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Building Better Manufacturing Web Sites
Companies from all sectors of manufacturing place scant importance on making their Web sites worth visiting, which risks brand equity, weakens customer relationships, and ultimately hurts sales.
By Mark Devaney
November 2004
 When it comes to the Internet, many people have been prone to overstatement. But if there is one industry that seems to have underutilized the power of the Web, it's manufacturing. After researching and profiling hundreds of companies ranging from makers of aeronautical equipment to biomedical and surgical-device suppliers to automotive subassembly builders, I've found some common deficiencies among manufacturing-company Web sites. My observations are categorized into three general areas: presentation (the look and feel), content (the message), and structure (the navigation).
Presentation
The two most common visual images on most manufacturing Web sites are the aerial facility shot and the employee group shot. Relying on such static images to evoke a brand simply does not work on the Web. Clearly, more can be done to enhance presentation on manufacturing-company Web sites.
For example, the success of so many manufacturing companies is predicated on a unique engineering method that allows them to build their products better, cheaper, and faster than the competition, yet rarely is that revolutionary process depicted on a company's Web site. A simple animation or interactive graphic would really help demonstrate how a product is put together or put to use. Also, few Web sites feature video footage to actually show a manufacturing process, even though improvements in streaming-video technology and increased bandwidth have made it much easier to watch video on the Web.
Manufacturing companies should not use animation or video simply because it will look "cool." Nor should they make public a proprietary process. But there certainly is an opportunity to be more creative by posting visually appealing and informative graphics that better represent what they do and how they do it.
Content
If pictures on manufacturing-company Web sites tend to be unoriginal, so, too, are words. No matter the manufacturer — windshield wipers, helicopter parts, materials-handling solutions — all fall prey to common corporate speak:
"What differentiates our company is quality customer service. We are committed to making our products at the highest possible standards and to meeting the needs of our customers, who are really our partners. We also strive to create a manufacturing environment second to none in terms of state-of-the-art technology and workplace safety for our employees."
There is nothing wrong with these sentiments, other than the fact that they apply to every single legitimate manufacturing company in the world. Statements about customer service, top technology, and employee safety are fine, but keep in mind that the average Web visit lasts about eight seconds. I doubt any sales and marketing director uses stale language to sell in person, so why use stale content on your Web site, where it's easy to click away to competitor links on a Google search list?
Structure
Web-site visitors might overlook poor presentation and endure uninformative content, but they will not accept confusing navigation. Typically, manufacturing companies have a lot to cover: products, locations, technology, sister companies, parent company, distributors, suppliers, and corporate communications. Without a well-planned strategy based on marketing-communications objectives, clicking around to so many subjects can get clunky and cause frustration.
Two simple solutions to improve navigation: build a site map and encourage visitor registration to allow for personalization. A site map ensures that a Web visitor will never get lost and provides a snapshot of the content areas that may be of most interest. For frequent visitors, consider a simple user-registration form, which is a good first step toward using the Web to strengthen a business relationship. By getting permission to acquire someone's email address, you can now serve up content that's relevant to that visitor, either on your site or via a customized email newsletter. By electing not to do either, too many manufacturing-company Web sites cause visitors to get lost on their sites and permanently lose those visitors once they leave, because they have no idea who they were or what they wanted.
Not all manufacturing-company Web sites make all the mistakes mentioned here, but many suffer from problems in presentation, content, and structure. Ignoring these Web-site problems won't make them go away, but it certainly will make someone very important go away — people who might have done business with you.
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