A Guide to a Great Manufacturing Website
As a manufacturing company, you need a website that clearly exhibits your innovation and technological expertise to inspire prospects to contact to your sales team. Whether you’re designing a new website or making user-focused updates to your existing site, these tips will help you turn your manufacturing website into a powerful marketing tool.
Professional & Clean Design
Having an updated website design can solidify your brand impression and quickly communicate the performance and quality of your company. That is true in any field, but especially so in technical industries, when an outdated, poorly functioning website can reflect negatively on the technical expertise of your company.
Your website is often the initial point of contact with a customer, so it needs to make a good first impression in three main areas: looks, content, and function.
A simple, streamlined, aesthetically pleasing website design makes your business look more professional than a website that is cluttered and difficult to navigate.
Great looking website must-haves:
- A clean and professionally updated logo
- A modern layout that is visually appealing and on-brand
- Large, captivating imagery and video
- Value-based messaging regarding your services
Great User Experience (UX)
It's crucial that your website works seamlessly, without any functionality issues to not only give your site visitors a good user experience, but to instill confidence in your ability to build things that work as they're supposed to.
Your website visitors should be able to browse your capabilities or search for a product easily. For capability and service-based manufacturers, this means easily-found service pages that are well-written and organized logically by application, industry, or material.
Must-have user-friendly design elements include:
- Logical & Intuitive Navigation
- Clear formatting using a hierarchical structure for headings and paragraph text
- Product Catalog (or eCommerce functionality if applicable)
- Mobile responsive
- Functional site search
- Conformance to accessibility standards
If your company is product-based, make sure your product categories are clearly defined and thoughtfully organized, and offer the ability to quickly drill down to see more specific options.
If you have a large selection of products, be sure they can easily be searched by keyword, part number/SKU, or other key factors.
It's preferable, both in terms of user experience and search engine optimization, to have a separate page for each product or product category. Make sure each product page includes any necessary relevant information and materials, including spec sheets, ordering guides, brochures, installation instructions, etc.
Compelling Content That Speaks to Your Target Audiences
When a prospect is vetting multiple manufacturing companies, thoughtful and well-written content that is specifically aimed at your target audience will help your website stand out from the competition. A great manufacturing website should clearly explain what your company does, your experience, skills, and technological proficiency.
When developing content for your website, always keep your target customer or buyer persona in mind and include information that helps them achieve their goals.
For example, if engineers are your prime audience, what details will help them understand they’ve found what they’re looking for? If purchasing managers are the ones browsing your website, how can you ‘keyword match’ their spec sheet to ensure the sale?
Once you've identified your audience(s), make sure you generate content that speaks to their needs, including key information such as turnaround times, product quality, lead times, shipping, etc.
Your manufacturing website should also highlight the unique selling points or value propositions that differentiate your company from its competitors.
Showcase Industry Expertise and Build Trust
One of the best ways to convince prospects your manufacturing company is capable of serving their needs is by showing results from other customers.
4 ways to build credibility on your manufacturing website:
- Awards, certifications, and/or associations
- Case studies showing how you solved a particular challenge for a customer
- Customer testimonials, in either written or video form
- Photos or videos of your products in action
- Reviews from customers, both on your own site and on third-party platforms
Having this type of content on your website will provide valuable confirmation of the quality of your work.
Make it Easy to Contact You
Once a prospect has read through your material, the next step is to contact your sales team. Make this process simple by having strategic calls-to-action on each page. Use action words like “Request a Quote” “Submit a Request” or “Order Replacement Part” to fully communicate what the user will experience next.
Contact/RFQ form must-haves:
- Include a place for attaching PDFs for purchase orders or blueprints.
- If there is standard information you need to generate a quote, ask for it in the form, but don’t make it required in case they don’t know.
- Remember that in general, shorter forms are more likely to be filled out.
- Include a thank you page (for marketing tracking) and a thank you email.
Don’t forget that some people prefer to start with a phone call rather than fill out a contact form or send an email. This is why it's important to include a phone number in the website header and footer, especially on mobile devices.
Here at Web Solutions, one of our specialties is developing websites and creating marketing plans for manufacturing, industrial and distribution companies. If it's time to redesign your manufacturing website, contact us to speak with experts who are ready to discuss your specific needs and goals.
