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Building a winning website for contract manufacturers that need to scale

Jeremy Knight
Mar 30, 2023
5 min read

Empathy serves as the foundation of successful site design. A well-structured website design and its pages should cater to the visitor's needs, uncertainties, and quest for information. Content and layout must collaborate to establish a clear visual hierarchy, guiding visitors through prioritised messages that address their questions.

We can enhance their clarity, trust, and confidence by presenting brand narratives, value propositions, and proof points across the visitor's journey. It helps by simulating the experience of interacting with a knowledgeable sales associate. The objective is to help them reach a psychological threshold where they feel comfortable acting and gain the confidence to convert on an offer.

The benefits of GDD for website optimisation

Growth-driven design (GDD ) can be crucial in optimising this process by focusing on continuous improvement and data-driven decision-making. GDD is an iterative approach that constantly evaluates and enhances website performance based on user interactions and feedback. This agile methodology enables businesses to respond swiftly to market changes and evolving customer needs. In turn, it makes sure their website designs remain relevant, engaging, and effective in generating leads.

The importance of keyphrase research

Keyphrase research is critical to this process. It helps you understand the specific terms and phrases your audience uses when searching for information about your services.

By incorporating these keyphrases into your website content and structure, you can make sure that your site aligns with your audience's needs and expectations. Doing this will make them more likely to engage with your brand and convert into leads or customers.

Moreover, keyphrase research allows you to identify new opportunities for content creation. And this enables you to address gaps in your current offerings and to better serve your target customers. It also plays a vital role in search engine optimisation (SEO). Incorporating relevant keyphrases into your website increases the likelihood of appearing in search results for those terms, driving more organic traffic.

SEO is an essential element

SEO, including technical SEO, is essential as it enhances website visibility, increasing organic traffic and brand awareness. Technical SEO improves crawl ability and indexing by optimising on-page elements, site architecture, and server-side factors. It enhances ‌UX, providing visitor satisfaction and engagement. SEO helps target users actively searching for your offerings. High search rankings build credibility and trust, giving you a competitive edge. Ultimately, SEO supports long-term growth by adapting to search algorithms and user behaviour.

Why include pillar pages and topic clusters

Pillar pages and topic clusters are crucial for a well-organised, user-friendly website that addresses your audience's needs and improves search rankings. Pillar pages serve as comprehensive guides for broad topics, while topic clusters connect to ‌the content on specific aspects of the main topic.

Understanding user intent allows you to create content that specifically addresses the needs of your audience, increasing the chances of engagement and conversion. Semantics help search engines understand the meaning and context of your content. Incorporating semantically related keywords into your pillar pages and topic clusters, you signal to search engines that your content is comprehensive and relevant to the user's search query.

This structure enhances user experience (UX) by simplifying navigation and boosts SEO by helping search engines understand content relationships. Additionally, it streamlines content creation, ensuring all relevant aspects of a topic are covered. It also establishes your brand's authority and trust by demonstrating expertise in the field.

The importance of creating ICPs and buyer personas

The first consideration when planning a new B2B website design for contract manufacturers with long and complex sales cycles is understanding the audience clearly. Identify the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and create detailed buyer personas.

The ideal customer profile (ICP) defines the characteristics of the most profitable and ideal customers. While buyer personas provide a more detailed view of the decision-makers involved in the sales cycle.

Creating accurate ICPs and buyer personas helps ensure the website content, design, and UX align with the target audience's needs, preferences, and decision-making processes. In turn, this helps increase engagement, trust, and conversion rates.

Developing ICPs and buyer personas is critical in creating an effective B2B website for companies with long and complex sales cycles. Additionally, creating ICPs and buyer personas helps identify the keyword phrases the target audience uses when searching for services related to your industry. Thus enabling the inclusion of relevant and targeted keywords in the website's content. Improving search engine optimisation (SEO) and increasing the likelihood of appearing in search results for those terms.

Building trust and credibility

When creating a B2B website, establishing trust and credibility with potential customers is essential. But contract manufacturers are expected to operate unseen by their customers. Releasing their work and accomplishments through traditional means, such as case studies and testimonials, is challenging.

To overcome this challenge, you can focus on building a strong online presence that speaks directly to your ideal customers' needs and pain points. This includes providing informative content such as blogs, whitepapers, and industry reports demonstrating your expertise and thought leadership.

Contract manufacturers can showcase their value and differentiate themselves from competitors by building a new website that takes a market-oriented approach and building trust and credibility with their audience. In an industry where operating unnoticed is the norm, this matters

Creating a user-centric website architecture

Simplify navigation, reduce friction, and highlight essential information relevant to the different stages of the buyer's journey, from awareness to consideration to decision-making.

To achieve this, you should map out the user journey and identify the key touchpoints visitors may need to access information. Then, ensure these touchpoints are easily accessible through web page navigation and structure.

Creating a user-centric architecture tailored to the different stages of the buyer's journey can improve the overall user experience. And this can increase the likelihood of visitors becoming leads and customers.

Build your website on your CRM

Building your website on your CRM requires that your CRM has an integrated content management system (CMS). This digital strategy can be effective for contract manufacturers with long, complex sales cycles. Of course, you must have a beautiful website developed by an experienced designer. But integrating your website with your CRM lets you also capture website visitors and leads directly from your website and efficiently manage and nurture them throughout the sales cycle.

Provide a seamless UX for potential customers. Allow them to easily navigate your website and connect with your sales team when they are ready to take the next step.

Make sure your CRM is equipped to handle your website and business needs. And work with a web development team with CRM integration experience. Taking a strategic approach, you can create a more streamlined and effective lead generation and nurturing system for your business.

Choosing the right web design agency with experienced professional designers, incorporating google analytics, the right design ideas, and the best web developer and graphic designer is paramount. And gaining inspiration for a bespoke website solution with the right digital marketing strategy, responsive design and marketing campaign programmes is essential too.   

In summary

Creating a user-centric website that caters to visitor needs is vital for successful site design. This includes empathetic content, clear visual hierarchy, brand narratives, value propositions, and proof points. Growth-driven design (GDD) helps optimize this process through continuous improvement and data-driven decision-making. Keyphrase research and SEO are essential for aligning content with audience expectations and driving organic traffic. Pillar pages and topic clusters enhance UX, SEO, and content organization.

Understanding the audience via ICPs and buyer personas ensures website content, design, and UX align with target audience preferences. Building trust and credibility is crucial for contract manufacturers, who often operate unseen. User-centric website architecture helps streamline navigation and highlights relevant information at different buyer journey stages.

Integrating your website with your CRM streamlines lead generation and nurturing. Working with an experienced web design agency that provides the best digital marketing strategy, responsive design, and marketing campaigns presents a winning formula you can bank on to generate superior results.

CRM Optim

Jeremy Knight

Jeremy Knight

Jeremy spent 20 years as a B2B publisher, targeting the venture capital, private equity & fast growth business sectors before launching Equinet Media.