Also companies in the manufacturing industry cannot escape it anymore: the power of the internet. There are many opportunities in this area, but they are not yet fully exploited.
Companies and consumers increasingly orientate and buy online, that is nothing new. For companies in the manufacturing industry, too, online presence is becoming more important by the day.
Research by marketing agency Fingerspitz Online Marketing found that marketing expenditure within the construction & manufacturing industry increased by 86.8% in 2014. Only a small part of that went to online marketing. The agency argues that this is far too little in any case when set against the fact that 70% of the online decision-making process in B2B takes place on the internet.
The agency looked at and assessed the 100 Dutch companies active in the manufacturing industry on various factors within five sub-areas: user-friendliness, security & privacy, performance, search engine optimisation and social media. These sub-areas did not require data from within the company, they could be assessed remotely, from the customer's perspective. The analysis is a snapshot from August 2017, where each company was assessed on the same topics, resulting in a rating of up to 5 stars. Despite being a snapshot, according to the compilers, the analysis provides enough insight to read the extent to which Dutch companies in the manufacturing industry are findable on the internet. The companies surveyed were chosen based on the 2014, 2015 and 2016 lists "De Maakindustrie Nederland" by the trade magazine Management Team.
Low score
The survey yielded the following result: companies in the manufacturing industry score an average of 2.96 stars. 'This indicates that there are still many opportunities for companies in the manufacturing industry, in favour of online findability. But there are also concerns,' the report reads, with the performance on privacy and security being particularly striking, according to the marketing company. Many companies do already use applications to store visitor data, while this is not or not accurately indicated with a cookie notification. They also still too often use an unsecured connection. There is also much room for improvement in terms of web performance, especially with regard to page load times.
The scores on the various subsectors
User-friendliness:
'The website is every company's business card,' Fingerspitz explains in this section. 'Even for industrial companies, a website should be user-friendly and provide the right information at the right time.'
In this section, the company analysed the website for multilingualism and mobile-friendliness. Does a potential foreign customer understand what is on the website? Often part of the website is translated, resulting in low conversion rates. Everyone should be able to find what they are looking for. And what about the mobile-friendliness of the website? How does Google view the mobile website, and what score is given for it?
Results: 12% of websites do not have the correct translation, even though they operate internati- onally. Of translated websites, 25% do not have a full translation. This incomplete translation is often reflected in the contact form, while this is an extremely important part of the website, considering the optimisation of conversions through contact requests.
The mobile friendliness of the surveyed companies scores an average of 55 out of 100, based on the Google Mobile Friendliness Test. Compared to Germany (78 out of 100), Dutch companies in the manufacturing industry are still far behind. 25% of the top 100 companies still do not have a mobile website, even though more than half of all searches are performed on mobile devices. One website still uses the now very outdated Flash.
Security & Privacy: 1.7 stars
'In recent years, both privacy and security have been hot topics when it comes to online data. You would rather not see all your data just lying on the street. Or even worse: your customer's.'
Since 2017, the data breach notification obligation has been in force. Data leakage is punishable by law and the amount of the fines alone is a good reason to have website and connection security in place. Obviously, privacy-sensitive data of web users is the top priority here. Companies should not, without informing visitors, store data. Because many industrial companies outsource website construction and online marketing to agencies, they themselves often do not know exactly what is happening on the website and what data storage applications are active.
'This study looked at the use of cookies and the setup of SSL in broad terms. Search engines like Google also penalise the use of unsecured connections with a lower position in search results.'
Research showed that 82% of the companies surveyed do not display a cookie notification, while only 2% do not use cookies. In addition, more than half (56%) do not use a secure connection with an SSL certificate.
Performance: 3.3 stars
A good user experience stands or falls with website performance. If a page takes too long to load, the visitor quits and then finds his information elsewhere.'
Performance is measured in different ways. It is important to distinguish between the first visit and a return or follow-up visit. On a first visit, no data are stored in the cache yet. On a follow-up visit, some data storage is already in the user's cache.
There is also a difference in loading time between the response speed of the server (time-to-first-byte) and the speed of total loading of all elements of the page. Speed performance is an important indicator for search engines. Moreover, with every extra second a website takes to load, you lose 7% in conversions (Google, 2017).
Research shows that as many as 46% of mobile online visitors say they are unlikely to return to a website with which they experienced slow loading times in the past.
'This study looked at homepage load time, the time-to-first byte, and applied the Google PageSpeed test on mobile and desktop. This showed that the surveyed companies with a mobile load time of 6.8 seconds outperformed the German industrial companies (8.2 seconds). In contrast, the time-to-first-byte was 0.5 seconds lower: 2.7 seconds compared to 2.2 seconds in Germany.
The fastest website took exactly one second to load on a second visitor; the slowest took 39.5 seconds.'
Search engine optimisation: 2.5 stars'
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), or search engine optimisation, is certainly not only relevant for business-2-consumer-oriented websites. Companies in the manufacturing industry also need to be at the top of the organic search results; especially when it comes to a particular specialism. When the potential customer searches online for a particular technique or product, a range of results appear. Companies in the manufacturing industry are known for their expertise, but miss the boat if they cannot be found and present online with that expertise too. Don't underestimate the power of Google!' A clear message from Fingerspitz.
According to the authors, organic search results are determined by a huge number of factors, which can be roughly divided into three categories: technology, content and external link structure. This study looked at title tags, use of H1s, meta tags and descriptions, authority scores, 404 pages and images.
What is striking about the results of the analysis is that 72% incorrectly use title tags on their websites. A good title (title tag) is not only important for search engine optimisation, but also for the click-through rate (CTR) from search engines like Google and Bing. This is because the title tag is the part of a website that people see first, when it appears in search results. When an inviting title is displayed in the search engine, people are more likely to click on it and view the website with products and/or services.
Only 57 out of 100 websites have one H1 tag per page. It is recommended to use only one H1 tag per page. After all, this is the most important indicator for search engines to assess the content of the page. It therefore determines whether the page is relevant to the user's search query.
Social media: 3.1 stars
Social media has become an incredibly important part of our daily internet use. Presence on social media is important for any industry, to maintain interaction with the target audience and to reach followers and fans. Also, presence on social media has become an important factor for search engines. Those with a strong presence on social media are more findable. 'It is not only the number of followers that matter. The level of interaction and influence are also important things to measure social presence.'
The conclusion: only 7% of companies score a rounded 5-star score when it comes to social media. The most common score is rounded 2 stars (21%). Especially in the area of interaction and influence, there is still a lot to be gained for companies in the manufacturing industry. And that while social media are very simple ways to reach the target audience.
By: Kelly Bakker
Source: Fingerspitz.nl
