Michal Bignitz, General Manager, Head of Partners at Wix chats about Wix’s evolution through the years and what it takes for online businesses to drive deeper impact:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Michal, tell us about yourself and your role at Wix…

I have been at Wix for more than 9 years working in different managerial roles. I’ve headed the product management division, the international growth group, responsible for the company’s growth in all countries apart from the US, the Wix App Market, Wix Events, Wix Forum, and more. Today, I  am the head of the Partners business unit, responsible for Wix’s offering to all the professionals who build web presences for others. These professionals include designers, developers, and marketers, and work as freelancers or at midsize to large agencies.

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We’d love to hear about the product enhancements at Wix, a quick dive into how the platform started and how it’s evolved over the years…

Wix’s co-founders were trying to build a website for another startup when they were surprised they couldn’t find a simple way to build and design a website. This led them to switch courses and founded Wix in 2006 as a platform for anyone to create their own website with no coding or design skills needed.

Over the years, we have evolved into a leader in website creation, providing users with the solutions they need to create a professional online presence and then manage and grow their business. Whether a user is a restaurant owner, store merchant, fitness instructor, whatever the need is, we have the solution for it.

For a really long time, Wix was perceived as a self creator platform. It’s a simple and easy-to-use platform for those who don’t speak code and want to build a website. Today, Wix can be used by any level of web designer, developer, or professional who builds sites for others. Over the years, we added more and more advanced capabilities and extended the platform even further.

We have different creation tools and fully customizable platforms. For pro designers, we have Editor X,  supporting more design capabilities, responsive experiences, advanced layouts, and breakpoints control. We have built-in solutions for almost every industry including restaurant owners, bookable service providers, bloggers, and eCommerce users. Along with these solutions, we also provide complete management capabilities and business tools like CRM, marketing tools, and SEO. We allow our users to add custom functionality with code and we have advanced CMS capabilities. All of this is available to users  in a secure production-ready environment.

We are always listening to our customers, understanding their needs. and adding capabilities to expand our offering accordingly.  For example, we recently launched the Seating Map Builder. Previously, businesses and venues would have to hire developers to build complex systems to create a ticketing system and manage it, but now Wix business owners can do this on their own.

Another example would be our integration with LegalZoom. We are always looking for new ways to empower small businesses to establish and grow their business online, and we saw a great opportunity to take it a step further with LegalZoom. This recent partnership will enable entrepreneurs to have a unified experience to legally form their business in the U.S. and build their online presence, together in one place.

We are continually evolving through our new product launches and partnerships to provide our customers with a seamless and holistic experience.

For B2B tech companies who rely on matching market needs and aligning it to product development, what practices do you feel work best – which brands have you seen doing this really well in today’s market and how?

For B2B tech companies, it’s key they know their strengths and leverage those to the fullest, and also know when it’s time to seek partnerships and integrations to strengthen their core offerings.

Wix is a product company, and it’s important that we remember our core value proposition and focus the majority of our product development resources on areas of our main offering and expertise. Our focus is on advancing our platform for any type of user to create and manage their or their clients’ online presence. We have a few practices we use to confirm we’re matching market needs:

• We listen to our users. Always.
• We are constantly reassessing our current product contributions to the market and evaluating where we can improve or add on capabilities for the benefit of our users.
• We are always monitoring the market to understand what new technologies we can bring to our platform for a seamless and holistic experience for global users.
• We are continually looking for new opportunities through partnerships, integrations, and acquisitions that will provide our users with even more support, tools, and capabilities that will empower them in all aspects of their business cycle.
• We view our competitors and emerging companies as motivators. Our goal is to provide the best platform for our users and competitors make us better.

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Building an online presence in a noisy market is not easy for new entrants / smaller businesses today, how do you feel these teams need to revisit their core processes to drive change here?

The importance of a fully functioning online presence, including marketing, communications, and sales is critical to stand out in today’s market. This comprehensive approach is important across all kinds of businesses, from commerce to restaurants, to fitness businesses, and more.

To drive change, I recommend:

• Having a mobile-friendly website. It’s not only important that the website looks good from a desktop, but it also should quickly load and be user-friendly from any mobile device.
• Ensure check-out and booking success with a clean, secure, seamless user experience. To create a friendly checkout experience, offer different payment options such as credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Buy-Now-Pay-Later, incorporate autofill by having automatic settings to help fill out the form when applicable, and localize the checkout form with the local language, currency, and formats of the currency.
• Master search engine optimization (SEO) to increase the traffic to your website and improve your brand’s recognition and online presence.

Five tips for 2022 you’d leave anyone in B2B/SaaS with?

1. Highlight the key problem you’re solving. Emphasize how your business helps solve a major problem and brings value by making it relatable and in the language of your target audience.
2. Take the time to create customer relationships. A customer’s willingness to interact with your company or buy a product again stems from them associating a favorable experience with your brand and increasing their likelihood of continuing their business with you.
3. Protecting sensitive data and PII is integral to the success and reputation of any business. Be super aware of security and privacy current requirements and regulations.
4. Analyze the outcomes of bad and good decisions and create learning and improvement opportunities.
5. Look at your competitors as educators. Learn from them, see what strides they are taking to elevate your overall industry, and build from insights.