click, cost per mile (cost per thousand impressions), and cost per acquisition (CPA). 

Select the bidding strategy that aligns with your objectives for the campaign, whether that’s increasing site visits, visibility, or conversion. If your goal is to increase website traffic, for instance, you might choose a cost-per-click bidding strategy that focuses on getting as many clicks as possible within your budget. Or, if your goal is brand visibility, a cost-per-mile bidding approach might be more suitable, since this strategy lets you pay based on how many impressions your ad receives, which makes it a more cost-effective way to increase brand awareness.

Ad extensions

These are supplementary business details (like contact information, links to specific site pages, and product details) that enhance your PPC ads. They expand your ad’s visibility on SERPs by enlarging its footprint, making it more prominent and attractive to potential customers. 

Ad extensions also improve the user experience by providing straightforward pathways to interact with your content, such as visiting a specific product page or contacting your business directly.
Including ad extensions can also positively impact your ad’s placement. Search engines factor the presence of these extensions and their relevance when determining ad positions during auctioning. By offering users more ways to engage with your ad, you increase the likelihood of a better ad rank, leading to better visibility.

Common ad extensions include:

• Sitelink extensions: These provide extra links that direct users to specific website pages, such as a promotional page or frequently asked questions section.
• Callout extensions: Callout extensions highlight key selling points and special offers. For instance, a callout might emphasize free shipping or 24/7 customer support.
• Structured snippet extensions: These extensions present concise information about your products and services to categorize offerings and help users quickly understand what you provide. A travel agency, for example, might use structured snippets to list different tour types (like “Adventure tours: hiking, rafting, and biking”) to help people who see your ad quickly understand your services.
• Location extensions: Especially useful for local businesses, location extensions display your physical address and a link to Google Maps. This helps viewers quickly find your location. An ad for a restaurant, for instance, might include its address and Google Maps profile. When people click on the location extension, they’re directed to the map, making finding and visiting the restaurant simple.
• Price extensions: Price extensions showcase your product and service offerings with the corresponding price, helping users make informed decisions directly from the ad. An electronics retailer, for instance, might use this extension type to show different laptop models with the respective prices, allowing users to compare options directly from the search results.

Ad group

In Google Ads, an ad group is essentially a container for a collection of ads that either share a common theme or target a specific keyword set. This structure allows for more precise targeting with messaging tailored to specific search queries. 

If you run a design agency, for instance, you might create separate ad groups for blog design, packaging design, and brand messaging. Each group can then have its own targeted ads, ensuring the right message reaches the right audience.

Ad text

Ad text encompasses your ad’s written content. Here you align your offerings with your target audience. This space is crucial for showcasing the unique value proposition of your products and services, as well as persuasive calls-to-action (CTAs).

The goal is to write copy that resonates with your audience and encourages them to click through to your site. Say you offer project management software that solves pain points like time wasted toggling between apps and manual task updating. Your ad text might read, “Centralize and automate project management today!”

Keywords

Keywords form the cornerstone of PPC campaigns, acting as triggers for your ads to appear. When you select appropriate keywords, you ensure that your ads are shown to people actively searching for or interested in what you offer. A cybersecurity company might target phrases like “cybersecurity checklist” and “data privacy,” for instance.

Conducting comprehensive keyword research is vital. By identifying terms relevant to your offering and popular with your target audience, you can more effectively direct your ads to people who are likely interested in your services.

How to create an effective PPC campaign in 5 steps

Assemble the PPC strategy elements discussed above into a successful campaign with these steps.

1. Define your campaign goals

Determine what you aim to achieve through your advertising efforts — whether that’s driving website traffic, generating leads, increasing sales, or something else. Use your goals to guide your team and align every decision, from keyword selection to bidding strategy.

Let’s say you run a SaaS company. To increase sign-ups for a new security feature, your campaign might focus on keywords and ads that highlight cybersecurity concerns and target audiences interested in avoiding data breaches. By tailoring your ads to meet specific interests, you’ll better reach your desired audience and outcomes.

2. Perform keyword research

The most effective keywords elevate ad visibility in search engine auctions and guide users directly to your ad. To identify which keywords to use, conduct competitor PPC analysis to understand how other companies target their keywords. This will give you insight into industry standards and help you identify any gaps that your brand could fill. 

Google Ads use an algorithm that prioritizes ads based on how well they match search intent. This means that if your campaign closely matches with what someone is searching for, Google recognizes your ad as more relevant and it’s more likely to display it in a higher SERP position. To truly understand the specific motivations behind your audience’s searches and design the most effective ads, perform extensive user research, such as surveys, focus groups, and feedback analysis..

If you launched a fitness app, for example, and want to target people looking for home workouts, specific keywords like “home fitness app” and “workout routines at home” directly address their needs and search queries. This relevance has dual benefits: It increases the likelihood of people clicking on your ad, and it leads to more meaningful engagement, since visitors will find exactly what they’re looking for.

3. Set up a landing page

Your landing page should seamlessly align with your target audience’s search intent and mirror the promises made in your ad. This alignment is crucial. By ensuring that your landing page content directly relates to your ad and lines up with what visitors expect, you’ll build confidence and trust in your brand. 

An ad highlighting a special deal on website development for small businesses, for example, should have a landing page that prominently features this offer and guides customers on how to claim it. This will likely significantly increase the odds that people will claim the offer. The same idea applies for other conversion opportunities, like sign-ups and downloads.

4. Create your ads

While writing and designing your ads, focus on crafting copy that highlights your unique value proposition and resonates with your target audience. Consider experimenting with elements like visual media and ad extensions to see which works best. 

If you’re advertising a marketing tool, your ad should succinctly convey its benefits with copy like “Transform your marketing campaigns with personalization powered by artificial intelligence.” Including relevant images and videos that visually showcase your product can further engage potential users and encourage them to click.

5. Analyze and optimize your approach

Regularly analyzing and refining your PPC strategy ensures your campaigns yield the desired results. To optimize your approach, focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) like:

• Click-through rate: Monitor this metric to understand how compelling your ad is to those who encounter it. A high click-through rate indicates that your ad is engaging and prompts people to visit your site. A low click-through rate suggests the ad might not be capturing interest.
• Conversion rate: This metric measures the percentage of people who took a desired action after clicking your ad. It’s crucial for understanding how well your ad motivates purchases and sign-ups. 
• Cost per acquisition: Review the cost per acquisition to gauge how cost effective your campaign is in terms of conversions.
• Cost per click: Evaluate and measure cost per click to assess whether the investment in each click aligns with your budget and campaign objectives. 
• Return on ad spend: Calculate the revenue generated for every dollar spent on your PPC campaign. This will help you assess how profitable your ads are and guide budget allocation decisions.
• Audience engagement metrics: Analyze engagement signals, such as page dwell time (how long users spend on a page) and bounce rates (the percentage of visitors who leave your site without taking an action) for people directed from PPC ads. These insights indicate how engaging and relevant your target audience finds your landing page content.

By regularly monitoring these metrics and applying insights to refine your targeting, ad copy, and bidding strategies, you can improve your PPC campaign’s performance. Adjusting based on performance indicators ensures your strategy stays in step with your marketing objectives and that you continually adapt to changing market dynamics.

6 PPC strategies to try out

To bolster your online marketing efforts, explore these six PPC tips and tricks.

1. Use broad match keywords 

When you opt for “broad match” keywords, your ad will show up in related search queries. This includes variations, misspellings, synonyms, and other terms that relate to your target keyword — the types of things your intended audience is likely to search for. For example, if you use “time management” as a broad match keyword, your ad might appear in searches for “time tracking apps” and “what’s time blocking.” 

But the challenge with broad match keywords is their potential to trigger your ad for irrelevant searches. This can dilute your campaign’s efficacy and waste your budget. To mitigate this, complement broad match keywords with audience targeting. Audience targeting lets you specify who sees your ads based on criteria like demographics, interests, and behaviors. This helps your broad-reaching ads show up for the most relevant and interested audience.

2. Use ads to drive data collection

Ads serve a dual purpose: They drive conversions and act as an invaluable tool for gathering first-party data. Consider focusing your PPC campaigns on lead generation, where each ad click gives you valuable insight into your audience’s preferences and behaviors. For example, a simple form-fill ad offering a free eBook (or something else your audience would find valuable) in exchange for an email address can boost your conversions and enrich your customer database.

3. Embrace A/B testing

PPC is inherently an iterative process, allowing for continuous optimization. Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket — or one ad — leverage A/B testing to experiment with different variations and elements. Whether you test differing CTAs, imagery, or ad copy, this approach helps you uncover what resonates most with your target audience.

For example, you might test two versions for the same product — one featuring a product image and another highlighting customer testimonials. Which version garners more clicks and conversions? Use this information to inform and refine your approach.

4. Optimize with responsive search ads 

Google’s responsive search ads offer a dynamic approach to testing ad components. You’ll input multiple headlines and descriptions, and Google will automatically test various combinations to find the one that’s most effective for your audience. 

For example, you could enter various headlines, descriptions, and CTAs. Google then determines which combinations are most likely to increase your click-through and conversion rates based on real-time performance data.

5. Use video

If your PPC platform allows it, consider using video ads to convey your message more vividly. Video offers a compelling way to present your brand story, demonstrate products, and explain services. This can capture attention more effectively than static ads.

6. Try location-based targeting

Customize your advertising for specific geographic areas with location-based targeting. When you adapt your messaging to fit local tastes and cultural nuances, you can improve your ad’s relevance and impact. 

For instance, if you’re promoting a café in downtown Chicago, using location-based targeting for your campaign means your ads will display to people searching for coffee shops within a five-mile radius. This focused approach helps you attract local customers while boosting online visibility and in-store visits.

A place to land

To transform clicks into customers, pair your well-crafted PPC campaigns with a landing page that converts. 

Webflow is a visual-first development platform that empowers you to build and launch paid landing pages faster. Explore the ways Webflow Enterprise can help you get the most of your advertising strategies. Complement your PPC efforts with strategic content, SEO with fine-tuned controls, and analytics integrations to help you understand where your potential customers are coming from — and keep your business growing strong.

By 2028, Gartner predicts brands will see organic search traffic decrease by 50% or more.  

That’s because unlike many other consumer applications of AI, search users are already comfortable with AI-generated search results. “70% of consumers show at least some trust in GenAI-backed search results, with 20% expressing complete or a great deal of trust,” says Greg Carlucci, Senior Director Analyst, in Gartner’s recent webinar.

For brands that rely on organic search as a primary growth channel, this is a huge wake-up call. But what should marketers do?  Let’s unpack what’s changing and take a closer look at how brands can respond — including using GenAI to their own advantage. 

How AI will change organic traffic and visibility in search

The search experience is evolving in a few key ways, such as AI-powered features in traditional search engines, the adoption of AI chatbots, and the proliferation of AI-generated content. Here’s what marketers need to know. 

Zero-click searches within Google’s SGE

Since Google introduced featured snippets in the fall of 2014, SEO pros have been obsessing over zero-click searches — search results where users get the answer they need directly from the search engine results page (SERP), with no website click necessary. 

Now, Google is testing a new kind of GenAI-powered search experience that expands on the idea of a featured snippet: Search Generative Experience (SGE). SGE delivers a robust, AI-generated answer to users’ queries. Sometimes, these AI snapshots are very rich and detailed — for example, suggesting a full travel itinerary for your vacation. 

Since SGE is very much in test mode and being tweaked constantly, the outputs can change daily. But for now, here are some key points for marketers to know: 

1. SGE answers load automatically for some searches, need to be requested with a button click on others, and won’t even be an option for more sensitive questions (such as medical questions like “Can I give my 3-year-old Tylenol?”) 
2. SGE responses can include images, lists, carousels, and follow-up questions that generate even more detailed answers.
3. Data about SGE traffic doesn’t appear in Google Search Console yet.

Here’s an important caveat: SGE doesn’t necessarily mean a zero-click search. After an initial launch with no links provided, SGE answers now provide citations with links, typically to the top three websites used as sources in developing its answer (more on how to claim one of those spots below). 

Originally, SGE was restricted to opted-in testers via Google’s Search Labs, but started testing in March 2024 with a small subset of users who didn’t opt-in (including many who were annoyed to learn they couldn’t turn it off). 

How SGE will impact brands’ organic traffic is a wide open and hotly debated question in the search community. We’ve already seen Bing launch its own GenAI snippets to the public, only to push them farther down on the SERP — most likely, because they didn’t actually serve their users’ needs. Ultimately, we won’t know the impact of SGE and similar AI-generated search experiences, like Bing’s newer Deep Search, until users have the chance to adopt them at scale.

Users choosing AI chatbots over traditional search engines

While SGE takes place within the traditional Google experience, brands are also likely to see some organic traffic displaced by chat-based generative AI. Tools like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Claude can answer questions from users directly within their own apps or websites including questions that would historically be asked via search. 

Meanwhile, hybrid chatbot/search engines like Perplexity are likely to grow in popularity as users discover the advantages of combining natural language conversations with links to third-party websites. 

Competing against low-quality AI-generated content (for now)

GenAI is also changing the organic search landscape by enabling some brands to create and publish massive quantities of content. 

In the most egregious cases, this happens via “SEO heists” — where an agency or company scrapes its competitors’ sites for high-ranking titles, recreates their hard-won content at scale with AI, and steals their traffic. Fortunately, Google’s recent core updates seem to be targeting this kind of mass-produced content, and favoring websites that publish high-quality content by real humans. 

But while the algorithms adjust, brands may still see some loss in traffic due to the proliferation of AI-produced articles taking up space in the SERPs. 

The generational migration away from Google

Finally, while not directly related to AI, it’s worth noting that younger consumers were already starting to choose social media search over Google anyway. 

Studies show GenZ consumers are choosing TikTok and Instagram over Google for local searches, while YouTube has long been known as the second-biggest search engine. 

Ultimately, this trend underscores the key point: These days, showing up where your audience is means thinking bigger than a list of ten links on a Google SERP. 

How brands can respond to AI-powered search

Growth marketer Kevin Indig describes SGE as “a bullet in the chamber of SEO Russian Roulette. It could be nothing; it could be lethal.” According to Kevin, the level of impact has to do with how users adopt the new technology, as well as each individual company’s industry and go-to-market strategy. He suggests conducting an SGE SWOT analysis to help you plan a company-specific response. 

Across the board, there are a few key ways every brand can respond: create great content, show up in AI-powered search, and adjust your metrics accordingly.

Create great content 

First and foremost, the best way brands can retain their audience is by creating high-quality, original content — the kind that AI-generated output simply can’t compete with, and will help make your brand a go-to resource for consumers. 

For most brands, that means investing in longform content like whitepapers, conducting original research, providing detailed best practices, creating videos, and crafting rich visuals. It also means infusing your content with opinionated perspectives and firsthand experiences. 

SEO expert Andy Crestodina perhaps says it best: “Take a stand, have beliefs, and come out for or against something — because AI has no opinions at all. Collaborate with influencers and work with other people — because AI has no friends.”

Show up in AI-powered searches

Once you have great content for your audience to find, you’ll want it to be visible across all the channels where they’re looking for resources — including in SGE answers and chatbot conversations. 

When it comes to SGE, there’s a silver lining for brands who are working to build up their visibilitly. SGE doesn’t just pull and summarize information from the existing top-ranked sites for the search term, instead studies have shown that only 57% of links cited by SGE were even from the first page of results. This means that brands can essentially take a shortcut to getting a link up at the very top of the SERP, which could actually increase traffic from certain keywords.

Here are a few ways to ensure your content can be found and surfaced within AI searches — and that these platforms can access and understand the right information about your brand:

Adjust your metrics 

With all these changes, some of your traffic may disappear into the zero-click category — still providing brand impressions, but not actual clicks through to your website.

And some traffic will come to your site via paths that are harder or impossible to measure with traditional methods. For now, we can’t track SGE traffic in Google Search Console and even though Bing has promised Bing Chat metrics in their webmaster tools, it’s not currently available. Plus, Chatbot apps like ChatGPT don’t provide data to marketers about how often they’re mentioning brands, which is the newest form of visibility in search. 

As agency owner Wil Reynolds writes, “With generative AI predicted to drive a 50%+ drop in organic search by 2028, clinging to 2023’s (outdated) success metrics will lead to a lot of missed projections in 2024/2025.” He goes on to describe how marketers can use workarounds, like measuring how often your brand is mentioned in response to key questions in ChatGPT or tracking known ChatGPT bot hits on your website. 

But ultimately, marketers won’t be able to quantify the impact of these new search experiences. That likely means marketing teams will need to pay close attention and adjust projections for traditional metrics like organic traffic and SERP rankings over the next few years — and be prepared to educate executives on why these changes are happening.  

How to use GenAI to your advantage

Finally, while AI may be changing the game for organic search, it’s also a valuable tool to improve your visibility and traffic. When used responsibly and with authenticity, GenAI can help strategic and creative teams produce the kind of high-quality content that will stand out in the crowd. 

For example, GenAI design tools and writing assistants can save valuable time by:

• Refining buyer personas so you can create more relevant content
• Ideating content topics 
• Rapidly creating prototypes for visual experiences
• Iterating design concepts
• Brainstorming blog titles
• Editing video and create snippets for social sharing
• Helping writers solve the “blank page problem” with first drafts
• Editing and proofreading content
• Generating SEO meta descriptions and alt text

The truth is, it’s not possible to future-proof your SEO. No schema markup or keyword strategy is eternal. New platforms and channels will continue to emerge, and consumer preferences will keep evolving right with them. 

But for marketing and brand teams, the bottom line doesn’t change: show up where your audience spends time, with content they find valuable and relevant.

We all want to be heard — not just customers but developers, too. Customers want to share their thoughts on a product and have those concerns addressed. And developers hope that the information they share about the product’s worth and function lands with the target audience. 

The best way to respect this reciprocal relationship between creators and consumers? Collect customer feedback — and act on it accordingly. Read on to learn how to get feedback from customers, categorize it, and use it to improve your implementation process.

Why should you collect customer feedback?

Customer feedback is information from people who buy and use your product or service. This information includes suggestions, compliments, and criticism — all sources of vital customer insights. You can use this data to develop and track key metrics including:

• Net promoter score (NPS): How likely a customer is to recommend your product
• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): How pleased users are with your product, customer service, and purchasing experience
• Customer effort score (CES): How intuitive or challenging it is to use your product

By requesting feedback and analyzing your findings, you can determine how to pivot and adapt your product to meet customer needs and preferences. Without this data, you’re probably just guessing what to improve, with little evidence. And users might come up with wildly different ideas about your product than you’d anticipated. Rather than struggling against those ideas, figure out how to harness them to improve your product.

How to ask customers for feedback: 4 methods

To collect feedback take a proactive approach. This includes capturing customer reviews, learning from support cases, and talking directly with customers. All these methods will yield vital customer input that can guide your crucial business decisions, like how to design your marketing funnel or when you should refresh the customer experience.

1. Polls and surveys

A customer survey is great for gathering specific information from your customer base. You could send an email or post on social media asking users to rate which feature they most desire.. Or, you could use a customer survey tool, like Zonka or SurveyMonkey. Pose your survey questions to get feedback on your biggest concerns, such as:

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product?
• Which features would you like us to add to our product?
• How satisfied are you with the customer service you receive from our company?

2. Customer interviews

Whether over the phone, in-person, or on a video call, interacting with your customers face to face is a helpful way to hear candid opinions. In this live format, take the opportunity to ask clarifying questions and determine the root causes of their complaints and suggestions. If possible, have your users interact with your product during the interview and ask them to think out loud about the experience.

3. Social media

Platforms like Meta and Twitter allow users to record their thoughts openly, making social media an excellent source of honest feedback. Most platforms use tags to make searching for related posts easier. If your product doesn’t have a tag, make one! Craft a post using a tag with your product name to encourage users to use it, too.

4. Email

If you’ve done your email marketing well, you should have a list of people already engaged with your product. Reach out to this audience for feedback, since they’ve already shown at least enough interest to remain subscribed to your emails. These emails can include embedded feedback forms or direct users to customer reviews on a third-party site, like Yelp or Google.

Common types of customer feedback

As you can see, customer insights come in many forms, solicited or unsolicited — and every piece can help you and your team understand the overall user satisfaction picture. 

To understand how all this feedback fits together, organize it into categories. Here are a few common feedback types you’ll want to collect.

Customer satisfaction feedback

This includes comments and ratings that indicate how pleased a customer is with your product. When you ask about satisfaction, try to request hard numbers, such as asking your customers to rate their feedback on a scale of 1 to 10. These numbers will easily translate into your NPS and CSAT. Track this information as you launch new features,adjust your customer service approach, or make other changes.

Sales feedback

Your sales team influences the purchasing experience, so it’s necessary to understand how it’s performing. Send surveys and emails to customers who’ve completed a purchase and those who decided not to. Ask how the sales rep or buying experience informed their choice and encourage them to provide suggestions for improvement.

Preference feedback

Understanding your customers’ preferences can indicate your company’s place in the market and reveal what your product might be missing compared to competitors. To obtain this type of feedback, ask your customers “which” questions, such as “Which product do you prefer?” and “Which feature matters most to you?” 

Support feedback

Even the best product in a given industry will fall flat if it isn’t backed by a robust customer service team that empowers users to navigate challenges. To request feedback on customer service, invite customers to complete a survey after interacting with your support team. Ask questions like “Did the representative help you solve your issue?” and “How well did the representative understand the issue you described?”

How to improve your customer feedback strategy in 4 steps

Collecting feedback can quickly grow overwhelming when user reviews, surveys, and social media posts flood in. Here are four suggestions for building an efficient process for capturing and understanding feedback. 

1. Design a robust process

As your product picks up steam in the market, so will your customers’ opinions. If you aren’t prepared for feedback, you could quickly lose track of valuable data.

Tools like Pendo and HubSpot help you with customer service stages, like intake, triage, and resolution. If you opt for a manual approach to tracking user inquiries and requests, maintain a feedback database (with spreadsheets or another tool). 

Regardless of your method, ensure your process includes a step for scrubbing personally identifiable information (PII), to meet important security standards. Also, establish a retention strategy that adheres to local regulations. Depending on your locale, you might be required to delete customer feedback after you’ve retained it for a certain time.

2. Categorize feedback

Categorization helps you organize feedback into useful buckets. These groupings are typically based on keywords, type, or sentiment. It’s helpful to use a digital whiteboard for this step to visualize how significant some categories are compared to others. 

3. Close any loops

Ensure your feedback strategy creates a closed loop that always ends with the customer. When you follow through with customers, you’ll accomplish two things: 

1. Increased customer satisfaction: When customers feel heard, they tend to feel more satisfied.
2. Reduced duplication: Customers feel less inclined to remind you of their feedback via other channels when they know you heard them the first time.

4. Automate

Wherever possible, find ways to automate steps in the feedback process. You shouldn’t automate everything, especially when communicating directly with individuals, of course. But identifying valuable opportunities to streamline the process can save time and capture more feedback. Consider automation tools, such as:

• Bug-tracking software, like ClickUp or Jira, to track tasks and automate workflows
• AI-powered solutions that can personalize customer experiences and automate A/B testing
• Data analytics tools that help you gather information like crash logs, conversion rates, and response times
• Survey tools that offer survey templates, review examples, and feedback forms, like UseResponse and SurveyMonkey

Elevate your company’s customer experience

Customer feedback and other types of zero-party data allow you to build personalized customer experiences and tailored marketing campaigns. Whether you’re collecting data or aligning user preferences with a great site experience, build an end-to-end digital interaction with your customers with Webflow.

From customized emails to forms and integrations, extract key insights about your audience that enhance your website strategy.

Empowering the entire marketing team

Webflow’s mission is to bring development superpowers to everyone. Over the last 10 years we’ve given those superpowers to millions of designers, enabling them to bring their designs to life in full production-ready code without having to write it out manually. In doing this, we’ve not only changed countless lives, but have also helped create a more engaging and beautiful web. 

But as we’ve started to work with larger teams like Orangetheory Fitness, IDEO, and Dropbox, we’ve realized that there are major problems with how web experiences are being created. Once a website is built, it’s extremely difficult for marketing teams to personalize it, to experiment to make it better, and to optimize it to meet the varying needs of their customers. This is because the tools that exist to optimize websites are often cumbersome to set up without significant engineering support or are too hard to use separately from where the source website content is designed and managed. 

At Webflow, this is the next big problem we are solving. Our goal is to give marketing teams and web agencies the ability not only to build incredible web experiences, but also seamlessly personalize those sites for different audiences, easily create experiments to test which versions perform better, and to optimize their buyer journey throughout their website to drive conversions and revenue.

With all these capabilities in one place, we’re building a unified Website Experience Platform – or WXP for short. With this vision, we’re taking the most important part of the digital experience (the website) and creating a seamlessly integrated and visual-first platform that allows marketing teams to break their dependence on code and innovate at speeds they could never reach before. We believe that this will not only lead to empowered, revenue-driving marketing teams, but also to a better experience for everyone on the web.

Intellimize & Webflow: built on the same principles

Intellimize was founded and built with similar goals. The Intellimize team created an incredible product that unlocked marketing teams’ abilities to deeply personalize website experience without the need for engineering support. From my very first conversation with the Intellimize team, I knew that we not only had a similar vision in mind, but that we also shared the same philosophy that the key to unlocking marketing’s code-dependence was by building visual-first tools that they could use without needing constant help from a dev team.

Since their founding, Intellimize has made a huge impact on customers like Sumo Logic (1B+ page versions, 53% lift in conversion rates), Snowflake (60% increase in conversions, 49% lift in meetings booked), and Drift (129% improvement in conversions, $2.8M incremental revenue).

The Intellimize approach is a perfect match for Webflow, and combined, we can bring our Website Experience Platform vision to life and disrupt the broader website experience market just like we have for the website development market over the last 10 years.

What’s next

I’m incredibly excited to welcome the Intellimize team to Webflow. Over the coming months, we will be integrating Intellimize into the Webflow platform so that all our customers can implement advanced personalization and experimentation directly in Webflow. For Intellimize customers, it’s business as usual with the product, and we’re excited to help them continue to grow with us. This is a big milestone for Webflow, and also for every marketing team out there who wants to build incredible website experiences.

Organizations face various crises like natural disasters and cybersecurity breaches. Each crisis brings its own unique challenges that risk disrupting operations and threatening your brand. To navigate these challenges, a strong crisis communication strategy is essential.

Beyond acting as a contingency plan, an effective crisis response plan serves as a proactive framework for transparency and accountability. This crisis communication plan outlines the strategy for engaging stakeholders, the media, and the public so you can transform potential organizational threats into opportunities to showcase resilience and reliability.

What’s a crisis communication plan?

A crisis communication plan details the procedures that your company will take after identifying a crisis, such as assembling a response team, assessing the impact, and responding promptly. These plans are essential for quickly reacting to emergencies and aim to minimize damage and prevent catastrophic outcomes.

Crises are an unfortunate reality for companies, regardless of their vigilance and operational efficiency. Mistakes occur, misjudgments in hiring happen, and external crises beyond control emerge, requiring a structured and prepared response.

Common crisis scenarios businesses may face include:

• Financial. These crises emerge from internal financial missteps or external economic pressures and lead to actions like layoffs or drastic budget cuts. For example, a company may need to downsize their workforce due to growing too fast or experience a plummet in stock prices following a public scandal.
• Confrontational. Stemming from public disputes over a company’s operations, policies, or ethics, confrontational crises can damage a brand’s image. Widespread consumer boycotts in response to controversial business practices are an example.
• Natural. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods require swift action to ensure employee safety and business continuity. A business might have to activate emergency protocols and communicate safety measures when a natural disaster threatens its headquarters and offices.
• Technological. Issues like cybersecurity breaches and significant system downtimes fall under technological crises. A company facing a data leak that exposes sensitive customer information, for instance, must take immediate remedial actions and communicate transparently with affected parties to mitigate reputational damage.

Why is crisis communication important?

Effective crisis communication is crucial for upholding your brand’s integrity in difficult situations. Swift and clear communication after a crisis directly influences how the public and your customers perceive your company. In today’s environment, where information spreads rapidly, any hesitation or failure to address issues risks attracting negative attention and raising doubts about your company’s readiness and responsiveness.

Prompt and thoughtfully prepared communication efforts demonstrate your commitment to transparency and accountability, which are key to maintaining customer trust. Beyond mitigating the immediate fallout, these plans also contribute to a stronger and more resilient brand in the long run. A solid plan enables your company to confidently manage and navigate the crisis, ensuring your responses are consistent, accurate, and aligned with your core values.

By helping you solidify your stance and addressing concerns head-on, a crisis communication plan safeguards your brand’s reputation, reinforces customer loyalty, and positions your company for successful recovery and growth following a crisis.

How to create a plan: 9 crisis management steps

Preparing your response in advance lets you outline steps to ensure rapid and coordinated action, minimizing panic and confusion during emergencies. The following nine steps — along with some crisis communication plan examples — provide a framework for developing a response plan.

1. Assemble a committee

Start your plan by forming a committee comprising individuals with relevant experience in handling crises or a strong motivation to prevent them. This team ensures a unified strategy across all planning efforts by maintaining a consistent presence and perspective throughout the process. They’ll also lead the project, so make this group diverse to create a well-rounded crisis communication plan.

When preparing for potential public backlash, for instance, include public relations experts and legal advisors in the committee to ensure the plan addresses communication and legal considerations.

2. Identify factors

After establishing your committee, identify all relevant factors for each crisis scenario. Key considerations include:

• Number of stakeholders involved
• Essential contact points for communication
• The nature of business operations impacted 
• Review of current communication strategies

This detailed examination ensures your crisis communication plan is comprehensive and covers all aspects to safeguard your reputation and stakeholder trust. For example, in preparing for a reputational crisis, understanding the demographic profiles of your stakeholders and your stakeholders’ interests lets you tailor your communication strategies to resonate with them. And it ensures your responses are clear, compassionate, and contextually appropriate.

3. Determine the desired outcome

Once you understand all relevant factors, your committee should envision the ideal resolution for each potential crisis. Aim high in your expectations, even if the perfect resolution seems out of reach. Setting such ambitious goals can motivate the team to explore every viable option to come as close as possible to this ideal state.

In a data breach scenario, the desired outcome would be to quickly address public concerns, restore brand trust, and prevent long-term reputational damage. This goal prompts the team to design a communication strategy focused on transparency, accountability, and future improvement.

4. Brainstorm ideas

During this phase, the team aligns on the desired outcomes, opening the floor to all ideas without judgment. After everyone has pitched their idea, organize the ideas into these categories to effectively structure your plan:

• Preparation: Actions to ensure your response plan unfolds smoothly
• Action: Immediate steps your company will initiate when the crisis happens
• Response: Communication strategies during and following the crisis event

Consider a scenario in which you plan on initiating a product recall over manufacturing defects. The brainstorming might yield a strategy like this:

• Preparation: Set up a dedicated hotline and frequently asked questions (FAQ) section on your website for concerned customers.
• Action: Issue a recall announcement across all platforms that clearly explains the risks and the steps customers should take.
• Response: Regularly update stakeholders on the recall process, address concerns through social media, and offer compensation or replacements to affected customers.

5. Establish severity levels

Assess the effort required for different crisis scenarios by establishing severity levels, categorized into tiers like Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. This classification helps tailor your response to each crisis’s specific intensity, enabling more precise and effective resource management.

If you’re addressing a confrontational crisis, such as backlash from an environmentally unfriendly policy decision, your tiered strategy might include:

• Level 1 (low severity): Address minor public concerns through targeted social media responses and FAQ updates to promptly clarify misunderstandings.
• Level 2 (moderate severity): Engage directly with stakeholders through press releases, detailed blog posts, and media interviews to address concerns comprehensively and transparently.
• Level 3 (high severity): Initiate comprehensive communication campaigns, including open letters from the CEO, emergency stakeholder meetings, and significant policy revisions to mitigate backlash and restore public trust.

6. Decide

Once you select the optimal strategies for each severity tier, the crisis team must draft these into a comprehensive document. This document must include specific action steps to take, drafts of communications to stakeholders, and a complete crisis communications plan. It should provide clear instructions on initiating each action, communicating effectively during the crisis, and adjusting strategies based on the crisis’s scope, timing, and impact location.

For example, the plan might detail initial response actions, template messages for immediate release to the public and employees, and guidelines for adapting the response if the crisis expands or persists longer than expected. This gives the team a clear road map to follow with pre-approved messages and actions for quick deployment, which minimizes delays and ensures consistent responses.

7. Test your plan

Test your crisis communication plan to ensure it functions as intended under various scenarios. Conducting simulations allows your team to practice their roles and refine the plan based on real-world dynamics. This hands-on approach identifies potential weaknesses and improvement areas so you can make your strategy more robust and effective.

Consider a simulation of a data breach crisis. Your team enacts the plan from detecting the breach to communicating with stakeholders and the public. This exercise might reveal the need for quicker internal communications and highlight gaps in your public response strategy.

8. Finalize and seek approval

Once your crisis communication plan is ready, present it to key stakeholders for feedback and approval. This approval group should include executives, team leads, and, if applicable, clients, who will scrutinize the plan for completeness and practicality. Their insights are invaluable for identifying any overlooked scenarios and unique challenges specific to different departments and client needs. Plus, this approval-seeking process helps improve your relationship with stakeholders by demonstrating that you value their input and satisfaction.

9. Implement and monitor compliance

After gaining approval, distribute the plan to all relevant parties involved to clarify their roles and responsibilities. Establish a monitoring program that checks compliance with the established protocols to ensure you integrate the plan effectively across all departments and identify any areas needing adjustment. You can also conduct regular audits and practice drills to keep the team alert and prepared.

Encourage effective communication with Webflow

An effective crisis communication plan is vital for ensuring swift, coordinated responses during emergencies. And an important part of this plan is choosing tools with built-in security features that offer you and your team more peace of mind. 

‍Webflow Enterprise provides robust security features like single sign-on and advanced DDoS protection, so you can rest assured knowing you’re working with a reliable hosting infrastructure. Check out our comprehensive resources, including Webflow University guides and app integrations, and discover how Webflow can help you effectively respond to a crisis.

Multidepartmental enterprise organizations often struggle with information silos. Since each department might use specialized software, like customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and other enterprise applications, they risk creating isolated information environments. This, in turn, can hinder information sharing and integration across the organization, leaving valuable cross-departmental data untapped.

But addressing data silos involves more than just merging databases across disparate systems and tools — it’s about establishing an integrated framework that facilitates collaboration and data exchange. By linking departmental data streams, you create a unified and comprehensive understanding of business operations and transform isolated data into valuable, actionable insights.

What is a data silo?

A data silo, or information silo, refers to data held by one department that’s inaccessible to others within the same organization. When teams independently store and manage their data, they create barriers to sharing information, making it “siloed.”

Data silos negatively affect organizational processes and efficiency. If departments silo customer data, for instance, it becomes a barrier to delivering personalized experiences. This lack of shared data leads to generic and less effective engagement strategies, undermining the potential for targeted marketing and customer relationship building.

Why data silos are problematic

Data silos do more than just prevent data accessibility — they hurt your entire organization in the following ways:

• Fragment data. Data silos isolate information within specific platforms, tools, and departments. This makes it challenging to develop holistic strategies that integrate insights from different departments, like customer profiles that include website behavior, purchasing history, and communication preferences.
• Form team barriers. Data silos create virtual barriers between teams that prevent effective collaboration. Exclusive information held by one team blocks information flow and contributes to organizational silos — departmental segregation that hampers overall operational strategy and company alignment.
• Increase costs. Maintaining and managing disparate systems often increases operating expenses because you have to invest resources to reconcile data from various sources.
• Create missed opportunities. Teams have a harder time creating cross-functional synergies and leveraging insights from one department to use for another, leading to overlooked opportunities for optimization, risk mitigation, and new ventures.

Common causes of data silos

With multiple departments and employees, it’s common to miss data silos until they start significantly impacting the company’s bottom line. Here are some reasons data silos form.

Legacy infrastructure

Outdated or aging information technology (IT) infrastructure, often called legacy systems, can struggle to align with modern workflows. These older systems may not support current data-sharing protocols and thus pose challenges in breaking down silos and extracting insights.

If your business relies on a decades-old CRM system that doesn’t integrate well with newer data visualization tools, your marketing team might experience slow and insufficient data integration issues. Relying on this outdated technology can lead to siloed data. To solve this issue, consider migrating your legacy system to more modern solutions.

Decentralized technology management

Decentralized technology management occurs when teams choose their tools and technologies independently. This approach offers flexibility but leads to inconsistency and inadvertently creates data silos because it drives teams to select solutions that fit their immediate needs but are unaligned with your broader organizational strategy.

For example, your marketing team might choose an advanced AI personalization tool that excels in customer engagement, while the customer service department uses a separate CRM focused on customer interaction history. Without a centralized approach to integrate these different systems, crucial data points remain isolated within each team’s chosen tool.

Mergers and acquisitions

Organizations often struggle to integrate diverse IT systems and data infrastructures during mergers and acquisitions. The key issue here is incompatible datasets, which, if not consolidated into a unified enterprise application, create data silos.

If a large enterprise acquires a small business, each organization typically brings its own data management tools. Without strategic planning for integration, the small business’s data becomes siloed, making it difficult to leverage this information across the larger, combined organization.

Rogue end users

Employees may independently adopt data tools without aligning with your organization’s broader integration strategy. Known as “rogue” users, these individuals inadvertently create silos by storing sensitive information in systems outside your organization’s primary data ecosystem.

Consider a customer service employee who is subscribed to a cloud-based chatbot tool for quick client interaction management but bypassed coordination with IT or data management teams. This action diverges from the standardized service protocol and makes customer information inaccessible to other departments — creating a silo.

How companies can identify data silos

Identifying silos within your organization is the first step to fostering a more integrated and collaborative working environment. Watch for these indicators:

Difficulty in accessing data

If teams regularly struggle to access information for projects and tasks immediately, it often means a specific group or individual is siloing data. For example, if your marketing team frequently delays obtaining sales data necessary for campaign planning, it implies that this information is siloed.

Inconsistent reporting

Varying figures and metrics from different departments for the same key performance indicators (KPIs) indicate siloed data. This inconsistency arises when departments like marketing and sales access and analyze data in isolation despite working on the same project. A discrepancy in which the marketing team reports a 25% increase in customer retention and the sales team reports 30% suggests that each team draws from separate, nonintegrated data sources.

Data negligence

Neglecting data quality, updates, and maintenance signals potential silos. This negligence presents as outdated information, dataset errors, and a general lack of up-to-date data handling, and reflects an absence of a comprehensive approach to data management. So if a team consistently uses outdated customer contact information and it leads to failed communication attempts, it suggests that other departments aren’t sharing, updating, or cross-verifying this data.

Lack of cross-departmental collaboration

Limited collaboration between teams using different technologies often leads to silos. This problem is especially evident when there are few shared projects or integrated workflows, suggesting that departments are confining information.

Redundant data storage

Multiple teams storing similar datasets indicate redundant and duplicate storage, a hallmark of silos. This redundancy creates waste as multiple teams invest resources to maintain similar information independently. It also elevates inconsistency error risks because each team may update its dataset at different times and in different ways. These inconsistencies can create errors or misleading conclusions when analyzing information because analysts might unknowingly use outdated or conflicting data versions.

4 steps to fix data silos

To dismantle silos and foster a cooperative work culture, follow these steps.

1. Identify the optimal customer experience path

Understanding how your target audience and customers interact with various touchpoints allows you to identify the main focus areas for data collection. Start by mapping the user journey from awareness to conversion. Then, conduct workshops with representatives from all departments, such as marketing, sales, and customer service.

During these workshops, work collaboratively to identify critical contact points in the customer journey and leverage this insight to build a centralized system for tracking all customer interactions. This unified approach ensures that no department deviates from the defined journey and everyone works toward a shared objective.

The goal is to effectively guide visitors through various calls to action (CTAs) that encourage them to take specific actions like purchasing a product or subscribing to a service. This strategy sets the foundation for streamlined data management and aligns departmental efforts toward enhancing the overall customer experience.

2. Bridge customer data gaps across teams

Ensure customer and company data flows between departments to prevent silos from forming. One way to achieve this is by integrating a CRM that provides access to all relevant teams. Complement this system with robust data-sharing protocols, like regular synchronizations and weekly check-ins, to keep everyone on the same page. Establish clear permissions to maintain secure access and prevent rogue users from forming new silos — this ensures information access for everyone.

For example, a shared data system, like a website, makes data accessible to a company’s marketing and engineering teams, ensuring both have real-time records of the same information.

3. Establish a systematized approach to data organization

To guarantee consistency across departments, establish norms and practices for collecting and organizing data. This includes setting file naming conventions and establishing project-specific number codes for documents and assets. A standardized system prevents duplication by creating consistent storage and management methods, lowering redundant and conflicting data entry.

Conduct regular audits and data validation checks to ensure all departments adhere to these standards. If certain departments aren’t complying, provide workshops and training sessions to bring struggling parties on board while encouraging a more collaborative working environment.

4. Cultivate a collaborative culture

Create a company culture where employees feel comfortable exchanging ideas and information with each other. Highlight the existence of data silos and the importance of breaking them down to achieve common goals. A collaborative workflow and environment ensure data becomes a shared asset rather than a departmental property.

For example, you can recognize and reward team efforts contributing to data integration and project success after holding workshops. And consider investing in collaboration tools and shared communication platforms like Slack and Notion to encourage real-time cooperation and data sharing.

Break siloed systems with Webflow

Silos can quickly creep into your organizational structure and impede workflows — and breaking them down is a slow challenge. But platforms like Webflow allow you to build collaboratively in a central visual development platform that directly integrates multiple analytics and data tools into your website.

With Webflow’s visual-first approach, you can build a unified website that’s accessible, user-friendly, and scalable to suit all levels of your organization. Plus, you can monitor performance with powerful apps and optimize for your business needs.

From 2015 to 2016, our team launched Webflow’s REST API, which focused on web builders across the market verticals where Webflow was being widely adopted. 

Initially, the API allowed 3rd-party developers to query the Webflow CMS and respond to site events (e.g. form submissions). Over time, the surface area of the API continued to expand as we continued to add features to the platform, and more developers were integrating Webflow into their visual development practices. 

Within our engineering department, this meant that more feature teams were contributing to the codebase and associated APIs. However, as the API surface area continued to grow and more new customer requests kept coming in — the API started to fragment.

Webflow was growing fast, third-party developers wanted to integrate into our platform, and some were building their entire business by writing applications that connected to our APIs millions of times a day. But to achieve this level of success, developers had to wade through a confusing assortment of different error response formats, and webhook payloads.

As we planned how we could motivate more 3rd-party solutions to build on top of Webflow, we started by reflecting on what we should do differently.

We identified three main areas for improvement:

1. Consistency, using non-standard response codes, and brimming with surprising behaviors (eg. having to pass id: null for setting SKU properties).
2. Using a style and governance model. Even if we cleaned up the API in its current state, we didn’t have a mechanism to prevent further sprawl and fragmentation.
3. Granular permissions requiring users to grant wholesale authorization to their site. A dealbreaker for many of our Enterprise customers.

At the start of 2023, our Developer Platform team— the team that interfaces directly with our 3rd-party developers on a regular basis via Twitter, Slack, and other channels — dedicated a week to audit our existing API, recording, and grouping “API papercuts” to identify how we should redesign our developer foundations.

This is the first part of a multi-part blog series providing a behind-the-scenes look at our journey of designing, engineering, scaling, and launching a revamped API for all of Webflow’s 3rd-party developers (and there are a lot more now than there were in 2015!).

Conducting a papercuts exercise

The first step we took was to dive into the API papercuts. We allocated a week to identify the gaps/limitations in our then current APIs (v1) and find all of the annoying little things that  were pain points for our 3rd-party developers. Also, we defined a public API style guide that laid out our design principles and best practices to set ourselves up for success during the development of the next version of our APIs (v2).

We conducted an exercise where we prepared a list of issues (from both internal and 3rd-party developer feedback) associated with our API suite. We broadly categorized the gaps/limitations into the following themes: API Response Errors, Webflow Users/Membership API vertical, API Ergonomics, Nomenclature, and Webhooks.

The sequence of process oriented activities that we executed are as listed below:

Step 1

We funneled down the top developer asks, along with issues/tasks from our JIRA boards, to identify the popular topics within the aforementioned themes and prepared a sample space of themed items.

Step 2

We started holding discussions within our working group to prioritize the themed items into the following actionable steps:

• Requires more exploration (yes/no)
• Update public developer documentation (yes/no)
• Update style guide (yes/no)
• Additional developer feedback sough (yes/no/comments)
• More details/next steps

An example of how we tackle prioritization:

Step 3

We prepared a Public API style guide laying out our API design principles and best practices. The style guide was sectioned into the following topics:

• Naming conventions for our API endpoints, API scopes, and fields
• API response entities: data types (null values, objects, arrays, booleans, etc), HTTP status codes, and error standardization
• Structure fundamentals: endpoint structure and pagination conventions 
• Open API specification

Step 4

Start incorporating the style guide as well as prioritized actionable steps from the Papercuts Exercise into driving our cross-functional company wide initiative of revamping/launching our API suite. 

The power of auditing and improving development building blocks

Building a developer platform requires constant iteration and self reflection. As you add new functionality, it’s important to consider how a new endpoint fits into the existing patterns already established. Nonetheless, as any API matures, you’ll inevitably accrue some degree of quirks, inconsistencies, and designs stretched beyond their intended purpose. 

Launching a new API version offers a rare opportunity to reevaluate these past decisions and holistically redesign how your API’s building blocks fit together as a cohesive suite. It’s a major responsibility that requires deep collaboration with stakeholders, as well as a clear understanding of developer scenarios and where the organization is heading next. Taking a comprehensive audit of the existing APIs is a first and critical step in setting this course. 

Please stay tuned for part 2 of this series, where we’ll dive into our next set of efforts around versioning practices, rollout lifecycle, API scopes design, and customer comms.