This year, Lumar launched its inaugural Website Intelligence Survey to 140 web professionals around the globe. This research aims to discover how businesses currently gather meaningful website insights and examines the current challenges, opportunities, and tech stack selections of website teams in 2023.
Despite recent macroeconomic turmoil, businesses are still prioritizing their websites as a key marketing channel — in fact, 65% of the professionals surveyed expect their budget for website projects to increase.
But managing website intelligence is no easy feat — nearly 60% of respondents reported that they use at least five different platforms to gather data on their websites’ health and performance, with 15% using 11 or more platforms.
“The fact that the majority of respondents in our survey report have at least five different products and platforms to gather intelligence about their website’s health and performance — on a wide range of dimensions — affirms that modern websites are indeed very rich ecosystems. Many different roles and stakeholders within a company participate in that ecosystem. It’s crucial to have a cohesive center of gravity that connects all of this together.”
— Scott Brinker, MarTech expert & founder of chiefmartec.com
Human resources often pose a challenge for website teams aiming to improve their sites, with nearly half of all respondents (49%) citing a lack of the right (or enough) people to work on their website projects as one of their top hurdles. Related to this ‘people challenge’, 40% also said that it took a long time for dev teams to implement their requested website changes.
Messy data was the third most-cited issue, with 37% of professionals 16 surveyed stating that the lack of a centralized source of website insights was a challenge for their team. (Warning: shameless promo time — Lumar aims to solve this exact problem!)
Read on to learn more about how website professionals are managing their domains and gathering the website intelligence required to improve their online presence.
Key Survey Takeaways
Website Tech Stacks:
59%
of respondents use at least 5 different platforms to gather intelligence about their website.
Increased Budgets:
65%
of respondents expect their budgets for website-related projects to increase.
Tech SEO Overlooked:
49%
of respondents feel that businesses do not pay enough attention to their websites’ technical SEO.
About the Website Intelligence Survey Respondents
Job Roles of Respondents:
The majority of our survey participants (69.28% in total) work as SEO professionals, developers, website managers, or marketing professionals. Other participants are in different website- and business-related roles, including UX designers, product managers, or business leadership.
Job titles of survey respondents:
- SEO Professionals: 26.4%
- Developers / Engineers: 22.1%
- Marketing Professionals: 13.6%
- C-Suite / Business Leadership: 10.7%
- Product Managers: 8.6%
- UX / Design Professionals: 7.9%
- Website Managers: 7.1%
- Other: 2.1%
- Digital
- Accessibility
- Specialists: 1.4%
Respondents’ Website Size
The websites our respondents work on ranged in size, with the largest number of respondents (49.29%) working on sites with 1,000 – 10,000 URLs. A further 40% of respondents work on sites that house 10,000 or more URLs and nearly 8% work on sites with over 1 million pages.
Respondents’ website size:
- 1,001 – 10,000 pages: 49.3%
- 10,001 – 100,000 pages: 23.6%
- 1 – 1,000 pages: 10.7%
- 100,001 – 1 million pages: 8.6%
- 1 million+ pages: 7.9%
Part 1: How Businesses Manage Their Websites
1.1. Which department manages the website?
For most businesses, day-to-day website management primarily falls to one of two teams: engineering (39.29%) or marketing (35%). Some businesses have a separate digital team — outside of marketing or engineering — overseeing the website (11.43%), while for others, website management fell primarily to the product team (12.86%).
Question: Which department within the company is primarily responsible for managing the overall day-to-day operation of the website?
(i.e. who typically makes decisions on what appears on the site, how it’s monitored, when it’s updated, and initiates new website projects?)
Survey responses to ‘Which department manages your website?’:
- Engineering team: 39.3%
- Marketing team: 35%
- Product team: 12.9%
- A separate digital team: 11.4%
- Other: 1.4%
1.2. Budget changes for website projects
The majority of website professionals surveyed (65%) expect their budget for website projects to increase in 2023. 20.71% expect their budget for website projects to remain steady, while just 14.29% expect to see a decrease in their budget.
Question: Do you expect your budget for website-related projects to increase, decrease, or stay the same this year?
Survey results – website budget expectations:
- 65% – Website project budget will increase
- 14.29% – Website project budget will decrease
- 20.71% – Website project budget will stay the same
1.3. Size of businesses’ website intelligence tech stacks
59% of website professionals surveyed reported that they use at least 5 different platforms to gather intelligence about their website’s health and performance.
But businesses may be underestimating the size of their website intelligence tech stacks. For those self-reporting 4 or fewer platforms in this early-survey question, when asked later to list specific platforms, nearly 80% who thought they had smaller tech stacks could actually name 5 or more specific website intelligence platforms used.
Question: How many different website intelligence platforms does your business currently use?
Survey results – number of website intelligence platforms used:
- 5-10 web intelligence platforms — 43.57%
- 3-4 web intelligence platforms — 30%
- 0-2 platforms — 11.43%
- 11-15 platforms — 10%
- 15+ platforms — 5%
1.4. Number of in-house website roles
Nearly 60% of all respondents said that more than 10 in-house employees contribute to their website’s management.
Unsurprisingly, for those who worked on larger sites with 10,000+ URLs, that percentage was larger — for businesses with large websites, nearly 70% reported at least 10 in-house employees working on the site.
Question: How many in-house employees currently work on the website?
Survey results – number of in-house website staff (across all website sizes):
- 10-14 in-house staff work on website — 27.86%
- 5-10 in-house staff work on website — 22.86%
- 21+ in-house staff work on website — 20%
- 0-4 in-house staff work on website — 17.86%
- 15-20 in-house staff work on website — 11.43%
1.5. Types of in-house website roles
The website-related roles that are most commonly staffed in-house are general website managers, developers, and content writers or editors.
Question: Which website-related roles currently exist in-house?
Survey results – in-house website roles:
- Website managers — 61.43% of respondents have this role in-house
- Website developers — 60% of respondents have this role in-house
- Content writers/editors — 55.71% of respondents have this role in-house
- SEOs — 45.71% of respondents have this role in-house
- Website compliance — 23.57% of respondents have this role in-house
- Digital accessibility — 19.29% of respondents have this role in-house
- Other roles — 2.86% of respondents have this role in-house
1.6. External agencies & consultants used
Most respondents use at least one external agency or consultant for added support on website projects. External web development support was cited most frequently, with nearly half (47.86%) of respondents reporting that they engaged an external website developer for added support on their website work (this may be in addition to in-house developers).
Question: What types of external agencies or freelancers does your company engage with for website-related projects?
Survey results – external contractors engaged for website projects:
- Website developers — 47.86% engage external contractors in this discipline
- Content — 37.14% engage external contractors in this discipline.
- SEO — 34.29% engage external contractors in this discipline.
- Design / UX — 34.29% engage external contractors in this discipline.
- Site security — 22.86% engage external contractors in this discipline.
- CRO — 22.14% engage external contractors in this discipline.
- Privacy / GDPR compliance — 20.71% engage external contractors in this discipline.
- Digital accessibility — 17.86% engage external contractors in this discipline.
- Other — 3.57% engage external contractors in other web-related disciplines.
1.7. Biggest challenges for website teams
For digital teams aiming to improve their company’s website, the challenge cited most often comes around people — nearly half (49.29%) of survey respondents said that not having the right (or enough) people to work on website projects held them back in terms of making site improvements. Slow developer team implementation came in second, with 40% of respondents stating that it takes too long for dev teams to implement their requested website changes.
Question: When it comes to improving your website, what are the biggest challenges your website team faces?
Survey results – biggest website improvement challenges:
- Not having the right (or enough) people to work on website projects — 49.29%
- It takes too long to get changes implemented by dev teams — 40%
- Messy data (no centralized source of insights relating to the website’s overall health & performance) — 37.14%
- It’s hard to prove the business impact / ROI of our website projects — 27.86%
- Not enough budget, buy-in, or support from business leaders — 24.29%
- It’s hard to keep up with the latest changes in search engine algorithms & website best practices — 22.86%
- Not having the right tools and platforms — 21.43%
- We struggle to execute improvements at scale across the entire site — 13.57%
- Other — 1.43%
Part 2: Managing Elements of Website Health
2.1. Website aspects most in need of improvement
When asked which aspects of their websites were most in need of improvement, nearly half (48.57%) of the website professionals surveyed said that their sites’ technical SEO was in need of improvement. On-site SEO came in second (42.86%) and website design and UX came in a distant third, with 35.71% of respondents citing this as an area of their business’ site that needed improvement.
Question: What aspects of your website are currently most in need of improvement?
- Technical SEO (site structure, crawlability, indexability, etc.) — 48.57%
- On-site SEO (keywords & content) — 42.86%
- Design / UX — 35.71%
- Off-site SEO (backlinks) — 32.86%
- CRO (conversion rate optimization) — 32.14%
- Website accessibility – 23.57%
- Site security — 22.86%
- Privacy/cookie compliance — 21.43%
- Other — 1.43%
2.2. What website aspects should more businesses prioritize?
When asked to think beyond their own websites and consider the state of website health and website management more broadly, nearly half of the respondents also cited technical SEO most often as an area of website health that should be prioritized more by businesses in general. The other elements of website health that website professionals cited most often as deserving of more attention included off-site SEO (31.14%); on-site SEO (31.43%); and design/UX (29.29%).
Question: Which types of website improvements do you feel, in general, do not receive enough attention from businesses?
- Technical SEO — 48.57%
- On-site SEO — 31.43%
- Off-site SEO — 31.14%
- Design/UX — 29.29%
- Website accessibility — 27.86%
- Site security — 25.71%
- Privacy/cookie compliance — 22.86%
- CRO — 19.29%
- Other — 0.71%
* Note: Respondents may use more than one platform in this category.
Part 3: Website Intelligence Platforms Used
Part 3 of our survey asked website professionals to list the website intelligence platforms currently in their businesses’ tech stacks. As some respondents may use multiple platforms in a given category, multiple choices were allowed.
3.1. Technical SEO Platforms
Question: Which technical SEO platforms (to crawl, audit, & monitor technical SEO factors like crawlability, indexability, etc.) are currently in your business’s tech stack?
- Screaming Frog — 39.29%
- Lumar (formerly Deepcrawl) — 32.86%
- Content King — 28.57%
- Botify — 28.57%
- OnCrawl — 22.86%
- Ryte — 19.29%
- JetOctopus — 17.86%
- Other — 4.29%
- None — 6.43%
- I don’t know which platforms in this category are used — 5%
* Note: Respondents may use more than one platform in this category.
3.2. On-Site & Off-Site SEO Platforms
The most popular SEO platform outside of technical SEO platforms like Lumar was SEMrush, with 34.29% of respondents reporting that this platform was in their tech stack. Ahrefs was not far behind, with 30.71% of respondents saying they use the platform for their on-site SEO efforts.
* Note: Respondents may use more than one platform in this category.
Question: Which on-site & off-site SEO platforms (to audit & monitor keywords, content, & backlinks) are currently in your business’s tech stack?
- SEMrush — 34.29%
- Ahrefs — 30.71%
- Content King — 27.14%
- Conductor — 21.43%
- BrightEdge — 22.14%
- SimilarWeb — 22.14%
- Linkody — 15%
- Surfer — 7.14%
- Moz Pro — 5.71%
- Ubersuggest — 5.71%
- Woorank — 4.29%
- Other — 3.57%
- None — 17.14%
- I don’t know which platforms in this category are used — 4.29%
* Note: Respondents may use more than one platform in this category.
3.3. Search Visibility Platforms
Question: Which search visibility platforms (to audit & monitor organic search rankings) are currently in your business’s tech stack?
- Google Search Console — 57.86%
- SEMrush — 33.57%
- Searchmetrics — 27.14%
- Ahrefs — 25.71%
- Sistrix — 18.57%
- BrightEdge — 17.14%
- Moz — 13.57%
- SEOMonitor — 12.86%
- Advanced Web Ranking — 11.43%
- Ryte — 11.43%
- Accuranker — 3.57%
- Pi Datametrics — 1.43%
- Other — 2.147%
- None — 3.57%
- I don’t know which platforms in this category are used — 2.86%
* Note: Respondents may use more than one platform in this category.
3.4. General Website Analytics Platforms
Question: Which general website analytics tools (to audit & monitor site traffic, traffic sources, user flows, etc.) are currently in your business’s tech stack?
- Google Analytics— 65%
- Adobe Analytics — 37.86%
- Bing Webmaster Tools — 23.57%
- Matomo — 16.43%
- Clicky — 15%
- Heap — 12.86%
- Woopra — 10.71%
- Chartbeat — 7.14%
- Piwik Pro — 5%
- Kissmetrics — 4.29%
- Other — 4.29%
- None — 1.43%
- I don’t know which platforms in this categories are used — 1.43%
* Note: Respondents may use more than one platform in this category.
3.5. Website Accessibility Platforms
Website accessibility appears to be the most overlooked aspect of website health and performance — 18.57% reported that no website accessibility platform was in use for their business’s website. This is higher than the ‘none’ response selected for any other type of website intelligence platform.
For those who did report using a website accessibility platform for their website, the most cited platform was Equally.ai.
Question: Which website accessibility platforms (to audit & monitor digital accessibility compliance) are currently in your business’s tech stack?
- Equally.ai — 27.14%
- Evinced — 18.57%
- Silktide — 17.86%
- Level Access — 17.14%
- Siteimprove — 16.43%
- UsableNet AQA—16.43%
- Sitebulb — 12.86%
- Allyable — 10.71%
- Deque — 9.29%
- Site Morse — 6.43%
- Monsido — 3.57%
- Other — 0%
- None — 18.57%
- I don’t know which platforms in this category are used — 14.29%
* Note: Respondents may use more than one platform in this category.
3.6. Privacy/Cookie Compliance Platforms
Question: Which privacy & cookie compliance platforms (to audit & monitor privacy compliance) are currently in your business’s tech stack?
- CookieYes — 31.43%
- Secure Privacy — 27.86%
- OneTrust — 27.86%
- Osano — 26.43%
- TrustArc — 20.71%
- Usercentrics — 19.29%
- Mine PrivacyOps — 10.71%
- Other — 0.71%
- None — 10%
- I don’t know which platforms in this category are used — 14.29%
* Note: Respondents may use more than one platform in this category.
3.7. Digital Experience/Behavior Analysis Platforms
Question: Which digital experience/behavior analysis platforms are currently in your business’s tech stack?
- Smartlook — 26.43%
- Mixpanel — 22.14%
- Heap — 21.43%
- HotJar — 20%
- Microsoft Clarity — 20%
- Mouseflow — 18.57%
- Lucky Orange — 15%
- Fullstory — 12.14%
- Crazy Egg — 10%
- Glassbox — 7.86%
- Contentsquare — 6.43%
- Plerdy — 3.57%
- Other — 1.43%
- None — 10%
- I don’t know which platforms in this category are used — 9.29%
* Note: Respondents may use more than one platform in this category.
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About Lumar
Lumar is a market-leading website intelligence platform that illuminates your site’s full commercial potential with a centralized command center for maintaining your site’s technical health. Our platform enables website teams to detect opportunities for growth and protect their sites from revenue-sapping SEO errors — so they can realize their site’s true revenue-driving potential.
Lumar Analyze uses our ultra-fast, enterprise-scale website crawler to provide actionable technical SEO and website accessibility insights that create real, meaningful business impacts.
Lumar Impact makes it easy to see the bigger picture when it comes to your website’s technical health with our organic traffic funnel visualization, website health scores, and industry benchmarks.
Lumar Monitor provides a high-level overview of all your domains in one place, making it easy to track website changes and site health trends over time.
Lumar Protect easily integrates with existing tech stacks, using automation to remove the SEO risks associated with site updates that can negatively affect search performance.
Lumar’s technical SEO platform is supplemented by our SEO professional services team, made up of some of the world’s best technical SEO experts.
