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What makes the best engineering websites in the world? In such industries, with long sales cycles and high value products and services, your website should act as a 24/7 sales tool. In order to make this happen, make sure your website has these five characteristics.
1 – Great website design and customer journey
As pointed out fantastically well by my colleague Dan in his blogs about website planning and its functionality requirements, your website needs to have a well thought out structure that takes into consideration your audience and the goals you want them to achieve.
Your customer journey should reflect this, making sure the design is contemporary, easy to use, and increases the business leads you get through the website. Which leads on well to point number two…
2 – Lead generation strategy
Still, some engineering firms do not see the website, or indeed the internet as a way to win new business – but it is happening and there is no finer example than the work we have done with oil and gas firm Claxton Engineering.
Having a lead generation strategy means adapting your website to include ways of attracting people to communicate with your website and show an expression of interest in what you do/sell.
Promoting books and product guides on your website, which visitors can download, are a great way of generating leads. Capturing the visitors email at this stage means you can contact them further about their requirements and potentially close a deal.
3 – Search engine optimised
A phrase thrown about by so many, but so few really know what it actually means. Having a search engine optimised (SEO) website means your website is one of the first results that appears in Google, Yahoo, etc after your target audience types in a product/service that you offer.
This is not a static piece of work. SEO is constantly evolving meaning you constantly need to ensure that ‘alt tags’, ‘page titles’ and ‘unique page descriptions’ throughout your website are completed. Midlands manufacturing companies that have completed this, and gone over and above the ‘norm’ by researching “keywords” that their target audience were searching for, came out on top in our 2015 index.
4 – Mobile optimised
Do you think your target audience just search on desktop computers for your products or services? Wrong! Busy business people are now working on the go – and most have access to a smart phone and have the ability to browse the internet.
If your website looks bad, is hard to use or doesn’t load up at all, the chances are that they will move onto the next best option. Don’t let your customers lose out because your website didn’t load fast enough – make sure its optimised for ALL devices including tablets – the more places people can access you, the more chance you have of a getting new business.
5 – Have a well-run blog
Blogs aren’t just to feature the company’s latest news or wish to Chairman a “Happy Birthday”. Your blog should be used like a Q&A for your target audience. Engage with your potential customers by giving them solutions to their work problems.
Writing about these kinds of industry problems not only makes you a ‘leader’ in the industry, but also gives you a better search engine optimised website. You can also feature your new lead generation strategy on your blog and promote your books to capture visitor data.
Photo Credit: Fancycrave