Your Manufacturer Website is not timeless and, unfortunately, not going to last forever.
It is crucial that you rebuild your website in a timely manner, so that your manufacturing company continues to succeed.
You might be asking yourself, "How do I properly rebuild my website?" Driven Digital has put together a Website Rebuild Checklist that is specifically for manufacturers and industrial service providers. Our checklist consists of:
- Establishing a team of stakeholders
- Auditing your current website
- Setting goals & a timeline
- Analyzing your competitor's website
- Making sure you own your domain
- Deciding how customers will purchase your product/service
- Identifying your calls to action (CTAs)
- Developing a site hierarchical structure & content strategy
- Improving the user experience (UX)
- Determining a hosting & maintenance plan
Having a weak website can lead to a host of negative consequences for a manufacturer, including a poor user experience, negative brand perception, decreased credibility, missed opportunities, lower search engine rankings, hindered marketing efforts and a competitive disadvantage. However, if you rebuild your website with an on-page SEO approach, you can:
- Enhance the aesthetic appearance
- Improve the user experience
- Raise your search engine ranking
- Generate more organic traffic
01) Establish A Committed Team Of Stakeholders
The select few individuals who will be making decisions throughout the website rebuild process should already be known, prior to rebuilding your Manufacturer Website.
If there are numerous people involved in the project, with everyone trying to advise at the same time, it can be difficult to ensure that every person's opinion is going to be heard. This will result in the entire project slowing down, which will, ultimately, make your chances greater for a complete missed timeline.
02) Audit Your Current Manufacturer Website
An audit refers to the process of measuring and analyzing your current manufacturer website.
Audits will create a highly detailed report, specifically on your website’s health. Within an audit, there are various website metrics that are going to be benchmarked.
Properly conducting an audit will help you discover issues that may be preventing your web pages from generating a continuous flow of organic traffic. Not only that, but the audit will show you pages that your visitors find useful, pages that your visitors cannot find and pages that your visitors never navigate to.
After analyzing the health of your site, you will have a clear and better understanding of the goals and objectives that are needed to maintain a successful website.
03) Set Goals & A Timeline
Think about why you want to rebuild your Manufacturer Website. Create goals that are relevant to your website rebuild process. Do not forget to review, analyze and measure your progress along the way. Not only that, but make certain that your goals can be achieved and properly attained by your manufacturing company.
It is also critical that you develop a practical timeline that is realistic, in order to accurately meet the objectives that were put in place. As you navigate through your website rebuild process, your timeline can be adjusted as needed.
04) Analyze Your Competitor's Manufacturer Website
It is vital that you take the initiative to analyze and measure your competitor’s website.
Analyzing your competitor's website is referred to as a competitive analysis. With a competitive analysis, you will be able to precisely analyze your competition’s online presence.
- Which keywords are ranking high?
- Which web pages are ranking for the most keywords?
- Which web pages are driving the most traffic?
A competitor analysis is going to help you benchmark your SEO performance, as well as improve your SEO strategy.
05) Make 100% Sure That You Own Your Domain
The most important step in obtaining a successful Manufacturer Website is domain ownership.
A domain is the particular name of your website, or more specifically, the address that is used to access your site. Your domain name is how your potential customers can search for and see your manufacturing company online. As a result, your domain should be relevant and, especially, related to your business or products and services.
Make 100% sure that you have ownership of your website's domain!
With 100% ownership of your domain name, you will effectively build credibility as a manufacturer online.
06) Determine How Customers Will Purchase Your Product | Service
When it comes to potential customers who are wanting to purchase your product or service through your manufacturer website, it is important that you are able to successfully meet their needs.
Sell Parts Online
For most manufacturing companies, selling parts is necessary.
With the rise of customers seeking an alternative and convenient solution to ordering parts hassle-free and on-demand, many of today’s businesses are turning to providers who sell their parts online.
Here at Driven Digital, we have created a resourceful system for selling your machined parts through your website - it is known as orderparts.online. This service is a turn-key solution for your company’s parts division. It is going to successfully streamline your part ordering process and, additionally, improve your profit margins.
Request A Quote
When custom machining is required for a project, requesting a quote is, especially, ideal.
As a manufacturer, your potential customers are likely going to need custom machining. You want to be able to satisfy the manufacturing needs and shipping demands of your customers accurately. Therefore, make sure that the quoting process is secure and easy for the companies that you do business with.
In order for your customers to request a quote through your website, a form will need to be created. The form is going to have various fields, to ensure that your manufacturing company receives the proper information about the particular project.
07) Identify Your Primary & Secondary CTAs
Not all of your target audience will be in the same stage of the buyer’s journey, simultaneously. Each individual user is going to be in a different phase of the buying process.
There are 3 stages that a buyer will go through:
- Awareness Stage
- Consideration Stage
- Decision Stage
It is crucial that your manufacturer website has a primary and secondary call-to-action (CTA). A CTA is simply known as a "call" to take an "action". It will particularly prompt your target audience, leads and potential customers to engage with your company. Having more than one CTA on your website is going to help guide your potential customers through the buying process, no matter what stage they are currently in. For example, "Learn More", "Request A Quote" or "Download Our Product Catalog".
08) Develop A Site Hierarchical Structure & Content Strategy
It is crucial that you employ a site hierarchical structure that will continuously drive organic traffic to your Manufacturer Website.
- Are you producing content on various key topics?
- Are you recycling content?
- Are you using a content strategy?
The topic cluster model is a highly effective approach for structuring your website’s hierarchy. A topic cluster is a cluster of content on your website that is related to one of your main topics. You will have a few main topics that are, specifically, related to your manufacturing company.
A pillar page is required for each main topic that you have. The content creation process will, then, consist of creating various subtopic web pages that are relevant to each main topic. It is essential that the subtopic web pages are properly linked to their corresponding main topic pillar pages.
This method will help you develop content on key manufacturing topics, particularly in a way that users can easily understand and navigate through.
09) Pay Attention To User Experience
Be attentive to user experience on your manufacturer website.
If a user has a poor experience on your website, they will likely resort to a competitor of yours. As a result, it is important that your website successfully meets the expectations of your target audience online.
If you confuse, you lose!
You need to make sure that your manufacturer website has exactly what your potential customers are searching for. In addition to that, your web pages should have a clear and straightforward navigation menu. If your website’s navigation is easy to understand, users will be less likely to get confused and be more likely to engage with your company.
10) Form A Long Term Hosting & Maintenance Plan
Over 30,000 websites are hacked every single day. Who is protecting your Manufacturer Website?
If your website is the face of your company, then you simply cannot afford for your web pages to not run smoothly day to day.
Here at Driven Digital, we like to think of website hosting and maintenance as insurance for your website.
Website Hosting is the process of safely storing a website and accurately serving its web pages to a targeted audience online. Whereas, Website Maintenance is the process of continuously checking your web pages for issues, while also keeping your website up-to-date, relevant and performing smoothly.
Click the button below to download the full version of our Website Rebuild Checklist for Manufacturers and Industrial Service Providers, which includes links to online tools and more!