What makes it different
There are plenty of website builders. The reason to use Odoo’s is not the editor — it is what the pages can show.
A page built in Odoo can display your real products, your real stock, and your real customer records. Not a copy synced across overnight. The same data your warehouse and your accountant work from.
For a brochure site that difference does not matter. For anything showing prices, availability or customer information, it is the whole point.
How editing works
Odoo’s builder is drag and drop, and you edit the live page rather than a separate admin screen.
Building blocks. Pre-made sections — a hero banner, a text and image row, a pricing table, a team section, a contact form. Drag one in and edit the text directly.
Inline editing. Click on any text and type. No separate field to fill in.
Save and publish. Changes are saved as a draft until you publish, so you can work on a page without it going live half-finished.
FIGURE 1: THE THREE THINGS YOU WILL USE MOST
Building blocks
- Pre-made sections you drag in — banners, text rows, pricing tables, forms.
Inline editing
- Click the text and type. What you see is what publishes.
Dynamic blocks
- Sections that pull live products, stock or blog posts from your database.
The pages to build first
For most businesses, five pages cover it.
Home. What you do, who for, and one clear action. Resist putting everything here.
Services or Products. What you sell. If you have a catalogue, this is where eCommerce comes in.
About. Who you are. People check this more than you expect, particularly for B2B.
Contact. A form, an address, a phone number. See the section below on forms.
Blog. Ongoing content. Good for search engines and it gives you something to share.
Add more only when you have something specific to say. A site with five good pages beats one with twenty thin ones.
Contact forms
The most valuable feature in the builder, and the most underused.
A form on your Odoo site can create a lead in CRM directly. No email to somebody’s inbox that gets missed. No copying details across.
Setting one up:
- Drag in the Form block
- Set the action to create a lead or opportunity
- Choose your fields
- Set who gets notified
Keep the fields short. Name, email, and what they need. Every extra field costs you submissions, and you can ask the rest on the phone.
Test it. Submit it yourself and confirm a lead appears in CRM with a notification going to the right person. Forms that quietly stopped working are more common than you would think.
The customer portal
Underused, and often more valuable than the public pages.
Logged-in customers can see their quotations, orders, delivery status, invoices and payment history. They can accept a quotation and pay online.
For a B2B business this often saves more time than the website makes in enquiries. Every “where is my order” email it prevents is time back.
It is enabled in settings and requires no building. If it is switched off, switch it on.
Search engines
Odoo has the standard tools built in: page titles, meta descriptions, alt text on images, clean URLs, sitemap generation, and analytics integration.
The tools are fine. The content is your job.
Three things that matter more than any setting:
Write your own copy. Product descriptions copied from a supplier catalogue appear on a hundred other sites and will not rank.
Use real page titles. “Home” tells a search engine nothing. “Odoo Implementation Partner in Hong Kong” does.
Fill in alt text on images. It helps search engines and it helps people using screen readers.
FIGURE 2: FOUR THINGS TO GET RIGHT BEFORE LAUNCH
Check it on a phone
- Most visitors are on one. Test every page, not just the home page.
Test every form
- Submit it yourself and confirm the lead lands with the right person notified.
Write your own copy
- Supplier descriptions are duplicated across the web and will not rank.
Set page titles and alt text
- Free, quick, and most sites skip it.
Mobile
Check every page on a phone before launching.
Odoo’s blocks are responsive, so most things work. But a layout that looks balanced on a wide screen can stack awkwardly on a narrow one, and long tables rarely survive the transition.
The builder has a mobile preview. Use it on every page, not just the home page.
What it does well and less well
Does well:
- Pages that need live business data — products, stock, customer portal
- Forms that create CRM records directly
- Blog and content pages
- Getting a decent site up quickly without a developer
Does less well:
- Highly bespoke marketing design with pixel-level control
- Complex animations and unusual layouts
- Anything where the design itself is the product
A reasonable position: if your site needs to show live business data, build it in Odoo. If it is a pure brand showcase with an unusual design, you may want a designer and a different tool — and you can still put the portal and shop on Odoo.
Common mistakes
Too many pages. Five good ones beat twenty thin ones, for readers and for search engines.
Forms that go nowhere. Set up, never tested, quietly broken.
Copied product descriptions. Invisible to search engines.
Never checked on mobile. Where most of your visitors are.
Portal left switched off. Free value, sitting unused.
No clear action on any page. A page that does not tell the reader what to do next does not achieve anything.
FIGURE 3: A SITE THAT WORKS AND ONE THAT DOES NOT
Working
- Five pages, each with a clear purpose
- Forms tested and creating leads
- Original copy written for customers
- Portal enabled for existing customers
Not working
- Twenty thin pages nobody reads
- A form nobody has submitted since launch
- Supplier text duplicated across the web
- Portal switched off and forgotten
Getting started
- Plan your five pages before touching the builder
- Write the copy first, in a document — it is faster than writing in the editor
- Build the pages using standard blocks
- Set up your contact form and test it properly
- Add page titles, meta descriptions and alt text
- Check every page on a phone
- Enable the customer portal
- Publish, then add pages as you have something to say
Point 2 is the one that saves the most time. Writing in a page builder is slow, and the design distracts from the words.
The short version
Odoo’s website builder is capable and its real advantage is live data — real products, real stock, forms that create leads, and a portal your customers can use.
Build five good pages, write your own copy, test the forms, and check it on a phone.
And turn on the portal. It is usually the piece that saves the most time and it is the piece most often forgotten.
Want a site that shows your real products and stock?
Get in touch. We will start with what your pages need to show, not with the design — that is what decides whether Odoo’s builder is the right tool.
