What makes great website design for manufacturers?
It sounds like such a simple question, doesn’t it? But it is one with a complicated answer. To boil it down to just two words, the answer is: it depends.
A good sales website is different from a good educational website. Some great sites serve both purposes well. Websites targeted to distributors are different than those that target end-users.
The list can go on and on, but there are a few elements that help any site become a great one with solid search results.
At Vision Fillers, we don’t like to settle for anything less than the best. This is why we advocate for optimizing every aspect of your site for search engines. And we don’t mean keyword stuffing (those days are long gone!). We mean making sure that every aspect of your site offers an exceptional user experience in line with a comprehensive SEO strategy. When you commit to that process with us, you won’t have to settle for anything less than the best either.
Remember when we said the days of keyword stuffing are long gone? It’s true, and Google has abandoned its early days of counting keywords and rewarding high search rankings to those with the most. For years now, Google and other search engines have stressed the importance of quality.
Improving your website content is always a good idea! Here are a few ways we do that:
Who is your audience? Who are you trying to reach, and why should they visit your website and choose your business? Having the best equipment or most innovative tools isn’t enough anymore.
Knowing your audience is the key to succeeding online. You probably already know what they want, but do you know what they need? The answers to those questions can be very different, and it’s important to frame your business as offering a way to make the life of your customer genuinely better. If you’re in the street sweeper business, it’s not just about selling the latest and greatest street sweeper; it’s about safer streets and cleaner communities. If you are in the industrial floor cleaning market, a floor scrubber isn’t just a machine; it’s a way to make a facility more productive and attractive.
Now that you understand the bigger picture, it’s easy to grasp the different types of search intents. What are people searching for, and what queries do you want your website to answer?
We discern all the different ways searchers can end up on your website, and we tailor your pages to answer the types of questions they are most likely to ask.
As a manufacturer, you have to decide the type of content you will have on your website. Are you selling direct? Or through distribution? Your language has to reflect your audience. Distributors and end-users are making different types of inquiries that will lead them to your website, and you have to respond to those intents differently. Distributors will utilize your website as a resource — not only do you want useful content, you also want shareable content your distributors can use on their websites and their own media distribution channels.
Crawlable?? What the heck is that?? Think of a robot that is going around the web every hour of every day. When it arrives at a website, it saves a version of it in a huge database known as the index. Because the robot is always going around the Internet, next time it runs into your website and finds new information or revisions, it adds that to the index.
Calling it a crawler or robot sounds a little creepy, but trust us, you want the crawler to visit your website! Each visit makes it more likely that your site will rank higher on search engines.
There are a few ways we encourage the crawler to visit your manufacturing site more often:
The crawler loves these things, and so do search engines.
Users and search engines want to trust your website. We make it easy for them by including trustworthy, relevant content, using up-to-date software and protecting your site from attacks.
Our website maintenance packages cover all the important tasks that keep your website backed up, secure, up-to-date and monitored 24/7. We monitor your Google Analytics to track how users are engaging with your site, perform monthly plugin and theme updates, commit to fast response times and regularly back up your site to keep it secure and monitored every hour of the day.
The most obvious factors that set great manufacturer websites apart from the rest are design and the user experience. You assess these every time you visit a website, whether you realize it or not. How many times have you clicked on a search engine result only to be bombarded with obnoxious colors and too many pop-ups? Or gotten frustrated when you couldn’t find the information you were seeking, waited too long for a page to load or couldn’t tap a button on your iPhone?
We make beautiful, user-friendly websites for manufacturers that perform flawlessly on any device. Web design is both an art and a science, and we create visually-appealing, on-brand layouts that also fulfill your goals. We amplify your message, highlight what makes your brand unique and do it all in a way that is easy for visitors to experience and use. Our web design strategies:
Remember the old adage “the customer is king?” The updated version for today’s online world is “the user is king.” This means that everything on your website is designed for them — we want to help them accomplish their goals by offering the right solution in the right place and time.
We’ve already talked about user intent and the importance of knowing your audience. We use this insight to focus our content and calls-to-action. If someone is searching for the best floor scrubbers, for example, we deliver a blog post comparing your top equipment and connect them with your team for a personalized follow-up. When someone searches for maintenance tips for street sweepers, we can answer their query with a page of expert advice on preventative maintenance and a call-to-action directing them to your parts department.
There’s a really good chance you are reading this on your phone or a tablet right now. We know our content looks great no matter what device you’re accessing it on because we designed it that way!
Your website simply must be mobile friendly – 60 to 70% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices today.
We take a mobile-first approach to website design for manufacturers. This allows us to reach people on any device they choose without compromising the look, feel and usability of your site.
Taking this approach doesn’t detract from the desktop experience either; in fact, we find that it enhances it. Mobile design is all about streamlining and taking a very strategic approach to content. Following this principle helps us eliminate clutter on desktop versions and focusing on freshness, authenticity and the user experience.
Best of all, this approach allows us to create one single website that looks and feels flawless on any device. You don’t have to invest in two separate builds — we accomplish all of your goals in one site.
…on who you choose to make it. At Vision Fillers, we know great website design for manufacturers is about more than purchasing a domain, throwing some content on the page and slapping on a couple of images.
We know that great website design starts with a strategy and ends with getting your site highly ranked on search engines. We know that 84% of industrial professionals go online to search for services, equipment and components. We know that most won’t contact a vendor until after they’ve visited their website, and that nearly 85% of buyers look at at least three pieces of content before making a large industrial purchase.
We have 25 years of experience in industrial equipment. We know your industry and we know your go-to-market. And we know great website design.
We’d love to talk – please fill out this form or give us a call at (866) 301-4803 to start the conversation!