Effective Website Strategies For Manufacturing Companies
Many manufacturers do realize the sensitive importance of a website and they believe that it is much more than a handful of beautiful web pages.
Also, there is a big chunk of industrialists & manufacturers that still opt for the ads in industrial publications, trade fairs and other traditional sources for branding and marketing activities.
The right question to be raised here is - Which type of manufacturing companies are growing fast and which ones are lagging behind in their business growth?
There is no doubt that a huge portion of B2B and B2C buying process is being effortlessly conducted completely online.
And for the manufacturing companies, the website and its effective designing have become a strong lead-generating tool.
Take for example- the website design of
-Nike
-Ford
These risk-takers believed in….
‘No matter if your manufacturing business does not need to sell products online, but your buyers will research and solve their queries about your brand and products through your website.’
It’s factually proved.
The 2018 survey reports reveals 88% of the customers do research for the brands online before purchasing.
Working and investing in web design helps to easily captivate the visitors to your website, effectively convert them into the loyal leads and finally into a happily satisfied customer base.
As for today’s customers, your website is a virtual store and beyond a source of helpful content.
It just takes a few seconds for any consumer to get the first impression of your company through your website.
What highly matters to them is-- How your website is? Does it have easy navigations and appealing customer experience?
As it is rightly said- ‘Everything is designed. But only a few things are designed well.’
Essentially! You need to plan out strategies to design the website that exactly offers what your potential customers desire for.
This is one of the best ways to make the brand experience a desirable one for your customers.
Let’s dive into the current trends and the best web design strategies that will work as a magic for the manufacturers.
1- Make the home page informative
Just as the candidates want to give their best during job interviews. Some get a new haircut, some put on their best professional blazers, some also get so conscious that they make sure they don’t have veggies stuck in their teeth. Haha…….
On a sincere note, they try and give their best to build the first impression in their job interviews.
Similarly,
For the times’ people land and visit your homepage, your manufacturing business goes under a typical critical job interview and that too of many sorts.
Within just a few couple of seconds, the web design of your homepage gets many judgments regarding- an opinion of your business, the worthiness to get known further or worthiness to do business with and worthiness to make a purchase.
To have a web design strategy for your homepage is useful to develop a good first impression with a level of sophisticated rapport with the people.
This can be done by making the homepage informative for the users.
Elements to consider while strategizing an informative design for your Homepage:
- Your homepage should reflect the core expertise and value proposition that your business offers.
- A level of trust gets created with showcasing the social proof, client testimonials, and social presence of your business.
- Intuitive, easy, creative, and user-friendly navigation on the website is at the prima facie.
- Equip the visitors with your contact details.
- For some cases, it acts effectively to highlight some of the important blogs on your homepage.
- Definitely Yes! a video gives an easy and quick review of your business information to the visitors.
- Using the unique, original, and good quality images or other graphics gives a feel of your brand quality and sincerity you have for our brand.
- It’s much essential to mention an overview of the products, services, features or the resources of your business.
- Don’t ever miss out to highlight the certifications, recognition or any other achievements your manufacturing business has achieved.
- A simplified, clear, and pitching Call-To-Action has the power to create an interest and a crave among the visitors to review other information or benefits of your business.
Apart from the above elements, the actual technical key points also matter a lot to make the homepage a hit show.
Such as- the white spacing, the creatives, the keywords, impactful content, the color combinations, your company logo, the topmost banner of the homepage, and fonts to give clear visibility and understanding of your business to the visitors.
2- Use high-quality images with message
We need to face the fact that Appearance is Everything.
What others see on your manufacturing brand has an undeniable effect on your business success.
Today’s humans are the visual creatures in real sense.
And images are a greater source to develop a connection and understanding of what you want to discuss about your business.
Images being a vital element of your website, it directly makes your website and brand to stick in the minds of visitors in a professional, interesting, and an interactive way.
The content with the relevant images has 94% more total viewers than the content without images.
For good web design, the image helps brand to smoothly convey an important message, story, news or any details. It helps the visitors to easily understand what your business is talking about.
Strategize the impact of images in your web design
It helps to create simplicity.
For example, Apple. Through the images in the homepage, they have made it simple for the users to have easily understandable categories and it shows off their most recent works. Have a glance at the website of Apple and do think about what you cannot see instead of what you can see on the site. You will experience simplicity.
Gorgeous product shots
For example, Nike. The website of Nike exactly showcases what’s important--- their products. Through high-quality images, they are reflecting the real experience of their products.
Consistency
For example, the website of StarBucks. Through the images, they have made their brand essence to be applied in almost all the design elements. The design with the images you see in Starbucks website is much more integrated.
Strong grid
For example GE (General Electric Co). Every webpage on their site has a grid structure. No matter it is complex or simple, but it is present in the web design. It helps the design to break the important information into some manageable cells on the site for the users.
3- Incorporate easy navigations
Let your customers feel good to be lost in the right direction.
Easy navigations provide connectivity, consistency, availability and above all time-savvy directions to your visitors to land at the exact place on your website.
Without proper navigation, the site visitors will either click the close button or will feel handicapped to access the brand information that is equally important for you to let them know.
No matter the rest of the design elements will have that wow factor. But the success of your business will not be measured by the style, beautiful images or the design trend it offers.
The most critical parameter among the design elements is measuring efficiency through the total number of purchases made by the customers.
Navigation has a great impact on the visitors to get diverted to the right information - exactly what they are looking for or the solution to the problem they want to fix.
This will motivate them to make a purchase.
Navigations on the website can be through the Call-To-Action, tabs given for the services pages or other landing pages on your homepage or simply navigating the customer to the right page through a link in a blog or a hyperlink in the content copy of the webpage.
Easy navigations motivate your users to make a purchase
- Cutting down the total number of clicks or scrolls that the user needs to make to reach the right information.
- Too much of navigations can also create confusion. So an average number of navigations should be 3 clicks to the right landing page.
- Page jumps (links to the important sections on the same page) should also be effectively used to minimize the journey of the visitor to search right information on your website.
- It is also impactful if the navigation tools or bars are decorated with a simple yet attractive structure through the help of colors, icons or fonts.
Navigation makes the whole website a structured and organized one for the visitors to happily make a purchase and become a loyal customer of your manufacturing company.
4- Highlight CTA (Call-To-Action)
Manufacturers need to optimize the Call-To-Action in their website in order to get more conversions and attract traffic on their website.
Usually, manufacturing sites have normal CTAs.
You might have seen
-BUY NOW
-MAKE A PURCHASE
-REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL
These CTA’s aren’t too effective.
Strategize the CTA’s on your website:
CTA should be attractive
The CTA should not have generic words or common colors used on your website. It should have attractive words and eye-catchy color combination that best contrast your website.
CTA should be solution-driven
All the CTA’s should be relevant to the products that your manufacturing brand offers or should be relevant to the advantage you gonna give to your customers.
The text in the CTA should align with the solution the visitors are looking for.
Make the other design elements to point out the CTA
The CTA used in the image, especially in the main image or the main banner on your website. The image should be such that it pinpoints the CTA.
For example, If you have humans, visually created creatures or other such things as the object on the image, it should be such that these objects are looking at the CTA.
This will automatically draw the visitors attention to the CTA.
Use demanding and imperative words in CTA
The visitors get more attracted to click the CTA if the text on the CTA makes them feel like it's on-demand.
For example-
-GET A FREE TRIAL
-TRY NOW
-HURRY TO GRAB THE DISCOUNTS
-BE THE FIRST TO GET THE NEW EDITION
And lastly, CTA’s should be placed where it makes right sense. No specific compulsion to place the CTA at the bottom or at the top of the webpage only. It should make sense where it is placed and for what purpose.
5- Don't get too creative into experimenting
Design is not just about bringing all the possible creativity in it’s every aspect or element. With creativity, there also comes the importance of solving user problems and to make them happy.
Yes of course, a good dose of innovation and uniqueness in presenting your manufacturing brand is essential. But the website should also consider the interface from the customers perspective.
The ‘too much of creativity’ should not knock down the visitor. Web design strategy should be focused on the friendly experience to be given to the targeted audience.
If your web design has too much of revolution and innovation, it might scare or confuse the visitor to understand what you're up to or what is your brand all about.
It’s thoughtful for the manufacturers!
Having a perfect web design has now been a way of doing business.
Manufacturers literally need a smart, sleek, and appealing web design that keeps up with the present technology trends.
And as a GenZ manufacturer, you should have a strategy-oriented website or mobile app that is smartly and sensibility designed for the new and powerful demands of your customers that develops a strong connection between your company, your suppliers, and your buyers.
