Many companies already use Odoo for sales, invoicing or projects – and still run their website on a completely separate system. In this article we show why it often makes sense to build the website directly in Odoo, how a professional Odoo website is created and which pitfalls you should avoid.
Why build your website in Odoo?
Odoo is not just an ERP system. With the Website app, it includes a full content management system that is directly connected to all other apps. This has some clear advantages:
- One system instead of many: website, CRM, shop, invoicing and projects share the same database. There is no need for plugins or interfaces that have to be maintained separately.
- Enquiries land where they are processed: a contact form can create a lead in the CRM, a task in a project or a ticket – without copy and paste.
- An online shop that knows your products: prices, stock and orders come directly from Odoo. Orders flow straight into sales, invoicing and payment.
- Editing without code: texts, images and sections can be changed by your team directly in the visual editor.
- Several websites, one backend: different brands or domains can be managed from a single Odoo database.
From theme to individual design
Odoo comes with a number of themes and building blocks. They are a good starting point, but a professional website should reflect your brand, not a template. A typical project therefore includes the following steps:
- Define the design: colours, fonts, spacing and the visual language of your brand.
- Configure the theme: colour palette, header and footer styles and fonts are set in the theme options so that all pages follow the same rules.
- Build the page layouts: hero section, service cards, references, contact sections – using Odoo's building blocks or custom sections with their own CSS where the standard blocks are not enough.
- Connect the apps: contact forms, newsletter, shop, blog or appointment booking are linked to the right Odoo apps.
- Legal pages and privacy: imprint, privacy policy and cookie handling are set up in line with the services actually used.
The result is a website that looks individual and can still be maintained comfortably in the Odoo editor.
Custom design without losing editability
A common mistake is to customise an Odoo website so heavily that it can no longer be edited without a developer. We prefer a clear separation:
- Theme settings for colours, fonts and global styles,
- a small, well-structured stylesheet for brand-specific components such as cards, buttons or hero sections,
- content in normal Odoo pages, so that texts and images remain editable for your team.
Where the website builder reaches its limits, we develop custom Odoo modules – for example for special forms, product configurators or integrations with external systems.
Performance, SEO and privacy
A good-looking website is only half the job. With Odoo websites, we pay particular attention to:
- Performance: optimised images (Odoo converts them to WebP automatically), lean custom CSS and no unnecessary scripts.
- SEO: clean URLs, page titles and meta descriptions, multilingual content and a correct domain setup (for example redirecting the domain without "www" to the main domain).
- Privacy: fonts can be hosted locally instead of being loaded from Google, third-party embeds are only used where they are really needed, and the privacy policy matches what the website actually does.
Common pitfalls
- Multi-website setups: pages, menus, pricelists and theme settings can be bound to a specific website. When cleaning up or removing a website, these dependencies have to be resolved first.
- Theme switching: changing the theme later can affect existing pages. It is worth deciding on the basic design early.
- Unpublished pages: buttons and menu items should only point to published pages – otherwise visitors end up on a "page not found" error.
- Copied legal texts: a privacy policy taken over from another website often lists tools that are not used at all – and misses those that are.
Conclusion
If you already work with Odoo, building your website in Odoo is often the most efficient choice: one system, no duplicate data and processes that run from the first website visit to the invoice. With a clean design concept and a few targeted customisations, an Odoo website looks just as professional as one built on a classic CMS.
Planning a new website or want to move your existing one to Odoo? We are happy to help – from the design to custom Odoo modules.