Podcast Summary: Marketing Trends

Episode: Website Expert: These Mistakes will Make or Break Your Entire 2026

Host: Stephanie Postles
Guest: Josh Koenig, Co-founder & SVP of Marketing, Pantheon
Date: January 7, 2026

Overview

In this insightful episode, Stephanie Postles sits down with Josh Koenig to discuss the rapidly-shifting landscape of websites, digital marketing, and the technological and cultural trends that are shaping 2026 and beyond. The conversation spans the changing expectations of web visitors, the impact of AI and LLMs on search, collaboration between marketing and IT, rising technical expectations for marketers, and the UX details that can make or break growth. Josh draws on Pantheon’s position in the market—powering mission-critical websites for major brands—to distill actionable insights and subtle industry shifts that many teams overlook.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Critical Importance of First Impressions in Website Experience

• Josh Koenig highlights a crucial, under-discussed factor: delivering a high-quality initial website experience is vital. If pages don’t load almost instantly, users—particularly those on mobile—will bounce before the page even finishes loading.
  • "People don't really think of the fact that they're visiting a website as anything different from they tapped on their phone and loaded an app. That's the baseline of experience people expect." (Josh, 00:16)
  • "One of the things we can observe in our data is the number of clicks that don't even wait for a page to fully load. They tap, they get bored and they just swipe left and move away." (Josh, 00:42)

Speed Benchmarks

• Josh’s "magic numbers" for load speed:
  • Over 2 seconds: “You're done” (users leave)
  • Under 1 second: “Good” (best practice today)
  • "You're done at like two seconds. And good is under one second. It's a change. Expectations are changing." (Josh, 06:27)

The Unprecedented Impact of AI “Crawlers” and LLMs on Website Load

• AI models and LLMs (Large Language Models) are fundamentally reshaping web traffic patterns, especially for sites breaking news or delivering time-sensitive info.
  • "The speed and intensity with which all the crawlers come in on fight night... It's almost like a denial of service attack." (Josh, 08:18)
• This requires robust site infrastructure, but Josh stresses the underlying best practices remain: scalability, clear information architecture, and anticipating “agent” access as much as human.

Evergreen Website Strategies for 2026

When asked for a “top five” list of strategies for future-proofed websites, Josh outlined:

1. FAQs / Questions & Answers Format
   Anticipate and directly answer questions on your site. It's beneficial for both human visitors and LLMs.

2. Technical SEO & Semantic Marking
   Use established markup formats for metadata (maps, images, addresses, hours) in your code, not just for SEO, but for LLM readability.

3. Monitor & Engage on Third-Party Forums
   Forums like Reddit are essential, as LLMs pull info from there. Influence your reputation and accuracy where possible.

4. Consistent, Distinct Brand Voice
   Ensure your site's language represents your brand in every context.

5. Gating Content (With Care)
   Decide thoughtfully what’s public or gated. Gated content won’t be accessible to LLMs/bots or show up in rich search results.

   • "If you do the fundamentals really well...you have to do all the things, you need to do them at a high quality and you need to do them consistently. And that was always true. So it's just like, hey, marketing, let's do our job." (Josh, 15:30)

Avoiding Artificial or Over-Engineered Tactics

• Josh is skeptical about artificially adapting (e.g., making a second “clean” site just for LLMs to crawl, or rewriting all content as Q&A for bots). Instead, focus on core quality and authentic value.
  • "If your website is so gunked up it needs a special LLM.txt version, why wouldn’t people want the cleaned-up version, too?" (Josh, 19:04)
  • "We walked back from trying to literally rewrite whole pieces of content to be read as an interview or a Q and A form, because again, it didn't feel authentic." (Josh, 20:05)

Lessons from Failed Content Strategies

• Josh shares a candid lesson: producing “medium quality” SEO content without true subject-matter expertise resulted in generic, unhelpful content that later polluted their own AI-powered search results.
  • “What you produce starts getting really generic and starts to feel like it’s a roundup of other articles that are also written for SEO. … It was really skewing the results … so we had to … weight [actual documentation] higher.” (Josh, 21:24)

New Tools: Integrating Content Creation & Publishing

• Josh introduces Pantheon Content Publisher, designed to eliminate the classic cut-and-paste workflow between writers and web teams by integrating Google Docs and real-time preview with web publishing.
  • "People don't sit down and crack open their CMS to create content ... making content teams and web teams actual partners and collaborators versus silos." (Josh, 26:36)

Building Effective Marketing & IT (CMO-CTO) Partnerships

• The web has shifted from a static IT asset to a living marketing channel that must be agile and secure. Successful companies align these imperatives—speed and innovation versus compliance and stability.
  • "This is one of the most critical partnerships ... Without the ability to fully flex what you are doing digitally ... it's very, very hard to be an effective marketer." (Josh, 32:43)
• Best practices for brokering this partnership:
  • Acknowledge and respect each other's goals.
  • Tie both teams to shared KPIs centered around growth/business value.
  • Decide collaboratively which responsibilities live with IT, which with marketing, and set guardrails as needed.
  • "I've seen this ... many times, and it really does unlocks the magic. People are not only more productive, they're happier." (Josh, 35:46)

The Rising Technical Bar for Marketers (“Vibe Coding”)

• Marketers now have “no-code/low-code” tools and AI (“vibe coding”) to rapidly prototype, build, and iterate on apps and campaigns without IT.
  • "It's incredible for prototyping... Even if at the end...it's only treated as an example." (Josh, 44:30)
  • "I think the profession is just going to become more technical over time because so many more of these things are technology mediated and we want to be masters of that." (Josh, 53:25)
• Josh details how tools like Next.js let developers pick up, verify, and refine code after an initial “vibe built” prototype, bridging between speedy iteration and organizational rigor.

The Entrepreneurial Marketer Mindset

• Marketers increasingly function as “intrapreneurs”: building, testing, analyzing, and iterating just like startup founders. This is now table stakes for the role, whereas previously it was niche.
  • "Good marketing has always been like that ... The entrepreneurial mindset is a tremendous asset ... I also think it's fun." (Josh, 54:38)
  • "If you're not fluent in those things (digital/tech), how do you even do your job?" (Josh, 57:50)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On User Expectations:
  "You're done at like two seconds. And good is under one second." (Josh, 06:27)

• On AI Crawlers:
  "It's almost like a denial of service attack … more intense activity from those sources than from casual visitors." (Josh, 08:18)

• On Content Quality:
  "If you do the fundamentals really well... you have to do all the things, at a high quality ... and that was always true." (Josh, 15:30)

• On CMO-CTO Partnerships:
  "Neither of us will be able to be successful on our own terms." (Josh, 34:45)

• On Technical Skills for Marketers:
  "I think the profession is just going to become more technical over time ... it's going to become increasingly data informed..." (Josh, 53:25)

• Lightning Round Highlights:

  • Favorite guilty metric: “Topline website traffic.” (Josh, 59:00)
  • Smallest UX quality he refuses to compromise on: “When the website loads that it doesn't keep jiggling around as other things pop in.” (Josh, 60:57)
  • Walkout song for CMO/CTO duo: “We Found Love in a Hopeless Place.” (Josh, 60:24)

Key Timestamps

• Initial Website Experience & "Swipe Left" Culture: 00:00–00:48
• The Baseline for Web Speed: 06:22–07:19
• AI/LLM Crawler Overload: 07:35–09:45
• Evergreen Website Practices for LLMs & Search: 13:11–16:04
• Danger of Chasing Microtrends: 09:45–12:29
• Pitfalls of Artificial Tactics for LLMs: 19:05–21:16
• Real-World Content Strategy Mistakes: 21:24–23:10
• New Workflow: Google Docs to Web Publishing: 26:36–32:16
• CMO-CTO Collaboration (and Tensions): 32:16–40:57
• Rise of No-code/Vibe Coding: 44:30–50:17
• Lightning Round (Fun moments): 58:09–62:44

Style & Tone

The conversation is candid, energetic, and deeply practical. Josh is technical yet down-to-earth, frequently mixing real data with practical advice and the occasional self-deprecating “marketers admitting their mistakes is not something that happens that often”. Stephanie keeps things lively and grounded with relatable questions, humor, and summarized recaps to clarify insights.

Summary Takeaway

To succeed in the evolving digital landscape of 2026, marketers must prioritize ultra-fast, first-class digital experiences, stay grounded in fundamentals that also serve modern AI needs, build authentic content, and champion closer partnerships with IT leadership. The era of highly technical, entrepreneurial marketers is now—and as the technical bar rises, so too does the importance of creativity, agility, and staying “dangerously good” at the basics.