Website builder Weebly is expanding to Arizona, opening an office in Scottsdale that will serve as its North American customer operations headquarters.

According to a report by AZCentral on Wednesday, the company signed a five-year lease on the 25,000-square-foot location at the Galleria Corporate Centre in Old Town Scottsdale. It plans to hire more than 250 people over the next three years to work as customer sales and support specialists, team leaders, trainers, quality assurance and other positions.

Based in San Francisco, Weebly hosts 20 million sites. In April, it raised $35 million in Series C funding to expand into new markets and increase investment in R&D.

The city expects Weebly’s expansion to have a $256 million economic impact over the next five years.

“Globally-focused companies continue to choose Arizona to achieve their goals for growth, and our highly skilled and available workforce is among our key advantages attracting corporate investment and expansions to the state,” Sandra Watson, president and CEO, Arizona Commerce Authority said in a statement.

Weebly is part of a segment of service providers that offer a space for small businesses and indivduals to build their online presence easily. Website builders like SquareSpace, Yola and Wix.com focus on this growing market, and while they offer hosting services, those services are almost secondary to all of the other features they offer around design, functionality and features like ecommerce.

While not a website builder, Facebook pages offer small businesses a space to grow their customer base online. Earlier this week, Facebook’s director of small business Dan Levy announced that the company has 30 million small businesses with active Pages on its social network.
Kepler Reviewed by Kepler on . Website Builder Weebly Opens Customer Operations Headquarters in Scottsdale http://i.imgur.com/bIBMeEU.jpg Website builder Weebly is expanding to Arizona, opening an office in Scottsdale that will serve as its North American customer operations headquarters. According to a report by AZCentral on Wednesday, the company signed a five-year lease on the 25,000-square-foot location at the Galleria Corporate Centre in Old Town Scottsdale. It plans to hire more than 250 people over the next three years to work as customer sales and support specialists, team leaders, Rating: 5