These days, your website is considered to be your storefront, and just as any shop owner wants their storefront to appear clean, organized, inviting, and informative, you should want your website to look the same.
The layout of your website will vary depending on your industry, as well as the products and services that you offer. Designing manufacturing websites in particular requires a unique approach.
If you’re a manufacturer looking for ways to revamp your website, you’re in the right place. This article outlines manufacturing website design practices that will help you take your business to the next level.
Don’t Be Afraid of White Space
A cluttered design is a surefire way to persuade visitors to leave your website. Visitors don’t want to stay on a website that’s hard to read and follow. For this reason, it’s important to keep things simple and clean.
When we say don’t be afraid of white space, we’re referring to the part of your web page that doesn’t feature text or graphics. Not every part of your page needs content or images. When you keep your design easy and intuitive, visitors will be more likely to stay.
Make Your Website Design Easy for Users
If you’re seeking information online, how long do you typically wait for a page to load?
Believe it or not, most visitors won’t stay on your page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. That’s not a lot of time. That’s why it’s important to ensure your site features optimized images that won’t slow your website speed.
Additionally, most visitors will leave a page if they can’t find the information they’re looking for right away. Think about your audience and the type of information that they’re looking for. The most useful and relevant information should always be at the top of the page, and you must always have a navigation bar at the top of your website.
Which Industries Do You Serve?
When creating a website design for your manufacturing company, you need to make it abundantly clear which industries you serve, what you create and sell, and how potential clients can purchase these products or services from you. In other words, you want visitors to know that they came to the right website.
Be sure to highlight which industries you serve at the top of your website. You can even create separate pages based on the industries that you serve.
Brand Awareness: Let Your Customers Know Who You Are
It’s important for customers to remember who you are. This means putting an image in their mind, and that image should be your logo. If you don’t already have a logo, there’s your next step.
Once you have one, make sure it’s prominently displayed on your website. Every page should have one as should all your products, invoices, and sales material. This will imprint the image into your customers’ minds so that the positive experiences they have with you are connected to your brand.
Optimize Your Website Design for Desktop & Mobile
While you’ll certainly get a lot of visitors and clients cruising your website from desktop computers or laptops, it’s highly likely that you’re going to have mobile and tablet visitors as well. A potentially huge client may be perusing your site on their phone right now.
If your website design is not optimized for mobile use, it could lead to slow loading pages and navigation errors. Avoid this by ensuring your website design is optimized for both desktop and mobile use from the very beginning.
Don’t Overdo Clickable Buttons
Naturally, buttons are quite useful when they’re paired with call-to-actions. You definitely want people to “request a quote,” “register,” or “sign up,” when you prompt them, so buttons for these types of these things are okay.
Despite their use on a website, you should resist the urge to put them everywhere. This is not only overwhelming for visitors, but it can also be confusing. You definitely don’t want to lose a customer because they couldn’t figure out where to click to contact you.
Be Visual
Most people are visual learners, and even if they’re not visual learners, they still like images to help them understand things—or at least to break up the monotony of text.
That’s why, whenever possible, you should include images on your website. This especially goes for your product catalog. When you list products for sale, be sure to include several high-quality pictures from different angles. A good website design also features optimized images. When high-quality images are not optimized, your website loading time could be negatively affected.
Never Leave Out Content
Content keeps your website afloat. Your site should have at least 250 to 500 words on each page, and you should be uploading new content on a regular basis.
Content on your site matters, most importantly, for SEO (search engine optimization). Google and other search engines want to know that you update your site regularly and that you have a wealth of high-quality, useful information on there.
To enhance your content, make sure each article or web page has an introduction and includes supporting graphics like images, graphs, and charts. The content should be easy to read, relevant to your industry, and useful to the reader. It should also include specific keywords that your targeted audience may be searching for.
Don’t Forget About Metadata
In order to optimize your site for Google and other search engines, be sure to include meta titles, meta descriptions, and other metadata. Search engines will use this information to better understand the information on your website.
Calls to Action: What Do You Want Your Customers to Do?
Ultimately, you want visitors to come to your website to do something. As a manufacturer, you likely want them to reach out to you to discuss an upcoming project. Because of this, you have to provide numerous opportunities for your visitors to contact you.
The best way to do this is to incorporate forms into your website design, and be sure to take your time when deciding its layout and placement.
First, don’t make them so sparse that you’ll get little to no information from potential clients. You also shouldn’t make them so complex that it deters people from filling them out.
Once you have your forms strategically placed on your site, be sure to strategically place your CTAs (calls-to-action) as well. Speak plainly. Tell your visitors that you want to discuss the project with them, and give them clear opportunities to reach out.
Secure Your Website
Visitors to your site want to know that they are safe there. In other words, if they make a purchase or give you any of their private information, they want to know that it’s going to be secure. The best way to prove this is to set up SSL on your site.
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. To establish trust with your website visitors, be sure to obtain an SSL certificate. This will not only ensure a secure connection for potential clients, but it will also make Google happy. If you don’t have an SSL certificate, Google will list your website as “non-secure,” which could impact your overall ranking.
Could Your Manufacturing Web Design Be Improved?
As a manufacturer, it’s important to partner with a professional that specializes in industrial marketing. At Momentum, our experienced team has over a decade of hands-on industrial marketing experience. We understand this niche, and have helped countless clients improve their marketing ROIs, lead generation, and overall sales with our tried-and-true techniques.
If your manufacturing web design could be refined, and you’d like more information about Momentum’s industrial marketing services, give us a call today at (586) 276-7496 or contact us online to schedule a consultation.
