Building a better website
The latest wave in manufacturing (Part 1 of 4)
You already know the world of manufacturing is changing. With the proliferation of “digital” manufacturers, on-demand parts and rapid prototyping, you can tell the industry is moving faster than ever before.
This shift is often referred to as industry 4.0, a term that covers not just the breakneck speed at which parts are designed, manufactured, and shipped these days, but also an increased focus on efficiency across all operations.
Today’s manufacturing shops aim to be leaner, lighter, and more nimble than their forebears in order to keep up with today’s customer.
A Brief Look at Today’s Customer
Before we tell you how to improve your website, you need to know who you’re improving it for. It’s not the customer with whom you’ve spent years building a long and loyal relationship.
In fact, if all goes well, you may never speak to today’s customer on the phone. Today’s customer lives online and is looking for immediate solutions.
If this sounds too daunting or like an over-demanding prospect, we have some good news:
Today’s customer doesn’t take a lot of time shopping around for the best price.
In fact, most of the time, today’s customer buys from the shop who responds to their RFQ the quickest. That’s it.
And for some great news about today’s customer: There are many of them, and the numbers are growing by the day. So, the easy and quick digital solution that works for one of them essentially works for all of them.
In order to capture these new customers, today’s most efficient shops are focusing on their websites first.
For many manufacturing shops, their websites always functioned more or less as an online shingle — a way to let the world know they were open for business, how to contact them, and little else.
Today’s manufacturing websites need to do a lot more. They need to function as an online hub for customers to carry out tasks that used to be performed offline: get a quote, speak with an engineer about feasibility and materials, speak with a sales person about placing an order, etc. Now, the industry standard is to keep that workflow in one easy-to-use online interface.
We know you’re thinking, “This sounds like a big IT project. No thanks.”
The good news is it’s not. The digital revolution that’s happening in manufacturing has also extended to the software available to shops of all sizes, and there are simple plug-and-play functions with which you can enhance your website almost immediately.
In this series, we’ll show you how you can keep your business at pace with a rapidly moving industry, win more customers, and increase revenue simply by enabling some key features on your website.
This article is an excerpt from our recent guidebook: What is your website really telling customers?
