Website design for manufacturing companies: Found by the spec,
not the slogan.
Your buyer knows the part number, the tolerance or the material. They are not browsing, and they are not impressed by a hero video.
Products·Specifications·Datasheets·Enquiries
The job
Website design for manufacturing companies is mostly structure, because industrial buying is a long, technical, unromantic process. Somebody specifies, somebody else approves, and a purchase order arrives months later. The website is not the thing that closes it. It is the thing that gets you onto the shortlist, and it does that by being the easiest place to find the answer.
Which means the work is mostly structure: products organised the way an engineer thinks about them, specifications as text rather than trapped in a PDF, and a way to ask a question that reaches somebody who can answer it.
What a manufacturing website includes: The whole list, nothing extra.
Every one of these is in the price. If a job needs something that is not here, it is in the written scope before you say yes, not on the invoice after.
Products, structured
A page per product or range, with the specifications as real content. Most manufacturing websites keep the catalogue as one downloadable PDF, which is invisible to search and painful on a phone in a workshop.
Findable by specification
Filterable by the things buyers actually filter by: material, size, standard, capacity. Marked up so search engines can read the same detail a buyer does.
Datasheets that work
Technical documents kept, because specifiers want them, but paired with a readable page so the content is searchable and the PDF is the download rather than the only copy of what you manufacture.
Enquiries that reach an engineer
Forms that capture the application, the quantity and the timescale, routed to the person who can answer rather than into a shared inbox.
Approvals and standards, shown
ISO certifications, sector approvals and test data where a procurement team looks for them, which is early and usually before they speak to you. For a manufacturing company these are often the shortlist, not the detail.
Distributors and territories
Where you sell, who sells it, and what a buyer outside that should do. Exporters lose enquiries by leaving this implicit.
Sitemap and page structure
What pages exist, how they relate, and what each one is for. This is where SEO is won or lost, before a line of code.
Design, if there is none
I will design it: a site that looks considered and does the job. If the brand underneath it needs doing too, that is its own piece of work and it has its own page.
Build
From your design or mine, on a platform that suits the team who will keep it running rather than the one I enjoy most.
Real content in
Your words and pictures loaded and laid out, not lorem ipsum with a note to fill it later. If an existing site is being replaced, moving it across is its own job: see website migration.
Accessibility and performance
Keyboard, focus order, contrast and labels checked, not assumed. Core Web Vitals measured on real pages, then fixed.
Launch and handover
A checklist worked through line by line, then documentation and a walkthrough with whoever picks it up.
Sounds like you if
“We have been quoted before and never seen what we were paying for.”
One page
A single scrolling page, £600. A launch, a test, or a business that needs to exist online by Friday.
Five pages
Home, about, services, one more, contact, £1,200. The standard small business site.
On WordPress
The same five pages on WordPress, £1,600. More to build, and more you can change yourself afterwards.
A shop
An online shop starts at £2,000: five content pages, up to twenty-five products, payments, shipping, tax and the policies.
Changes afterwards
£75 an hour, billed after they are done, or a monthly plan if there are enough of them to be worth fixing the price.
What is never extra
The sitemap, the redirects, the accessibility pass and the handover. They are part of the build, not a line added at the end.
Hosting and the certificate
A WordPress site on a managed host on my account, with the security certificate kept renewed, for £50 a month. The domain stays registered in your name.
Updated every month
WordPress, the theme and the plugins brought up to date, then the pages that matter checked by hand.
A backup every day
A fresh backup every day, and another before any update runs, so any change can be undone.
Changes when you need them
A reply within twelve working hours saying what it needs and how long it will take, before any of it is started. £75 an hour, or on a plan.
The note on the 1st
What was updated, what was changed and how many hours were used, next to the invoice.
Leaving, and what you take
A month's notice after the first three months, then a full backup and help moving it, free. The domain is already yours.
Sounds like you if
“The last person built it and then we never heard from them again.”
How a manufacturing website runs: From hello to handover.
Step 1
12 hours max
I reply
Working hours, unless I am on holiday and have said so.
Step 2
Day 0
Scope call
30 minutes. What you manufacture, who specifies it, and how an enquiry reaches you today.
Step 3
+2 days
Scope and structure
What gets built, what it costs and when it lands, with how the range is organised, agreed with the people who know it before anything is designed around it.
Step 4
Every week
Something live
A build you can open, and send to the engineer who will find the mistake in the specifications.
Step 5
End
Handover
Adding a product, a variant or a datasheet without a developer, documented and walked through with whoever maintains the range.
This is for you
A manufacturing website is for you
if any of these sound familiar.
- Buyers search for what your product does
- The catalogue is a PDF, the site a brochure
- Enquiries arrive too thin to quote from
- You export, or sell through distributors
It is not, if
- You want a consumer shop, not a catalogue
- Nobody in the business owns the product data
- You want a site that looks like a car advert
Not sure which side you are on? Say so on the call. If I am not the right person, you get the name of someone who is.
What a manufacturing website costs
Every price on the page,
before you call.
You should not have to sit through a call to find out whether you can afford me.
Questions about a manufacturing website: Questions I get every time.
The honest answers. If yours is not here, it is the first thing we cover.
Ask me yours01 What does website design for manufacturing companies involve?
Mostly structure rather than decoration: organising the range the way a buyer thinks about it, putting specifications on the page as text rather than only inside a PDF, making them filterable by the things engineers filter by, and routing enquiries to somebody who can answer a technical question.
02 Our catalogue is a PDF. Is that a problem?
It is the most common one. A PDF catalogue cannot be searched properly, cannot be filtered, and is unpleasant to use on a phone in a workshop. The PDF stays, because buyers do want it, but the content also lives as pages, which is what makes you findable by specification at all.
03 Do we need a shop?
Usually not. Industrial website design is not retail: buying goes through quotes, approvals and purchase orders, and a checkout does not fit that. What helps is making it fast to specify and easy to ask. If you do sell direct in quantity, that is ecommerce and there is a page for it.
04 Can distributors have their own login?
Yes, and it is a common ask: trade pricing, stock, order history and datasheets behind a sign-in. That is a web app rather than a website, so it is scoped rather than priced by platform, and it has a page of its own. Worth separating from the public site in the scope, because the two get built to different standards.
05 Can we add products ourselves?
Yes, and you need to be able to, because ranges change. Manufacturing website design that needs a developer to add a product is a website that will be out of date within a quarter. Adding a product, a variant or a datasheet is an ordinary job, and the handover covers whoever will do it.
06 How long is the sales cycle worth designing for?
Long. Most industrial enquiries come after several visits over weeks, often from different people at the same company. That means the site has to be useful to somebody who is not ready to talk yet, which is why the specifications matter more than the call to action.
07 How much does it cost?
The same as any build on the same platform, published by platform on the websites pages. The variable is the range: fifty products is more work than five, and if the data lives in a spreadsheet or an ERP it is usually worth importing rather than retyping, which is quoted at £400 a day.
08 How do we pay?
One of two ways, and the written scope says which. A build is a deposit, paid by card when you agree the scope, which starts the work, then the balance when it is finished, or monthly by Direct Debit where the price allows. Other work is paid as each stage is accepted. No VAT is charged.
Usually goes with: Websites for manufacturers
and website migration.
Manufacturers usually have a site with years of product pages behind it, and those pages are the ones distributors and buyers have bookmarked. Moving them without breaking the links is the part worth being careful about.
See website migrationOr one of the other three
Is your catalogue
still a PDF?
Tell me what you manufacture and who specifies it. Thirty minutes, no pitch, and you leave knowing whether a rebuilt product structure would actually win you enquiries.
- Within 12 hoursA reply
- Within 2 working daysA written scope and a price
- OrThe name of someone who fits better