Website projects are huge undertakings. What ultimately matters is not the effort you put into them but the return-on-investment you derive from it. Making a business case for investing in a comprehensive website redesign to bottom-line-driven, quant-minded manufacturers requires hard-nosed, disciplined thinking.

Remember that what you invest in a new website design will determine the returns you can expect from it. Assuming you have baked all the best practices into a redesign project, you can and should expect solid returns. Here are five ROI metrics that we have used to justify the investment in a comprehensive website redesign:

1. Increase in Inquiries and RFQ’s: Website projects should always result in quantifiable increase in inquiries and RFQs. For clients who have been re-packaged as solutions providers, the thickness of their RFP’s should grow in size. All clients should expect to see an increase in PDF downloads and event signups.

By elevating your brand during a website redesign, the increases should not just come from bottom feeders for low-margin products, but from right-fit clients for higher-margin prospects in highly-coveted markets.

2. Reduction in Time to Sale: Effective manufacturing websites surround and engage the prospective buyers at every stage of the decision funnel with unique content. They accelerate sales by building brand awareness and early brand preference during the education/awareness stage, reinforcing the brand during the consideration stage, and providing brand reassurance during the decisioning phase. As a result of these efforts, they should experience a reduction in sales cycles.

3. Stronger Keyword Rankings: Baking search engine thinking into every phase of redesign enhances a website’s Google rankings. This should result in a measurable growth in number of keywords on Google page 1, increase in organic traffic, increase in non-branded traffic and expansion in geographic reach. The result should be an increase in number of inquires and RFQ’s originating from search engines, and an increase in number of inquires and RFP’s for higher-margin solutions. You should expect to see an increase in search engine traffic by 25% to 30%. The lowest ROI we have delivered is 5X, and the highest a whopping 100X.

4. Strengthened Brand Awareness: Since industrial website redesign projects typically fortify both products/services and career development resources, they result in an increase in the number of products and job listings ranked on Google page 1. As a result, manufacturers enjoy expanded geographic footprint, expansion into new markets, and a reduction in recruitment costs. Over the years, we’ve delivered on all these fronts.

We track and create a trend line of number of times the brand name surfaces and is clicked on search engine results pages using Google search console data. Our SEO/Inbound clients should expect this to grow upwards year-over-year.The non-branded to branded organic traffic ratio should rise over time. For most of our clients this ratio begins around 20/80 or 30/70 and rises all the way up to 60/40 or 70/30. Occasionally, it rises up to 80/20 and 90/10. We’ll monitor organic search volume over time by measuring the organic traffic as a percentage of overall website traffic trended over time. We expect this to grow upward year-over-year for all our clients.

5. Increase in Revenue:  Since industrial website redesign projects increase the number of keywords ranked on Google page 1 and the overall brand impressions, the manufacturer’s geographic footprint invariably expands to new markets and new geographies. Great websites increases sales. They have created order backlogs for our industrial clients, whether they are an e-commerce client or RFQ-based. For the clients we’ve packaged as solutions providers, they have all enjoyed growth in their average order size and profitability.

Beyond the quantitative ROI, we have observed that website redesign projects are a catalyst for transforming a manufacturer, liberating new prosperity and realizing destiny. A great website redesign project energizes the entire corporation, and creates a new corporate inflection point.

Contact us if you are seeking a smart manufacturing marketing agency which can help you join the elite group of manufacturers and industrial companies growing their company’s share of mind, voice and market using our website design services.