The (Surprising) Results Are in From Our Q2 2020 Modern Digital Experience Platform Survey

In conversations with clients, we often find ourselves providing quick assessments and comparisons of the major digital experience and content management platforms on the market, their strengths and weaknesses, and, most crucially, what the best use cases are for each. As a data-driven team, at TAG, we pride ourselves on researching to validate (or invalidate) our assumptions.

We wanted to look at the recommendations given to Chief Marketing Officers for bleeding-edge technology platforms that power corporate websites of midsize and large for-profit organizations. We wanted authentic, unbiased information, so we didn’t conduct an explicit survey.

Why? Because to get to the truth, you should look at what people do, not what they say they do. 

Our approach: We extracted information from conversations on LinkedIn involving relevant, qualified buyers, sellers, and users, talking about modern website approaches. And it turns out, what we found was quite illuminating.

First, a quick note about our respondents and data: 

• Average company headcount: ~500 (We removed one ultra-large employer that was skewing the data)
• Region: Mostly North America, with a few outliers in EU and APEC
• Sectors: A variety, both B2B and B2C
• To reduce bias, we removed platform recommendation responses from professionals who worked at those platform companies.
• Common job titles included Marketing Manager, Marketing Director, Product Marketing Director, VP, and C-level folks.

OK, time for findings! A simple chart showing the counts by platform does not provide much insight, so we skipped right past that and focused on three key findings:

Finding 1: In total, we identified 24 individual platform recommendations, but only three were recommended more than five times: (in order of most to least): WordPress, Webflow, and Contentful.

Our take: The energy and excitement around modern website approaches appear to be coalescing around three platforms.

Finding 2: The platforms that are not mentioned at all tell you as much as the platforms that are mentioned. The platforms that didn’t get a single mention: Ektron, Joomla, DotCMS, OpenText TeamSite, Liferay, and BloomReach.

Our take: The market does not view these legacy players as innovative. Leadership at these platforms would be wise to remember what the other side of “innovate and they will come” looks like.

Finding 3: As is often the case, there is a secondary dimension to this data that is revealing. When you take the average company size of every professional that recommended a platform and look at that average by platform, a clear pattern emerges. WordPress’s average size is six times larger than the size for Webflow, which itself is double the average size for Contentful.

Our take: Contentful may not be moving up as far in the enterprise ladder as appeared to be the case. Webflow, a relatively new entrant in this space, seems very popular for the smaller mid-market players. And WordPress is a popular choice for larger companies. 

Interesting results, right? Discover more insights from Third and Grove, and if you want to chat with us, feel free to reach out and contact us today.