Maximising the potential of your website – top tips for manufacturing and engineering companies

Do you want your website to make an impression and help you grow your business? Jack Weir, Horizon Works’ Digital Marketing Apprentice, looks at what manufacturing and engineering companies should consider when building and launching new websites.   

The manufacturing and engineering sectors are competitive, complex and ever-evolving. Therefore, it is important that you have a website that truly expresses what your organisation does, along with its mission and values. The services and/or products that you offer should be displayed and described in an engaging way.

I have put together some top tips on maximising the potential of your website…

Showcase your facilities

Customers like to see where products have come from. Make sure your website features content on your base, plant, or factory, and that it showcases the great work you do. It’s a great way of adding more personality to your brand and telling your story. Start small and invest in some key photography, but if budget permits produce a high-quality video that provides a virtual tour around your site. Allowing people to see where your products are manufactured can position your business as a reliable and trusted provider.

Highlight your products

Your website should clearly articulate the purpose, applications, and benefits of each product you offer. Make sure your website is a reference point for your products and that customers and prospects can easily access key information. With short, powerful descriptions, your audience can gain a strong understanding of what you offer, as well as the benefits of your products and what sets them apart from those of your competitors. The use of key imagery and videos will also help with this… and will catch the eye of your audience.

Your website should act as a sales tool, so suggest other key products and features to support you in upselling and cross selling your products. For example, on each individual product page, you should display additional products that you feel would also be of interest to your target market.

You could also create a promotional graphic to visually highlight your product/s on the website’s homepage. For example, on the ExMesh™ website, we have showcased the company’s extensive security product range and with the use of photography, demonstrated how each product would be used in context. View our case study for ExMesh™ here.

Our client Devine Chemicals has a broad range of specialist products and in this case, it was very important to prominently highlight technical information. To find out more about our work with Devine Chemicals click here.

Communicate your capabilities

Your business may specialise in more than one area and you may have a wide range of capabilities. It’s important that you communicate this to your audience and provide clear descriptions of each capability. In addition, you could use icons/symbols and assign separate colours to each capability. These can then be used across your entire website and wider marketing collateral. This will allow your audience to gain a better understanding of your capabilities and ensure they are easy to identify.

In addition, industry accreditations, innovations and in-house expertise should be clearly communicated on your website. These can be the very factors that set you apart from your competitors and should be prominently promoted.

An example of the above is our work with Ameriwater. The company’s products and solutions are featured on the website’s navigation banner, which makes it easy for website visitors to find out more about them. Links to Ameriwater’s product service, training and resources are also displayed prominently on the website’s home page. To find out more on our work with Ameriwater visit the case study here.

Bring your company to life

Publishing blog content regularly will help you increase the number of visitors to your website. Through your blog, you can announce any significant business updates, comment on key industry trends and provide tips and advice on your area of expertise. Having a consistent blog on your website can also have a positive impact on your search engine rankings.

A great example of this is The Expanded Metal Company’s news and blog section. This features a wide variety of content which helps website visitors gain more understanding of its innovative products and expertise, and informs them of company developments. Blogs, news articles, event information and videos are all used to bring the company to life.

To find out more about our work with The Expanded Metal Company, visit the case study here.

Display your testimonials

Make sure you gain as much feedback from your clients and/or customers as possible. They are tangible proof that your company is delivering to high standards. Housing your testimonials on your website shows your organisation is trusted and reliable.

GEM Partnership, a recruitment and training provider, works with manufacturing and engineering companies and has used testimonials from these sectors to demonstrate its support for and experience in these industries. We created a dedicated page on its website for testimonials. This page features feedback from candidates, learners and customers – and can easily be filtered by these titles – so that website visitors can explore feedback from those who have used the specific service they are interested in. To out find more about the website we designed and developed for GEM Partnership visit our case study here.

Report on your website activity

Each month you should monitor how your pages are performing and what level of engagement they are receiving. From this, you will be able to determine what kind of content is proving to be the most popular with your audience, as well as any areas for improvement. You can then harness this insight to make website improvements, further enhance core content and inform your digital marketing strategy.

Google Analytics allows you to see certain features, such as how long users are spending on certain web pages, where your traffic has come from and the devices that people are using to view your website. Regular reporting will enable you to monitor website performance and trends.

Be easily contactable

First and foremost, your website should have a contact page. This page should house the address/locations of your organisation, contact number, email address and links to your social media platforms. Your ‘contact us’ page should also be visible from your website’s navigation bar.

In addition, it is important that your website and other digital marketing platforms feature strong calls to action (CTAs) – in many cases this will direct website users to your contact page. An example could be your e-marketing: when sending out e-newsletters and e-shots, a link to your website contact page should always be featured, so that if audiences want to find out more about you, they have an easy way of getting in touch.

The Expanded Metal Company is a good example of this: through the company’s website, prospective customers can order product samples. As well as giving prospective customers a ‘feel’ for the products, this also helps The Expanded Metal Company develop a relationship with them and drive further engagement.

Optimise your website

Using search engine optimisation (SEO) is an effective way of increasing the reach of your website. SEO is a make-up of technical aspects which allow your website to become more visible within search engine results pages (SERPs). With consideration to the website layout and inclusion of key messaging, content should be optimised as a part of an effective SEO strategy when using key industry terms.

Keyword research is vital when increasing the performance of a website. We would recommend conducting some keyword research to find relevant keywords and working these keywords into the key messaging on the main pages across your website.

These keywords also need to be specific to your company, industry and proposition to attract the right prospects to your website.

Expand your reach

Once your website has been optimised to increase organic traffic, it is important to further increase your reach. Social media will help you do this. To drive users to your website, each social media post – whether across LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook – should include a clear call to action. These are critical to extending an individual’s journey with you and should drive them to act, for example by visiting a specific page on your website or contacting your team. To open up your post to a wider audience, you should also include hashtags relevant to your post and your offer. For example, #ukmfg, #engineering and #manufacturing are popular hashtags on LinkedIn for the manufacturing and engineering sectors.

Don’t forget to share a photo, infographic or high impact image alongside your social posts. According to Hootsuite, LinkedIn posts with images have a 98% higher comment rate on average. The same can be said for Twitter, as tweets that include visual content are three times more likely to get engagements than regular posts.

In addition, your website address should be incorporated into your wider marketing activity and collateral. For example, email marketing campaigns, brochures, banner stands, business cards and proposals should feature your website address.

We can help manufacturing and engineering organisations to create websites that support their marketing strategies. Take a look at how we support manufacturing and engineering organisations and the digital services that we provide.