Factories default to about + leadership care + equipment list. Buyers are not touring org charts. They want: can you make this spec, have you delivered similar, how is quality proven, who answers the inquiry.
Product pages are the core. Each series: fit boundary, key spec table, options, public photos, related certs, inquire. Do not pile models on one giant image. Sales needs a specific URL to forward. See How the Website Becomes the Sales Team's Shared Playbook.
- Application pages say food plant / auto parts / PV so purchasing can match themselves.
- Capability pages put checkable things: system certs, test gear, shop-floor photos — not adjectives.
- News is optional. Downloads (manuals, selection cards) are often more useful.
If you sell both domestic and export, the product model must support bilingual pages. See whether you need bilingual pages and Why Exporters Need a Standalone Website Even More. Tenders will check whether certificates and news are still alive. See What a Website Does in Tenders and Due Diligence.
Do not make twenty empty sections to look large. Process and warehouse departments need not be nav. The visitor path should end at inquire. See visitor to inquiry and inquiry engine.
The product information model is worth more than art
The hard part for manufacturers is not the home hero. It is how products are searched and compared. Sales says a trade name, the shop floor a drawing number, export a series. The site must pick a public name and also show aliases buyers may search. Spec tables use fields purchasing will ask: material, tolerance, voltage, interface, certification — not every ERP column. Mark options and discontinued SKUs so an inquiry does not land on a model you stopped two years ago.
Drawings and selection guides work well as “leave an email to download” — protect the file and keep the lead. Factory photos should split by workshop, not one assembly shot for everything. For confidential lines, “visit by appointment” is more professional than a blur. After-sales, spare parts, and warranty on their own page cut WeChat repeats. All of these pages must show spec tables on a phone, or field engineers cannot forward them to purchasing.
For manufacturer sites DaXi first asks for a real sellable product list, the fields on the current quote, and which certificates can be public — then draws navigation. Go to the corporate website service page or see From Brief to Launch. An old site that is only an equipment list with no model pages usually needs a new IA, not a reskin. See redesign or rebuild.
Also keep this in mind
If products are highly custom and almost no standard models exist, nav can become capability + process + industry cases + inquiry instead of a fake catalog. The home page must then write customization bounds and MOQ so visitors do not assume stock. Keep a drawing door — change it to “upload a requirement,” not “add to RFQ basket.”
OEM/ODM needs its own note: private label or not, how tooling is priced — so every visitor is not pushed into a standard-SKU inquiry. Two form doors immediately improve lead quality.
QC as steps beats adjectives: incoming, in-process, outgoing — what is checked. The buyer’s quality engineer came for those steps.
Write “visitable,” “appointment required,” and “no photos — confidential” on the factory page. That manages expectation and reduces sales being put on the spot. The visit process itself is a credibility display.