100+ Ways Manufacturers Can Improve Their Websites

You desperately need to implement #7 ASAP!

  1. 1.

    Have Regular Website Meetings With The Main Stakeholders

    • Thoroughly review website progress
    • Assign accountability to team members
  2. 2.

    Setting Goals For Your Website Will Help You Reach Your Business Objectives

    • Rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs)
    • Boost the engagement on your web pages
  3. 3.

    Use A CMS (Content Management System)

    • A CMS will make it easy to create & edit content on your Manufacturer Website - No coding required
    • We recommend WordPress
  4. 4.

    Have A Clear Primary Call-To-Action (CTA) On Each Web Page

    • It has to be easily visible
    • Tell them what you want them to do
    • For instance, schedule a meeting, request a quote, etc.
  5. 5.

    Have A Secondary Call-To-Action (CTA) On Select Web Pages

    • It requires less of a commitment
    • For example, download a PDF or access training material
  6. 6.

    Create A Content Marketing Calendar

    • This will be your scheduled timeline
    • It will precisely organize all of your marketing content and activity
  7. 7.

    Have Very Clear Messaging

    • What do you manufacture?
    • How does it make my life better?
    • How do I get it?
  8. 8.

    Position Your Company As The Guide & Your Customers As The Hero In Your Manufacturing Brand Story

    • Clarify your ideal customer’s problem
    • Express a solution to the problem - your manufactured product/service
  9. 9.

    Your Messaging Strategy Should Include A One-Liner Statement

    • Voice your ideal customer’s problem
    • Express a solution to their problem
    • Define what success looks like
  10. 10.

    Avoid Long Paragraphs

    • Use short paragraphs
    • Use bullet lists
  11. 11.

    Create Content That Targets The Website Visitor’s Intent

    • Informational
    • Transactional
    • Navigational
    • Educational
  12. 12.

    Create High Quality Blogs With Relevant Manufacturing Content

    • Form your ideal buyer persona
    • Complete competitor research
  13. 13.

    Create A Special Landing Page Or Blog Post About An Upcoming Trade Show That You Will Be Attending

    • It creates awareness
    • It encourages people to make an appearance
    • It motivates your leads to visit your company’s booth
  14. 14.

    Make Sure To Optimize Blog Posts And Web Pages

    • Optimize for search engines
    • Optimize for user experience
  15. 15.

    Send Email Campaigns That Link Back To Your Manufacturer Website

    • Link to blog posts
    • Link to landing pages
  16. 16.

    Create Various Targeted Landing Pages

    • Relevant to your targeted keywords
    • Relevant to your marketing campaigns
  17. 17.

    Add A “Live Chat” Feature To Your Manufacturer Website

    • So that you can interact with visitors in real-time
  18. 18.

    Make Certain That Your Website Is Easy To Navigate

    • No web pages or blog posts should be more than 3 clicks from the homepage
    • Don’t make the main navigation on your website crowded or confusing
  19. 19.

    Add An Accessibility Menu To Your Website

    • For the people who are visually impaired
  20. 20.

    Make Sure That Your Website Is ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Compliant

  21. 21.

    Add A Background Video To Your Homepage Banner

    • Show your manufactured product being used
    • Show your manufactured product being made
  22. 22.

    Use Videos Throughout Your Website

    • Informational videos
    • Instructional videos
  23. 23.

    Post On Social Media Accounts

    • Link back to your website
  24. 24.

    Create A “Resources” Section On Your Manufacturer Website

    • This will provide your customers, sales reps or dealers with any information that they might need
  25. 25.

    Your Web Pages Should Include FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

    • This helps with user experience and search engine ranking
  26. 26.

    Making A Purchase On Your Website Should Be A Simple And Easy Process

    • Someone outside of your company should test the purchase process
    • Have that person recommend improvements
  27. 27.

    Form Submissions Should Have A Brief Response Time

    • To increase conversion rates
  28. 28.

    Make Sure Landing Pages Have One Strong Call-To-Action (CTA)

    • For instance, fill out a quote request form
  29. 29.

    Color Coordinate Your Theme With Your Logo

    • Looks more professional
    • Looks more organized
  30. 30.

    Regularly Check Your Website For Broken Links

    • This will enhance the user's experience
  31. 31.

    Give Your Dealers Or Sales Reps Access To Special, Password-Protected Content

    • This is your manufacturing content that is not intended for the general public
  32. 32.

    Create Content That Has Detailed Information About Your Manufactured Products

    • Try to get around 600 words on each product page
  33. 33.

    Keep Visitors Up-To-Date, By Creating A "News & Updates" Section On Your Manufacturer Website

    • Upcoming events
    • Featured products or services
  34. 34.

    Include Google Maps On Your Website

    • That way, visitors can easily find you
  35. 35.

    Your Website Should Be Clutter-Free - If you confuse, you lose

    • Make sure that users are always familiar with where they are at, when browsing your web pages
    • Make sure that users know how to find what they are looking for on your website
  36. 36.

    Ensure That Your Website Is Aesthetically Pleasing

    • Have someone outside of your organization give you an honest opinion
  37. 37.

    Include Multiple Product Images

    • Preferably with a zoom-in feature
  38. 38.

    Add 360° Imaging When Applicable

    • Customers will be able to see every angle and detail of the manufactured product
  39. 39.

    Optimize The Images On Your Manufacturer Website

    • Use the correct formatting
    • Use the proper dimensions
    • Use the appropriate quality/compression
  40. 40.

    Use A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

    • This will help your website load faster
    • We recommend Cloudflare
  41. 41.

    Use A Full Page Cache

    • For instance, Varnish
    • This will improve the response time of your web pages
  42. 42.

    Ensure OPcache is enabled

    • To increase the performance of your web pages
  43. 43.

    Ensure Styles And Scripts Are Minified & Concatenated

    • Use a plugin
    • For example, WP Rocket
  44. 44.

    Your Phone Number Should Be Easily Visible On Every Web Page

    • Mobile devices should have a click-to-call functionality
  45. 45.

    Add Customer Testimonials To Your Manufacturer Website

    • Display them on your homepage
  46. 46.

    Use The Topic Cluster Model To Set Up Your Website’s Hierarchy

    • This will improve the user's experience
    • This will help with search engine crawlability
  47. 47.

    If You Have A “Recent News” Page, Keep Up With It

    • Always publish updates, so that your page is well kept
    • If your "Recent News" post is from 3 years ago, it looks bad
  48. 48.

    Create A Standard Privacy Policy For Your Manufacturer Website

    • So that user information is efficiently protected
  49. 49.

    Create An HTML Sitemap Of Your Website

    • To make your content more accessible
    • To make your content more navigable
  50. 50.

    At Least 3 People Should Analyze Every Page On Your Website

    • Proofread ALL content for spelling, typos, etc.
  51. 51.

    Add A "Careers" Page To Your Website

    • This will attract new employees
  52. 52.

    Do An SEO Audit On Your Current Manufacturer Website

    • With an SEO Audit, you can look for areas of improvement
  53. 53.

    Analyze Your Competitor's Website

  54. 54.

    Make Sure That Your Website Is Indexed By Google

    • Do a Google search for "site:yourdomain.com"
    • The results will show the content that Google has indexed
    • If not indexed, submit it to Google Search Console
  55. 55.

    Frequently Submit Your Website To Google Search Console

  56. 56.

    Submit Your XML Sitemap To Google Search Console

  57. 57.

    Fix Any XML Sitemap Errors On Your Manufacturer Website

    • As noted in your Google Search Console
  58. 58.

    Fix Any Responsive Issues On Your Web Pages

    • As noted in your Google Search Console
  59. 59.

    Continuously Monitor Google Search Console

    • To understand how Google Search views your web pages
  60. 60.

    Make Sure That Google Analytics Is Properly Configured On Your Website

    • That way, you can thoroughly analyze your website traffic
  61. 61.

    Analyze Your Google Analytics Reports On A Regular Basis

    • This will help you understand your website visitors and how they behave on your web pages
  62. 62.

    Where Your Manufacturer Website Is Hosted Will Matter

    • Try to avoid Share-Hosting
    • That is, when your website is on the same environment as other websites
  63. 63.

    Make Sure To Run A Security Application On Your Website

    • So that hackers cannot access sensitive data and information
  64. 64.

    Do Nightly Backups Of Your Website

  65. 65.

    Make Sure That Your Domain Is Secured

    • Secure your domain with an SSL certificate
    • Ask your domain provider about this
  66. 66.

    Make Sure That Your Plugins Are Up To Date

    • So that there won't be any unexpected security cracks in your manufacturer website
  67. 67.

    Use Technology That Has The Ability To Continuously Update Plugins

  68. 68.

    Limit Users With Administrative Permissions

  69. 69.

    Use Strong Passwords

    • Change them regularly
  70. 70.

    Make Sure That You Are Targeting The Proper Keywords

    • In order to continuously generate quality leads
  71. 71.

    Do A Competitive Keyword Analysis

    • It is also known as a Keyword Gap Analysis
  72. 72.

    Utilize A Tool Like SEMrush, In Order To:

    • Thoroughly review your competitor’s online presence
    • Analyze your website performance with site metrics
    • Specifically target the right keywords
    • Discover your keyword ranking
  73. 73.

    Make Sure That Your Heading Tags Contain Variations Of Your Target Keywords

    • H1 tags, H2 tags & H3 tags
  74. 74.

    Use Heading Tags To Provide Content Structure

    • Heading tags will improve a user's experience
    • Heading tags help the search engine recognize how your manufacturing content is structured
  75. 75.

    Improve Your Manufacturer Website’s SEO

    • Use Schema Markup
  76. 76.

    Make Sure That Your Title Tags Contain Target Keywords

  77. 77.

    Make Sure That Your Title Tags Are Not Too Long

    • Title Tags should be between 50 and 60 characters long
  78. 78.

    Add Internal Links To Your Manufacturer Website

    • At least 3 internal links should be on each blog post, landing page and web page
  79. 79.

    Make Sure The Anchor Text Of Internal Links Are Keyword Focused

    • Utilize descriptive anchor text
  80. 80.

    Make Sure To Use Your Keywords In The Meta Description

  81. 81.

    Do Not Keyword Stuff

    • This is a technique in search engine optimization (SEO) that over-uses your keywords on the page content
  82. 82.

    Add Lucky Orange

    • In order to really see how your visitors are navigating through your manufacturer website
  83. 83.

    Own Your Manufacturer Website's Domain!

    • Make sure that the Domain Registration information has an email address that you will always be able to access
  84. 84.

    Use reCAPTCHA On All Contact Forms

    • In order to minimize spam form submissions
  85. 85.

    Responsiveness - Make Sure That Your Website Is Responsive On All Devices

    • Desktop
    • Mobile
    • Tablet
  86. 86.

    Connect Your eCommerce Website To Your Shipping Company

    • This will provide a smooth purchase process for your customers
  87. 87.

    Configure A Sales Tax Application

    • In order to calculate the appropriate sales tax
  88. 88.

    Connect Your eCommerce Website To Your Payment Gateway

  89. 89.

    Monitor The Page Speed Of Your Manufacturer Website

  90. 90.

    Monitor Your Website’s Uptime

    • Get reports when/if your manufacturer website goes down
  91. 91.

    Make Sure That All Of Your External Links Are Functioning Correctly

    • Don’t forget to test your Social Media links
  92. 92.

    A Website Management Strategy Will Prepare You For Updates To:

    • Your website's DNS
    • Email submissions
    • Invoicing
  93. 93.

    Optimize Your Manufacturer Website’s Database

    • In order to improve the overall performance of your site
  94. 94.

    Remove Spam Comments

    • Spam comments can cause your website to rank lower in the search engine results pages (SERPs)
  95. 95.

    Delete Unnecessary Plugins From Your Website

    • An unused plugin can cause security issues to arise
  96. 96.

    Delete Unnecessary Themes From Your Website

    • Security issues can transpire when your website has unused themes
    • Deleting unused themes will, additionally, improve your website's performance
  97. 97.

    Delete Unnecessary Media Files

    • Having a large number of unused media files will slow your website down
  98. 98.

    Use The Amazon Keyword Tool

  99. 99.

    Do Not Forget To Optimize Your “Careers” Page

    • Optimize for the keyword phrases that job seekers are using to search
  100. 100.

    Make Sure That Your Manufactured Product's Name Is In The URL Of The Product Page

  101. 101.

    Refresh Your Older Manufacturing Content

    • Keep your content evergreen
    • Update old web pages and blog posts
    • Then resubmit them to Google for indexing