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Industrial companies often get most of their customers from referrals. However, in many cases, your potential customers will get referred to several companies and they’ll check your website before making a final decision. As a result, it’s essential to invest in your website and maximize the percentage of website visitors that convert into leads and paying customers.
At Azuro Digital, we provide cutting-edge web design services for industrial companies. We continuously test and collect data to see what factors have the best impact on an industrial website’s conversion rate.
Here are some best practices that we’ve accumulated over the years:
Since your potential customers are often referred to several companies, you want to ensure that your website is several steps ahead of the competition. This all starts with exhaustive competitor research.
Check all of your competitors’ websites to see what they’re doing. You can take some inspiration and implement some of the best features from each competitor website, but make improvements to those features and add some of your own unique sections as well.
The goal of competitor research isn’t to copy them - it’s to ensure that your website is superior from a content perspective as well as a design aesthetic perspective.
Calls-to-action (CTAs) are at the core of conversion rate optimization - the process of maximizing the percentage of users who take action.
CTAs are usually buttons that lead to conversion events, such as contact forms to get in touch with your industrial company.
The choice of placement, styling, and messaging for your calls-to-action are critical.
Here are 5 tips for your CTAs:
1. Make them stand out by using a prominent color and sufficient font size.
2. Don’t use too many different CTAs. Focus the visitor’s attention on 1 or 2 primary CTAs.
3. Include a CTA in many sections throughout the website to keep it top-of-mind.
4. Keep a CTA in the header and keep the header “fixed” as the user scrolls down the page, so that a CTA is always in sight.
5. Avoid generic CTAs if possible. For example, instead of using “contact us” or “get in touch”, you’ll get more clicks and conversions by using specific and enticing CTAs like “get a quote” or “free consultation”.
The user will only reach out if your industrial company seems credible and trustworthy.
The best way to portray credibility and trust is through various forms of “social proof”. This may include client testimonials, links to review platforms, logos of awards/certifications, impressive statistics about your company, etc.
It’s important to leverage as many different forms of social proof as possible, and it’s also important to display them in the right spots.
Display some form of social proof near the top of the page to create a positive first impression. Then, the visitor should continue to see additional forms of social proof throughout the page as they scroll (keeping credibility top of mind).
Toward the bottom of the page, you should have a prominent “call-to-action” whether it’s a contact form, appointment scheduler, product to purchase, etc. Be sure to include some form of social proof right next to that call-to-action to increase the odds of conversion.
Bonus tip: when displaying client testimonials, if possible, be sure to use the person’s full name and headshot so that it looks legitimate (people know that testimonials are easily faked).
Another bonus tip: Don't display more than 4 testimonials at a time, and keep them under 30 words each. Focus on quality, not quantity. Display the most impactful statements and nothing else. Website users have short attention spans, and if you display too much, they'll get overwhelmed and they might miss the most impactful statements.
If you don’t have enough of your own original images to complete the website design, or if your own images aren’t good enough, then you’ll need to use stock images.
You’ll want to be careful with stock images because a lot of them will be tacky, cringe, irrelevant, off-brand or off-color scheme. When we build websites for industrial companies that require stock images, we spend an extensive amount of time searching for stock images that are compelling and that match the style of the website.
However, in an ideal world, your company would have its own original images to use throughout the website or would do a professional photoshoot specifically for the website. This way, your website would be 100% unique and there wouldn’t be any other websites using the same stock images as you.
Most industrial companies should have some sort of photo gallery, whether it’s to showcase various products, projects, or their factory/plant.
As mentioned previously, it’s alright to use stock images for many areas on your site if you’re selecting them carefully, but you should at least use original images for some sort of photo gallery to provide a sense of authenticity and legitimacy to the user. They want to see your business in action!
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