“I used to think having an official website was enough, but now I realize that without one, customers won’t even give you a chance to talk.” In a meeting room of a cross-border e-commerce company in Hangzhou’s Binjiang District, Operations Director Chen Lei pointed at the data on the screen and admitted to reporters. Over the past three months, they had closed their flagship store on third-party platforms and redirected their entire budget to an enterprise website building project. As a result, inquiry volume from organic search actually increased by 40%.

This counterintuitive decision is becoming a new consensus among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In the first quarter of 2025, domestic enterprise website building service providers saw a 67% year-on-year increase in customized demand, with over half of clients requiring websites to simultaneously feature “brand showcase,” “lead collection,” and “real-time communication.” This marks a shift in the enterprise website building industry from the crude phase of “template-based, launch-and-forget” to a refined era centered on user experience.

After visiting multiple enterprise website building service providers in Shenzhen and Shanghai, reporters found that market divergence has become clearly evident. On one hand, traditional website building companies continue to compete for micro and small clients with low-cost templates, with average order values dropping below 3,000 RMB and profit margins squeezed to the limit. On the other hand, service providers with full-chain capabilities—spanning “strategy, design, technology, and operations”—command average order values between 50,000 and 200,000 RMB, while order cycles have shortened by 30%.

“Clients are no longer satisfied with just ‘looking good’; they want the website to ‘speak’,” said Li Wei, CEO of a digital marketing agency in Shanghai. He told reporters that in a recent enterprise website building project for a medical device company, they embedded an AI chatbot, 3D product displays, and a real-time data dashboard. In the first month after launch, the site’s bounce rate dropped by 22%, and average session duration increased from 47 seconds to 3 minutes and 12 seconds. “This reflects changes in search engine algorithms—both Google and Baidu are increasing the weight of ‘page experience’. Websites with slow loading speeds and rigid interactions will rank lower and lower.”

Another trend worth noting is the deep integration of enterprise website building with private domain operations. In the past, after building a website, companies often left it disconnected from CRM systems, WeCom, ERP, and other tools, resulting in visitor data that could not be captured. Today, leading website building service providers are beginning to offer “build a website, build a pool” solutions: websites come with built-in tracking systems that automatically record user behavior and sync it to the company’s own customer database.

“When we built a website for a chain restaurant brand, we specifically designed a closed-loop path: ‘scan to order – register as a member – claim a coupon’,” said Wang Yuqing, a product manager at a Hangzhou-based SaaS website building platform. She noted that through this enterprise website building project, the brand accumulated 120,000 registered members in three months, with a repurchase rate increase of 18%. She emphasized: “The website is no longer an isolated billboard; it is the central nervous system of the entire business.”

However, beneath the industry’s prosperity lie hidden concerns. Reporter investigations found that many business owners still hold misconceptions about enterprise website building. Some believe that buying a template for a few thousand RMB can solve all problems, only to end up with slow loading and empty content that yields extremely low conversion rates. Others blindly pile on flashy effects while neglecting information architecture and basic SEO optimization. Industry insiders suggest that before building a website, companies should clarify three core questions: Who is the target customer? What action do you want visitors to take? How will you measure the website’s performance?

“In the next three years, any enterprise website that cannot generate business value will be eliminated,” Li Wei predicted. As AI-generated content (AIGC) technology becomes more widespread, the barrier to building a website will further decrease, but the competitive focus will shift from “whether you have a website” to “whether the website can continuously acquire customers.” For SMEs, choosing a website building partner that understands the industry, the technology, and—most importantly—growth, may matter more than the website itself.

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