You have an eye-catching website and appealing content, but your conversion rate is still suffering. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) for manufacturing websites can help increase the number of visitors who become customers.
Without an effective CRO strategy, you could be losing out on valuable leads.
This guide will explore the unique aspects of CRO for manufacturing and some strategies you can use to improve your conversion rate.
Key Takeaways
- Conversion rate optimization for manufacturing websites is crucial to gaining new leads and customers.
- Knowing where your website visitors are coming from and which sources generate the most leads can help you improve your CRO strategy.
- Eliminating bottlenecks, especially in the lead response time, can have a significant impact on your conversion rate.
What Is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?
Conversion rate optimization is a systematic process for increasing the percentage of website visitors who complete the desired action. That action could be making a purchase, submitting a contact form, or requesting a quote. CRO is a form of digital marketing.
Video Source: Neil Patel on YouTube
6 Strategies to Improve CRO for Manufacturing Websites
When people visit your website or specific pages on your site, what do you want them to do? The answer to that question is what CRO works to improve. Use these six tactics to help improve the conversion rate on your manufacturing website.
1. Analyze Your Website Visitors
As a manufacturing business in the B2B industry, you deal with long sales cycles and major deals. You need high-quality, serious buyers coming to your website to get the conversion rates you need. The more your visitors fit your ideal customer profile, the better your conversion rate will be.
Analyzing and improving your incoming traffic will give you a major step forward in improving your CRO. Consider these strategies:
- Google Analytics: Use Google Analytics to identify where users are coming from. Look for sources that have higher conversion rates and focus more of your marketing budget on that source.
- Retargeting: Run more marketing campaigns to attract more “warm” leads. These leads will likely be people who have heard of your brand or even considered purchasing from you before. You can run ad campaigns that use your brand name to target these visitors.
- Social Media: Where do your ideal customers hang out online? If you don’t already, create accounts on more professional-focused social sites like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Slideshare. Start adding valuable content to these sites to attract desirable leads to your site.
2. Qualify Your Leads
While any completed action on your site can feel like a win, you want those completed actions to count. This is especially true for the manufacturing industry. You do not want to waste your valuable time on unqualified leads that eventually fizzle out.
To help eliminate unqualified leads from your pool, consider making your lead generation easy but not simple. For example, if a visitor wants to request a quote, they must answer specific questions about their needs and timeline. If someone is genuinely interested in your products, they will take the time to answer these questions. If someone is unmotivated, they likely won’t finish the form.
This is a good deal for you. It gives you motivated, qualified leads while eliminating the time you might waste on unqualified leads. While it might lower the conversion rate for visitors to leads, it should improve your rate for converting leads into customers.
3. Find Your Unique Conversion Rate
Of course, you want to have a goal for your conversion rate. While you can find industry average conversion rates online, individual rates will vary wildly between one manufacturing company and another, thanks to the long sales cycle, spread in pricing, and traffic volume.
You will need to take the time to analyze your current lead volume to calculate your unique conversion rate. You can create a benchmark to help you meet your conversion rate goals. If you’re not reaching your goal, take a step back, consider your marketing strategy, and make changes.
4. Eliminate Bottlenecks
Is there a specific point where leads get lost in your marketing funnel or sales pipeline? For many manufacturers, a major bottleneck could be at the beginning of the pipeline.
Do you know how long it takes your sales team to reach out to a prospect after they request a quote or consultation? However long it is, it is likely too long.
According to research from XANT, conversion rates are 8 times higher if you contact a lead within five minutes after their initial contact than if you wait six minutes or more. Unfortunately, this report also showed that 57.1% of businesses waited a week or longer before responding.
Other possible bottlenecks might include:
- Completing the opt-in form
- Getting a response to a follow-up email
- Getting a new buyer to make a payment
- Moving from a verbal agreement to signing the contract
If you identify these or other bottlenecks, act quickly to remove the blockage and increase your conversion rates.
5. Improve Your Product Descriptions
As a manufacturer, your products are why you exist. For many manufacturers, their products are highly technical and complex. Adding detailed product descriptions and images can help potential customers get a better idea if your product works for them. Good product descriptions can also help differentiate you from the competition.
Include as much information as you can. Consider adding:
- Dimensions
- Product functionality
- Product videos
- Features/benefits
- Instruction manuals
The more information you offer up-front, the more confident a potential buyer can feel when they commit to your products.
6. Improve Search Functionality
Today’s internet users have high expectations when it comes to search results. If the search function on your website is not accurate or returns irrelevant information, your leads will get frustrated and likely leave your site.
Use search features like auto-complete or type-ahead so your customers can quickly find what they are looking for. Features like this are critical to manufacturers, especially if you sell parts for your products. If the buyer doesn’t have the exact product number or name of the part, advanced search functions can suggest the right part based on the information they search for. This can greatly improve the customer experience and increase your conversion rate.
See Excellent CRO Results with Shanahan Strategy
At Shanahan Strategy, we offer advanced marketing services exclusively to manufacturers, distributors, and dealers. With this narrow focus, we can better understand the unique needs of the manufacturing industry, including how to handle conversion rate optimization on manufacturing websites.
If you have been let down in the past by other types of marketing agencies, we are ready to show you how it should be done.
Contact Shanahan Strategy today to learn about our conversion rate optimization strategy.
