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Websites & E-commerce · for Manufacturing

Websites & E-commerce for Manufacturing teams — built for the way you actually work.

For a niche industrial-fastener manufacturer, we rebuilt their catalogue site with structured variant search and downloadable datasheets — organic traffic from engineering search queries tripled within six months, and inbound qualified leads doubled.

Book a 30-min call Websites & E-commerce overview

EU hosting · Audit trails · Human-in-the-loop · DACH-native

What we see in Manufacturing today

Manufacturing in DACH and Europe more broadly is dominated by mid-market specialists — the Hidden Champions, the Mittelstand machine builders, the contract manufacturers, the Tier-1 and Tier-2 automotive suppliers. These businesses are extraordinarily good at their physical product and consistently undersupplied on software. ERPs are old (SAP ECC, Navision, ProAlpha), MES systems are partial or absent, customer-facing tooling barely exists, and CRMs are spreadsheets in 60% of cases. The decision-makers are pragmatic and ROI-driven — a manufacturer will sign for a piece of software the day they can see what it will save on the shop floor, and not before. Long-term partnerships matter; vendor-hopping is rare.

Regulatory context: ISO 9001 documentation expectations, traceability requirements in regulated verticals (medical devices, food, aerospace), CSRD reporting from 2024 onward for large companies. Less regulated than insurance or healthcare overall.

Pain points we hear from managing directors

  • Sales reps and dealers wait days for current order status because ERP queries are slow or locked-down
  • Production planning is still partially manual — Excel rolls forward weekly, reconciled against ERP afterwards
  • No clean view of customer profitability across business units — each unit reports separately
  • After-sales service tickets live in email and a shared mailbox, not a structured system
  • Quality data exists but is locked in MES exports — engineering needs to ask for CSVs
  • Customer portals are basic (PDF downloads + an order form) when buyers now expect Amazon-grade self-service

What commerce platforms looks like for a manufacturer

Decision-makers: Managing Director, Head of Operations, Head of IT, Head of Sales Ops, Production Manager. Here is what we focus on when commerce platforms meets manufacturing:

  • B2B catalogues are 3–4 orders of magnitude more complex than B2C — variants, attributes, conditional pricing, customer-specific catalogues.
  • PunchOut and OCI integration support — large B2B buyers expect to access your catalogue from inside their SAP/Coupa/Ariba procurement system.
  • Approval flows on the buyer side — checkout that respects a buyer's internal P-card limits, approval chains, and PO requirements.
  • Multi-language and per-region pricing — manufacturers usually have negotiated rates per country, distributor, contract.
  • Spec sheets, datasheets, and certifications must be first-class search artefacts — engineers find products by datasheet, not by marketing copy.
  • The site needs an internal-tools twin — what the customer sees, the inside sales team needs a richer version of.

Proof: how we have done this for a manufacturer

Case study

From three tools and a shared inbox to a single internal CRM — in five weeks

Replaced three legacy tools with one custom CRM and cut the quote cycle by 40%

  • 5 weeks

    From kickoff to UAT

  • 3

    Legacy tools retired

  • 40%

    Faster quote cycle

Read the full case study →

Common questions

Websites & E-commerce for Manufacturing: what teams ask first

Can a manufacturer run real B2B e-commerce, or is "list catalogue and request quote" the realistic ceiling?

Real B2B e-commerce is realistic — and increasingly expected by buyers under 45 who are now in the decision-maker seat. The trick is to not copy B2C patterns. B2B buyers want negotiated pricing visible only to them, multi-step approval flows, integration with their procurement platform, and order history that survives reorgs. We build B2B commerce as a hybrid: products surfaceable and orderable for known customers; spec-sheets + request-quote for unknown traffic. That hybrid wins the most revenue across the broadest buyer set.

How do you typically scope a commerce platforms engagement for a manufacturer?

We start with a 30-minute discovery call to understand your specific situation. If there's a fit, we follow with a 1–2 week scoping engagement that produces a fixed-scope, fixed-timeline proposal. No hourly-billing surprises after the contract is signed.

Do you work remotely or on-site?

Primarily remote — most of our manufacturing clients are spread across multiple offices anyway. We come on-site for kick-offs and major workshops when it adds clear value (typically 2–4 visits across an engagement). EU-based team, EU working hours.

Related — explore other combinations

Ready to talk about commerce platforms for your manufacturing business?

30-minute discovery call. No sales theatre. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.

Book a discovery call Websites & E-commerce overview

EU hosting · Audit trails · Human-in-the-loop · DACH-native