Category: Websites

The economy is looking good. Wood products manufacturers have told us they’re busier now than they’ve been in years.

With all this positive business growth, you might be ready to invest in a new and improved website to help you reach new customers and pave the way toward future sales.

Before you hire a web development company, be sure you ask these questions so you know exactly what you’re getting.

1. Will your website be responsive?

Responsive sites adjust automatically to fit mobile phones, tablets and desktops. Websites that are not responsive are penalized by Google, which could harm your search rankings.

2. Will you be able to update your site yourself?

Don’t get stuck with a website that you can’t update yourself. Otherwise, you’ll have to spend money on a web designer each time you want to make a change.

3. Will your site be a template, semi-custom or custom site?

This impacts your cost and how much control you have over the look and functionality of your site. Template sites cost less, but severely limit your options for customization. Semi-custom sites offer many more features and greater design choices. Custom sites, which offer the greatest flexibility, are designed and built to your requirements.

4. Does your web developer have industry knowledge?

Working with a web developer who understands the wood products industry makes the entire process go more smoothly and ensures that you’ll get a website tailored to the specific needs of your business and your customers.

5. Is your web developer using SEO tools?

Make sure your web developer has knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization) and uses SEO best practices. This is critical to your website’s search rankings.

6. Are you dealing with a web designer or a web developer?

This distinction is important if you have specific technical requirements or need a website with customized features and functionality. Web developers have programming and coding skills that most web designers don’t have. Make sure your web professional has the technical skills necessary to execute your project.

7. Are there monthly fees after your site is launched?

Some web companies charge you for creating your website and also charge you an ongoing monthly fee afterwards. Find out exactly what that fee is for and how long you’re going to be paying it.

8. Do you have a written contract?

This is important for your protection as well as the web developer’s. Be sure the scope of work and payment terms are spelled out completely and clearly so there are no surprises or misunderstandings.

9. Is your web developer using too many technical terms?

Beware of jargon. Your web developer should be explaining technical things in plain English. Ask questions if you don’t understand. And keep asking if you need to.

Does your company website need some work? Can’t figure out how to make it better?

Improving your website doesn’t have to be complicated. Little changes that you can do yourself can often make a big difference.

Try these six easy ways to beef up your website:

1. Improve your home page.

First impressions matter. Web visitors coming to your home page judge within a matter of seconds whether your company can serve their needs. Make sure your home page clearly tells what you do, what products and services your provide, and which customers you serve.

2. Rework your “About” page.

Did you know that “About” pages are among the most highly viewed web pages? That’s because potential customers are more comfortable doing business with you if they know who you are. Use your “About” page to build trust by giving details about your company, its history, and your key staff.

3. Add customer testimonials.

Do you have happy customers? Add quotes from your customers that show how your products or services helped them to solve a problem or improve their business. Seeing positive comments from past customers helps potential customers form a positive impression of your company.

4. Have complete contact information.

Make it easy for customers to reach you. You should have a separate “Contact” page that prominently displays all of the ways customers can contact you including phone, email, mail, and social media. It’s also a good idea to include contact information in the footer section at the bottom of every page of your website.

5. Check and update every web page.

Make sure all of the information on all of your web pages is accurate and complete. Remove outdated information, update pricing, add any new products or services, and check that all links are working properly. Regularly updating your website ensures a good user experience for your customer.

6. Add photos.

Photos attract attention and keep customers on your site longer. Add quality photos that are relevant to your business such as product photos or project photos. If you have a photo gallery, be sure to update it with your most current projects. And don’t forget to add captions under your photos so you customers know what they’re looking at.

I’m willing to bet that everyone who has used the internet to research products has had this frustrating experience. You go to a company’s website looking for specific product information, and you can’t find it. They talk about how wonderful they are, how many awards they’ve won, and how customer-focused they are. But nowhere on their site do they provide detailed information about the products they make. If they don’t have information about their products, who will?

Your customers need details

Imagine you wanted to buy a lawnmower and you wanted to compare models from three different manufacturers.

• Company A’s website shows an image of a lawnmower and lists models by cutting width.
• Company B’s website has images of every lawnmower they sell, and they have specifications for their models like: horsepower, cutting width, adjustable wheels, self-propelled, etc.
• Company C’s website has multiple images for each of their models, including close-ups of key features. They have a complete list of specifications and features, including optional accessories. They have videos demonstrating the use and maintenance of their product, and they offer printable PDFs for each model with all of the specifications and images.

Which of the three manufacturers serves their customers’ needs the best? Which website is most helpful? Obviously, the answer is Company C, because they provide a wealth of product information on their site. And detailed product information is what customers use to make decisions.

Why you should love CAD files

Here’s a real-world, industry example from a couple of years ago. An architect called me looking for advice and suggestions for interior details for a project. He was up against a deadline and he had to complete his drawings the next day. I sent him to my website and suggested several products for his consideration. Once there, he could see large images and dimensions for every product I offered. Plus, he was able to download the CAD files for each product he wanted – which helped him with his drawings. He specified my product in his blueprints, and I got the job. And he was so grateful for my help, he recommended me to a friend at another firm.

Speaking of CAD files, research conducted by ThomasNet has shown that when CAD drawings are specified into a design, the actual product gets purchased 80% of the time. Stop and think about what you just read. If you had any question about the importance of offering CAD files on your website, that should convince you.

Present your product information in the most useful way

Here’s another scenario. See the image of the menu at right. Suppose you were looking for a restaurant online and you found this menu. What do you see, or more importantly, what don’t you see? The menu shows broad meal categories, but there are no dishes listed. Very frustrating. How can you possibly judge whether this restaurant is right for you given the complete lack of information about their offerings?

OK, now look at your company website and pretend you’re a customer. What information about your products can you find? If you were to search by product category, would you be able to find everything (or anything) that your company offers? Or does your website look more like that restaurant menu?

What product information is available, and how it’s presented makes a difference. For instance, having a PDF of your print catalog on your website is not a substitute for actual web content. Usability experts Nielsen Norman Group warns that forcing users to browse PDF files on a website makes usability 300% worse. More to the point, a survey conducted by Elsevier found participants preferred the HTML (web) format for learning and discovery, and liked the PDF format for reading and printing. In other words, visitors use your website to browse and evaluate your products, and they download PDFs for in-depth study. Both HTML and PDF have their place and each is necessary, but they support different stages of the sales funnel. Browsing and evaluating are top of funnel; in-depth study comes further down. It’s important that manufacturer websites support all stages of the sales funnel.

What’s the take-away?

Every manufacturer needs to honestly assess how helpful their website is to their customers. Give them the information they need to properly evaluate your products, and make it easy for them to incorporate your products in their specifications. Giving your customers the information they want, when and where they want it, ensures greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, which increases the likelihood of future sales.

As a wood products manufacturer, you would never choose a tool based on price alone. You would consider many factors like efficiency, reliability, longevity and return on investment. You would research and evaluate the options to ensure the benefit to your business. You know that investing in the right tool will increase efficiency, sales and profitability.

In this article, you’ll see how all tools, including websites, are not the same. Choosing the right tool will have a positive impact on your bottom line, while choosing the wrong tool will result in lower productivity and profits.

Let’s consider a bench table saw. Would using one of those saws as your primary saw help or hurt your business? A bench table saw can perform most basic operations of an industrial table saw. They can rip, crosscut, mitre, dado, and rabbet. And these saws are very inexpensive, so you’re not shelling out lots of cash. Then why would you invest in a Martin or Altendorf sliding table saw when a small, inexpensive saw can do? Because they have many significant shortcomings.

• the single phase motor is noisy, small, and inefficient
• it takes much longer to rip lumber, especially material thicker than 4/4
• its light weight and size make it unstable
• its lighter-duty bearings won’t stand up to continuous use
• its reliability and accuracy negatively impact quality

While a bench table saw may be fine for homeowners or job site use, it could never handle the demands of an industrial manufacturing environment. It wasn’t designed or built for that.

Low-priced tools have high long-term costs

Just like the bench table saw, many low-priced or “free” website platforms appear to be able to do everything their professional counterparts can do. But an informed buyer examining these low-cost platforms will see that they are woefully under-powered and inefficient, and they can never handle the demands of a manufacturer’s website. While their upfront cost may be small, their unreliability and tremendous inefficiency results in low productivity, which means very high long-term costs. Those websites rarely serve your customer’s needs, and that could mean lost sales.

As a manufacturer, you know that the success of your company is related to production efficiency and product quality, and how well you serve your customers. That’s why you need to invest in the right tool for the job – whether it’s industrial manufacturing equipment or an industrial-grade website. Prospective customers will judge you by your website design, content, performance and the user experience.

For a business website to be an effective sales tool it must:

• be reliable and available 24/7
• be fast and easy to navigate
• have powerful searching capabilities
• provide complete, detailed product information
• deliver large quantities of content efficiently and consistently
• serve as a resource for your current and prospective customers
• be optimized for search engines

Invest in a quality tool

When considering a business website, take your time and do your research, just as you would with any tool purchase. Learn about the professional level platforms that are available, and try to compare apples to apples. Before deciding on a web development company, be sure to ask questions, know exactly what you’re getting, and make sure it’s the right tool for your wood products business. Rarely do the one-size-fits-all tools solve more problems than they create.

Working with a professional web development company that knows the wood products industry and takes the time to understand your individual needs, means you’ll get a website tool that will work for you and your customers. Remember, it’s important that your website contributes to your bottom line just like every other tool you own. The money you invest in a quality tool will be returned many times over through years of reliable service and increased productivity.

You wouldn’t consider purchasing a tool, setting it up in your shop and never touching it again. But many manufacturers think that building their website is a once-and-done process. In this article we’ll look at why treating your website like any other tool can yield benefits in the form of leads and sales.

Imagine never checking the squareness of your radial arm saw, the accuracy of your miter saw, or the set of your planer knives. You know what problems that would cause further down the production line. You would be wasting not just materials and time, but opportunity and profit. By continually monitoring your tools and making fine-tuned adjustments you are ensuring reliable production. You maximize your output and seize new opportunities through efficiency.

Likewise with your website, you need to regularly monitor your pages to keep them optimized for search engines (SEO – search engine optimization). Optimization is the process of monitoring and refining the keywords and phrases on a page to increase the page’s search ranking. To reach a wider audience and be found, you need to elevate your website page rankings. That’s really worth doing. 89% of B2B buyers research products online, and 46% use their research to create a short-list of potential vendors. If they can’t find you, you’ll never be on the short-list.

Most people don’t realize that visitors who reach a site through a search engine are much more likely to arrive on a page other than the home page. Home pages are not good candidates for optimization because they contain so many competing keywords and phrases in order to direct traffic to different parts of the site. Really effective business websites have optimized pages for specific search terms to get higher ranking for those terms. The point being that higher ranking will result in greater visibility, increased traffic and more sales opportunities.

But just like the tools in your shop, you need to actively monitor and adjust your pages to achieve those benefits. So think of it like the regular maintenance you perform on your equipment. Keeping your tools sharp and the shop clean goes a long way toward maximizing production efficiency. You invest the time because you recognize that efficient production increases profitability.

Invest time in your other machine, your sales machine, your website. Create and optimize pages so they will deliver quality leads. Focus pages on specific keywords or phrases for maximum effect. Then monitor your analytics and page ranking, and continually refine the page content until your pages begin to deliver leads and sales. It’s worth remembering that maintenance is an ongoing effort that results in long-term benefits.