I Need a Website for My Manufacturing Company: Where to Start

If you've caught yourself thinking "I need a website" for the shop recently, you're probably in one of two spots. Either you don't have a website at all, or you have one but it's old and outdated, and you'd rather nobody looked at. Both are common in manufacturing, and both are fixable.

This page walks through what to expect before you talk to anyone: what it costs and why, how long it takes, what pages you need to have, what to ask an agency that's helping you, and the warning signs that a project is headed sideways. This guide is written for owners and marketing managers of US industrial manufacturers to understand what to expect.

What makes a manufacturing website different?

A website for a manufacturing company has a specific job. Engineers and buyers come to it to answer a few questions fast. Can you make this part? Do you have the certifications we require? How do we send a drawing and get a quote?

That's what separates industrial website design from a general small business site, and it's why plenty of B2B website design advice doesn't quite fit a shop or an OEM. The site has to explain technical capabilities clearly and make it easy to send an RFQ. A good looking homepage alone won't do that.

How much does a manufacturing website cost?

If you search "how much does a website cost for a small business," you'll find answers anywhere from a few hundred dollars to six figures. That spread is real, because the price depends on what the site has to do.

For manufacturers, these are the things that move the number:

• How many capability and industry pages you need, and who writes them
• Whether you need product catalogs, part search, or spec sheet libraries
• A custom RFQ form that accepts drawings and routes the submission to your sales team
• Photography of your actual floor, parts, and people
• Moving content and keeping search rankings from an old site
• Connections to your CRM or ERP, if any

A website you build yourself costs the least up front, but might not be fully optimized to be found and to convert visitors to buyers. A custom website design costs more and should be built around how your buyers actually request quotes.

For reference, most of our manufacturing website projects land between $10,000 and $40,000]. If your budget is well under that, a simpler setup may be the better fit for now, and we're happy to help you work through that.

How long does it take?

Plan for 3-4 months from kickoff to launch for a typical manufacturing site. The biggest variable usually isn't design or development. It's creating and approving content for your website. Making sure that the capability descriptions, certifications, photos, and case studies are accurate and clear can take time, and the people who know that information are also the ones running production.

You can keep things moving by naming one person on your side who owns the project, gathering certifications and equipment lists early, and setting aside time for reviews and project check in calls.

What pages does a manufacturing website need?

Most manufacturing sites need fewer pages than people expect, but the right ones. At a minimum, plan for:

• A strong homepage that says what you make and who you make it for
• A page for each core capability or process that you can do
• Pages for the industries you serve most
• Certifications and quality information
• Equipment lists
• A few case studies or project examples of your work
• About and contact pages
• A Request a Quote page to submit jobs

What should you ask an agency before hiring them?

You should talk to a few firms before deciding on one. These questions tend to separate the ones who understand manufacturing from the ones who build everything the same way:

1. Have you built sites for manufacturers like us? Can we see them live?
2. Who writes the capability pages, and how do you learn our processes?
3. How does the RFQ form work, and where do the submissions go?
4. How will you protect the search rankings our current site has?
5. Who owns the site, the domain, and the hosting accounts when we're done?
6. Can our team update pages ourselves after launch?
7. What does support cost after launch, and what's included?
8. How will we know if the site is bringing in quote requests?

Good agencies will answer these clearly for you. If you get vague answers or a lot of jargon, take note.

What are the red flags?

Some warning signs come up again and again:

• A quote with no discovery. If they priced it before learning what you make, they're pricing a template.
• No plan for redirects from the old site. That's how rankings disappear after launch.
• A portfolio full of restaurants and salons and nothing industrial or similar to what you do
• Guaranteed rankings or a guaranteed number of leads. Nobody can promise that honestly.

None of these automatically rules a firm out, but each one is worth thinking about how it can impact you.

Is your website a fit for us?

We work mostly with owner-run manufacturers and industrial companies who want the website to bring in real RFQs without needing to maintain the website themselves. If that sounds like you, a few quick answers help us come back with something useful:

• What do you make, and for which industries?
• Do you have a website now? If so, what's the address?
• About how many capabilities or product lines need their own pages?
• When would you like to launch?
• What budget range are you working with? [NEED CONFIRM: ranges for dropdown]

Ready to talk?

If you're starting from scratch or replacing something that's holding you back from growing, our manufacturing website design work is built for shops like yours to see what we can do. Dynamic Digital is the agency for industrial manufacturing website design in Willow Grove, PA that has been building websites since 1994.