It’s often the most basic and simple questions that can leave us completely stumped, especially when it comes to your business website. In this article we tackle one of the most overlooked, yet highly strategic decisions when building or updating your website, the pages. It’s obvious right? You just have the “standard” set of pages any business would have, right? A cookie cutter solution doesn't tackle YOUR customers needs, it’s time to start with them. We show you what they want and what pages and content they need...

Just because every other business website has the same set of pages doesn’t mean you should too. It’s the easy option, but it’s also a very foundational mistake not to think about YOUR customer needs before defining what pages your website will be made up of.

Customers of contract manufacturing businesses have specific information needs. Most of these needs are significantly different to the needs of conventional business 2 business buyers in other industries. In this article I’ll outline the information requirements buyers in engineering and manufacturing will typically have, and I’ll suggest a list of pages you could use to deliver the right information at the right time!

With so many website design companies out there offering you the same “off-the-shelf” solution, it’s very easy to get railroaded into a website that appears to tick all the boxes, but doesn’t satisfy your customers needs. So if you’re employing a website development company to build your contract manufacturing website, just refer them to this article as a starting point for specifying YOUR needs.

List of Pages & Content For Your Website

Homepage

Your homepage should tell your visitor that they’ve come to the right place. It can be a tough job to define what you do without overloading the page with content, but it’s worth the effort. There are many ways you can approach the design of the page, with headlines, blocks of text and calls-to-action (or buttons).

The important thing to remember here is that your homepage is potentially the start of the story for your visitor (a potential customer or an existing one).

Start the story with a high level “Key Marketing Message” but offer them the calls-to-action to get more of the story or specific detail they are browsing for. Your visitors are looking for direction on where they should be clicking next, give it to them.

Introduction To Your Company

This can form part of your homepage or be a separate page altogether. Think about your customers needs. They don’t need a detailed history of your business, they need to understand why working with you is beneficial to them.

When you’re writing this section it’s quite easy to get carried away. Just remember to use headlines to draw attention to key, sharp messages and ask yourself “so what?” when you’re writing. This will force you to think about what you’ve written in terms of how it benefits your customer, the buyers and engineers.

Buyer and engineers won’t be making their judgement of your business based on your introduction alone. This information is of interest to them, it should build a sense of trust and understanding in their minds. Buyers and engineers want to have an insight into your vision for the business going forward, what was, is and will be your strategy for investment and growth?

Capabilities

You should most definitely outline what capabilities you offer as a business, and be specific! Make sure you use terminology that your customers will understand, it may sound minor but there’s no quicker way to alienate a customer than to make them feel stupid.

Your website visitors will also be wanting to understand what capabilities are core to your business vs those that are supplementary or even sub-contracted. This is like exposing a piece of your company DNA, but it’s a vital step. Buyers and engineers recognise the need to find the right supplier for the right engineering challenge. The outcome is always quicker, better quality and typically less costly.

Don’t be afraid to highlight any limitations or special exceptions to your capabilities. Being up-front like this allows your website visitors to qualify themselves as potential customers or not. This saves you the wasted time of dealing with a lead that will never evolve into a customer.
Materials You Process
If there are specific materials you can or cannot process, your customers want to know, so make it straightforward. Equally, if you are a specialist at dealing with a specific material, this is the time to scream about it.

This section isn’t necessarily a separate page, it could easily form part of your page of capabilities.

Your website visitors want to gain confidence that you can fulfill their requirements. Materials play a major role in today’s engineering landscape, so don’t shy away from talking about them. Once again, this information allows the buyer to qualify themselves as a lead.

Preferred File Formats & Software You Use

Your customers will work with specific software and electronic files, letting them know what you typically work with breaks down barriers.

This once again doesn’t need it’s own page on your website, however it is vital content. With the growth of Computer Aided Design packages, readers and translators there has become a need to align yourselves with your customers. Letting your customers know that you understand their CAD language or package is a great confidence boost for them.

Certifications You Hold

Some customers may require a minimum level of qualification and certification such as ISO 9001, in these cases it’s critical you make this information readily available and crystal clear.

Many customers may even start looking at this section first to make sure they aren’t wasting their time. If company policy or their supply contract has limitations posed on the suppliers they use and their certification this can become a barrier.

Think broader than ISO 9001. If you hold any approvals on customer lists make it clear. Your buyers might not even know if you are approved on their own list, so spell it out for them.

Industries You Serve

Qualification and Certification ticks the boxes, but many customers want to know you understand the needs of their niche. Telling customers about the sectors you have worked in makes it clear that you understand the demands and working practices within their industry.

Once again, you wouldn’t have to dedicate an entire web page, but you could easily do so in demonstrating what sectors you’ve worked in.

Case Studies

This one is pretty critical as it is one of the core ways your website sells your business. The best way to deliver any message is with a story, that’s why case studies are such a powerful way of demonstrating your capabilities. Far more powerful than just listing your capabilities.

Case studies of previous work are the builders of trust and understanding within the buyer or engineer’s mind. Case studies allow you to expand on the true extent of your capabilities and bring them to life with the skill that sits behind them. This could be in the form of written content and images, however videos are even more powerful.

This is a section or page of your website you should be growing on an ongoing basis, keeping your case studies current and up to date with latest technologies and capabilities.

Contact Details & Contact form

Make it clear how customers can get in contact with you, give them a way to get in contact, and give them a good reason to get in contact with you! Just providing a form is not enough, give them an offer and make it clear what they are going to get back, even if it’s just a return phone call or email.

Your website visitors want to know where you are and how they can contact you. What you want is for them to hand over their contact details so you can follow up with them, even if it’s only with an automated email sequence. Be enticing and inviting to both first time visitors and returning customers.

Team Member Profiles

Give your visitors an insight into the skills that sit behind your list of capabilities. This is where experience and true capability can start to shine through. Team member profiles therefore shouldn’t be limited to just the management team, include the team who are delivering the capabilities.

Team member profiles are a real trust builder for your potential customers, one of the most significant if done correctly.

Optional

Your Business Blog

If you want your website to compete for Google rankings you’re going to need a business blog. Content Marketing is fundamental to climbing the rankings in any major search engine. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’d suggest you check out my article explaining Content Marketing and how it’s the fuel behind modern online marketing.

Your Company Newsletter

Similarly to your business blog, a newsletter is a method of content marketing. It’s not a “one or the other” situation when it comes to the newsletter and business blog, they can be used in combination. If you aren’t going to keep it up to date, you shouldn’t make this part of your website, instead of enhancing your website, an outdated newsletter will act as a negative.

These are just the pages, don’t forget navigation

I’ve covered the main pages and content you need on your contract manufacturing business website, but I haven’t mentioned navigation and flow. Providing the content is critical, but it’s also a foundational step. Once you have the pages and the content, thinking about navigation and who you are targeting with your call to actions, buttons and links is of vital importance.

If you want to know more about making your content, and therefore your customers FLOW through your website it’s worth checking out this article giving you guidance on writing content that flows.

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