What should a manufacturer's product page include?
What a buyer needs before picking up the phone: specifications, applications, lead times, minimum order quantities and case studies showing the product in use.
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When manufacturers go digital
Mostly operational ones rather than marketing ones. Seven of the 55 businesses I audited were manufacturers, and many already had plenty of work. What held them back was stock management on spreadsheets, quotes printed, annotated by hand and posted, customer accounts living in email threads, and software subscriptions nobody had mapped. Their websites were usually an afterthought, with one product page of 127 words. Start with deeper product pages, a quote form that captures the right details, and a list of every tool you pay for.
Why were manufacturers' websites an afterthought?
Because most were built years ago because someone said they should have one. The seven manufacturers covered injection moulding, lifting equipment, heating systems, joinery and containers, and in most of them the website showed the products, listed a phone number and had not been meaningfully updated since. One had been trading for over fifteen years with a website that looked like it came from its first five: the range had expanded and the client base grown, and a new customer would have had no sense of the business's scale. Another had product pages with barely any text, one of just 127 words, while competitors with worse products and better descriptions outranked it.
What operational problems did the manufacturing audits find?
Systems held together by hand. Most businesses in the programme needed help getting found; manufacturers often had plenty of work and struggled to run it. Stock management lived in spreadsheets. Quoting meant printing PDFs, annotating them by hand and posting them. Customer accounts existed only in email threads. One business was spending hundreds a month on software subscriptions that could have been consolidated into a single platform, because nobody had ever listed them. A lifting equipment company needed its site to handle hire enquiries, custom manufacturing, stock availability and testing services, and the existing site treated all four the same way, so none worked well.
How uneven is manufacturing on digital?
Very. One manufacturer was already number one in its sector nationally, with turnover grown from eight million to thirty million in five years, and wanted world-class online customer experience: real-time order tracking, customer accounts and proactive updates. The gap between that business and the one with 127 words on a product page shows the range within the sector.
Where should a manufacturer start?
With what a buyer needs before picking up the phone. Give product pages depth: specifications, applications, lead times, minimum order quantities and case studies of the product in use. If quoting is manual, even a simple enquiry form that captures product type, quantity and timeline saves time on both sides. List every tool the business pays for and look for overlap. And treat the website as the first impression it is for a growing share of customers, rather than as a brochure.
Related evidence: 55 digital audits. Here’s what I found.. Earlier in this journey: When the website IS the business.
Questions people ask
How can a manufacturer cut its software costs?
Write down every tool the business pays for and what each one does. Overlap is common, and two or three tools can often be replaced by one platform.
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