Put Your Best Electronic Foot Forward

Although the majority of component manufacturers (CMs) have a website according to our website poll, the question remains: Is your website up-to-date and attractive enough to be effective? We all know there are countless reasons to have a website but just having a website, especially an outdated one, is no longer enough in this day and age to be effective and could in fact detract from your business. To this point, a website redesign could help tap into new business opportunities and be a huge return on investment for your company. 

William Whewell, the assistant general manager for York P-B Truss, Inc. had responded to SBCA’s website poll that he finds the greatest value of their website to be sales leads and cold calls. According to William it took their team about six months to work up a redesign as they were fairly particular on who they wanted to work with and what the design would look like. 

William shared that they updated their website about two years ago and prior to that they hadn’t updated it in about ten years. “We just hadn’t seen a lot of value in it and I’m not sure if that was because it wasn’t mobile friendly or because it was outdated,” says William. “After we made the decision to revamp our website and make it more modern, we saw a significant increase in website traffic that we didn’t expect. I put my email on the site just to see how it would play out and I get three to four emails a week for quotes on trusses, which is something we didn’t anticipate.”

The turning point for York P-B Truss was realizing that if they were going to use social media to market their business that their website would need a revamp. “We knew if we wanted to venture in that direction we needed to come up and meet that standard for everything else we’d have out there,” explains William. “I personally knew that if we wanted to try to do more on social media that we needed to be more modern with our website.”

William also shared that York P-B Truss keeps their web designer on a monthly retainer to make updates but that they’re looking to hire someone to help with their marketing efforts and website. “We’d like to be updating at least once a month so we can share what’s happening at P-B and showcase some projects we’ve worked on so people can see what we do in production but also at a jobsite and see a finished project,” says William. “We also wanted to show video so people could see how the process works all the way through our plant, from start to finish, so we can fill in the gaps for individuals who haven’t worked with trusses.”

Regular updates are important to engage prospective or current customers and keep them in the loop on what’s new with your company. Millard Lumber is a great example of this as they have a staff member who manages their website content and social media platforms. 

“Our marketing and social media specialist goes through the site and updates our products and services on a regular basis to make sure our website is up-to-date and offers the most current information,” says Mark Russell, employee engagement manager at Millard Lumber. “It’s huge having someone internally that understands our industry and uses terms that builders and other customers use.”

Mark also points out the benefit that having someone on staff streamlines their marketing across the board. “It’s helpful knowing that what we’re promoting across our social media and website are in line with what we’re wanting to do and having someone on staff allows us to get things done rather quickly.”

According to Mark, Millard Lumber started the process to make their website more functional and user-friendly about five years ago. When he completed SBCA’s website poll he indicated that to him the greatest value of their website was explaining their products and services.

“People can visit our website and it clearly explains what we do, what we stock, and what we can get, so people know the products and services we offer,” explains Mark. “All of our social media is linked to the site so it helps to get the word out and push other types of information to people who may not be visiting our website regularly but then they can visit the site to learn about what we do.”

As Mark and William shared, there are some noteworthy reasons to have a modern and regularly updated website. Although there is an upfront investment necessary for a new website or redesign, it’s important to recognize that those updates will likely have a considerable positive impact on your overall business.