Most people who land on your website know little about your business. Even if you’re one of the best manufacturers in your industry, there’s a good chance they’ve never heard about your brand. This problem is common for many sectors, not just industrial companies.
Although you can’t become best friends with your clients overnight, there are ways to build trust quickly. You must present yourself as a serious business, not just some stock website made yesterday. You must instill confidence in every visitor so they not only leave with a good impression, but also make a purchase.
In this article, we’ll go through some amazing tricks that will help you build trust in your brand. Keep in mind that most of these suggestions will work for other businesses as well, not just manufacturing companies.
- Spend Money on Design
Let’s be honest. Most manufacturing companies pay little attention to the visual appearance of their site. A lot of them think mechanically; as long as the platform works, I’ve done my job.
However, this isn’t enough to entice potential clients. “As with everything else, you must leave a strong first impression on your site visitors,” suggests BORG Pumps GMBH, a pump parts supplier. “Hire a designer and a marketer to come up with a visual identity for your brand.”
Here, we’re not only talking about the logo. We’re also referring to the colors you’ll be using, the size of different boxes, the appearance of drop-down menus, and the quality of your images. Every single element is worth optimizing and can make a world of difference when you have to convert a person.
- Show Industry Expertise
People working in heavy-duty industries, such as construction and engineering, generally don’t respect entrepreneurs who know little about the business. You must be deeply involved with your business to earn the trust of potential partners.
This is why your site needs to showcase your knowledge of the subject matter. On the homepage, you must provide an extensive explanation of your products and who can use them. Although you can hire a content writer for your homepage, we recommend that you take an active role in arranging the information.
Mention how long you’ve been in the business. If you’ve just started, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to muddle up this information or misrepresent it in some way. Most importantly, you shouldn’t voluntarily mention that you’ve just started.
- Add Testimonials
The general rule of thumb is to always include testimonials on your home page. Ideally, you can place a strip with logos of different companies you’ve worked with. If you worked with just one or two companies, you might want to consider snippets, with the owner’s image and a short description of the service you provided.
Unfortunately, this trick doesn’t work for all businesses. If you’re just starting, it is to be expected that you won’t have many clients. In these cases, you might ask friends to help you out by including their data on your homepage.
Whatever you do, make sure that the person in the testimonial is real, as you don’t want potential clients to call an unavailable number.
- Show Your Prices
One of the most annoying things about e-commerce is the fact that many companies don’t disclose their prices on the website. The practice is especially common in healthcare, construction, and other industries. What’s worse, some of them add extra charges just as the client is closing on a deal.
As you can presume, this is incredibly annoying for your customers. Adding shipping and packing costs, as well as taxes at the last moment, will quickly alienate a person from you. Even if they finish the process, you can rest assured they will find a better option next time around.
- Prioritize Safety
Many companies have suffered devastating cyberattacks. Hacking costs US companies billions of dollars each year, and despite sophisticated software, it’s still hard to detect some of these threats. It doesn’t help that attackers are using better and smarter tech with each passing year.
You have to make sure your clients always feel safe when shopping at your website. Industrial manufacturers commonly work with other businesses, so the potential damages are huge. Even if a client company doesn’t lose any money outright, small work disruptions can cost them profits.
- Make It Easier for Clients
A lot of industrial B2B clients aren’t that tech-savvy. Sure, they might know how to send emails or manage their own social media, but they often struggle with website browsing and ordering. This is especially true if you have a convoluted shop design.
You need to do everything in your power to streamline the buying process. You should use large buttons and make sure that impaired users have no problem accessing content. Most importantly, you should make it easy to add products to the cart and execute the payment.
- Enhance Your Social Media
Social media is now, more than ever, intertwined with your website. Most companies place widgets on their homepage, leading visitors to Facebook, Instagram, and other pages. This gives your team a secondary, less direct channel of communication.
Unfortunately, industrial companies often neglect their profiles. They might have a certain number of followers and a few posts on their page, but they rarely share any info about their work.
It is vital that you try to enhance these channels. The good rule of thumb is to talk about your clients and prioritize their needs. Although you can mention your brand here and there, you should do so sparingly.
Last Thoughts
Mastering industrial e-commerce requires a lot of planning. You must first create a visual identity and introduce it to all your messaging. Furthermore, you have to ensure your website is as functional as possible.
The main goal is to instill confidence in your visitors. As most of them have limited information about your business when they reach your site, you must quickly build a bridge of trust that will help you convert them.
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