Manufacturer’s Website Maintenance 101
Does this sound familiar?:
Your boss says to you “ We need to get the website updated”.
O…kaaaay…..
How do you even know where to begin?
You work for a manufacturing company. You’re not a web developer. If they held a gun to your head, maybe, just maybe you could figure out how to login and change a setting or two, or on the best of all days, you could install a plugin.
But that’s about it.
The website was originally built years ago, before you or maybe even your boss were employed there. The original developer or agency is now a mystery, or long gone. Or (which is more common than you’d think) they’ve just stopped returning your calls.
What does a manufacturer need with a new or refreshed website anyway? It’s not like your company is spending a lot of time nurturing inbound web-leads, right?
Most manufacturers believe their site is mainly brochureware – a website built because your company needed one and someone’s brother’s cousin built the thing for cheap 10 years ago and there it sits…..untouched, unused….unloved.
Why now? Why have smart, forward-thinking manufacturers and their teams started to take a second look at their heretofore out-of-date online properties?
Our manufacturing clients are telling us the biggest incentive they have to refocus and refresh their online experience and potentially impact nearly every aspect of the business and its ability to compete comes down to something most manufacturers have previously never really considered vital to their success – Brand.
The word has been all the rage of late and in many places misused and misunderstood.
Brand is more than about defining who you are, why you matter, your values, and the difference you make for your employees and customers, it’s about how those ideas live in the world outside your business in the minds of your potential clients, but also your potential manufacturing employees.
How can an updated website solve my recruitment challenges?
Here are some of the biggest complaints we’ve heard about manufacturing recruitment and how the conversation around brand creates can make a difference:
- We’re not attracting the right talent – We need to attract better, more qualified candidates:
- How do we define ourselves as a great place for young talent to start their careers?
- How do we create a company culture that makes that true?
- We’ve got no pipeline for executive advancement/legacy prep.
- What are our values and how can we impart them to our team so they feel invested in the organization to stick with us for the long-term?
- Too much turnover, we lack any cohesive plan for employee engagement – inspiration is lacking.
- Does our team have a mission we can all get behind. Are we just cutting bricks or are we building a cathedral?
- We’re seeing competition from Amazon/Alibaba so we need to promote what makes us different. Why should our customers stick with us?
- Define the value beyond the lowest price. If you truly own what makes you unique then defending your value in the face of competition gets easier.
These are just a few of the issues manufacturers are telling us are the reasons that for the first time in their history they’re taking a serious look at their company’s brand and their forward facing digital efforts.
So if the boss is sick of the current state of the website, chances are they’re seeing the most visible part of the problem. The next step is helping them understand just how comprehensive and impactful the right approach can be.
Next Article: The Best Approach to Updating A Manufacturing Website