Web Design for Manufacturers: How to make your website not suck.
by Vin DiGioia
Chances are if you are reading this blog post, you are a decision-maker at a manufacturing company – or at least someone who has been tasked with figuring out what to do with your seven-year old beast of a manufacturing company website.
Chances are also pretty good that your website sucks.
I don’t mean “sucks” like the cyclonic technology of a Dyson vacuum. I don’t even mean sucks as in it is not visually appealing (even though it might be.) I mean it sucks like a Twilight vampire; it consistently drains your company of two of its most precious assets: time and money.
- TIME: Think about how much time it takes your staff – or worse, that pricey “website management company” – to lumber through your antiquated company website, just to make simple edits! The two hours of time that was spent trying to remove your old sales manager’s bio from the website could definitely have been spent on something much more productive…
- MONEY: Let’s skip right past all the money associated with the aforementioned “time” factor we just discussed. What about the revenue that your website isn’t generating for you? The money that was lost. The sales and leads that NEVER came in from your website. The countless opportunities your company has missed because your website is no where to be found in the search engines. That useless waste of digital space does nothing to help your manufacturing business grow and just continues to suck money off of your bottom line.
You’re here because you want to change that. Now, unlike 99% of the other B2B web design/marketing/advertising blogs out there, I’m going to spare you all the fancy UI/UX design best practices and color theory, and just focus on strategy. Above all else, when contemplating web design for manufacturers and manufacturing companies alike, planning and strategy are critically important. Here are three key factors to keep front of mind at all times during this process:
- Knowing your brand
Who are you? What is your product? Beyond the nuts and bolts – what does it do? Does it solve a problem? Your website should clearly state who you are and what you do. In today’s global economy, telling the user where you do it (i.e. where you are located) can also be beneficial. - Knowing your audience
Who are your customers? How do they use your product? Moreover, why do they use your product? What does your brand mean to them? In a nutshell: you must understand your customers. The content of your website must speak to them in a language they understand and provide them with the information (words + images) they need to make an informed decision. (Hopefully one that involves choosing you over a competitor!) - Knowing the search engines (and what they want)
Here we can stop with all the questions and boil it all down to one statement: Content is king. When evaluating websites for ranking on their results pages, search engines love to see strong, regularly updated content. Make sure you’ve got it – in spades. Make sure you’ve got it today and make sure you have a plan for how you’re going to continue providing it tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. Websites aren’t like those Ron Popiel ovens, you can’t just set it and forget it.
NOTE: I should also mention a new wrinkle that search giant Google recently threw into the mix that has to do with having a website that is “mobile-friendly.” It used to be a nice-to-have; now it’s a must-have. This means that companies must have a web presence that not only displays optimally on traditional desktops and laptops, but a host of other devices, as well. For this, we generally recommend what is called a “responsive design,” which literally means it will allow the website to physically “respond” to the device it is being viewed on, by reformatting the page’s content to provide an optimal viewing experience based on the screen size and/or device it is being displayed on. In short, a responsive design will ensure that your website will never appear as a miniature version of itself – thus limiting the amount of panning, pinching, and resizing a user needs to do in order to get to your content. It will also keep your website from sucking in the eyes of Google. (Want to test your current site? Click here and Google will tell you if it considers your current website to be mobile-friendly or not.)
Still not sure about web design for manufacturers or where to start? Maybe you think your ten-year-old website doesn’t suck and covers all of the above, already? (HINT: It doesn’t, so stop kidding yourself.) Maybe you think that that free website template company that advertises during intermission of the Yankees game will get the job done for you. (HINT #2: It won’t. It will just be a slightly more modern-looking version of the sucky website you already have. You get what you pay for, every time.)