Commentary

Wix Gives Small Businesses 20 Marketing Options

Cloud-based web development platform Wix recently released a suite of 20 products called Ascend that integrates with Google Ads. The products are designed to guide small and medium-sized businesses through the process of building a digital business after creating a web site.

Wix Ascend aims to give the little guy the same capabilities as large corporations.

Some of the tools were previously available but updated -- such as Wix Code, ADI, and Wix Answers -- but all have been integrated with the new services. Price Quotes and Automations are new to Wix.

Among the 20 services in the platform, Ascend includes a chat interface that allows for interactions with customers, the ability to automatically respond to queries, SEO tools, and the ability to create unique content to engage customers through social media channels.

Internal company stats suggest that the chat feature increases site appointments and repeat visits by 235% and 278%, respectively. Email marketing also shows an increase of 783% site traffic.

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Nitzan Aschaf, product lead and vice president of customer experience, wrote in an email that the platform requires little marketing or search engine optimization experience.

SEO Wiz, built alongside Google, offers a tutorial that takes a business owner through the steps, showing how to use the product. Wix found that nearly 70% of users who complete SEO Wiz rank content on the first page in Google search results. In addition, the integration with Google can index a site within 30 seconds.

Along with being able to pull in content from a business, the platform provides templates and suggestions on marketing tactics. These could be as simple as a holiday-themed email marketing campaign, sending repeat customers a coupon or creating an Automation to send cart abandonment emails.

Following the product announcement, RBC Capital Markets Analyst Mark Mahaney and team flew to Israel to meet with Wix CFO Lior Shemesh.

Mahaney estimates that between 40% and 50% of the product is new or updated and has been tightly integrated within the package.

“We believe that the discoverability from the enhanced UI, the improved direct CRM capabilities, and the improved functionality of most Wix products through Wix Ascend should help customers move up the product spectrum and better accomplish their personal business goals,” he wrote.

Pricing for Wix Ascend ranges from $10 to $49 depending on number of contributors, support, customizable forms, email marketing campaigns, and other services.

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