Website for B2B manufacturers: ranges, specifications and enquiries
A manufacturer that sells through quotes and enquiries rather than a checkout needs step 03, a business website at EUR 1.500 to 3.500, built in 3 to 6 weeks. If distributors log in for price lists, product data syncs from your ERP, or repeat orders are paid online, it is step 04 at EUR 3.500 to 7.500, built in 6 to 12 weeks.
The line between the two is not the number of products. It is whether the site presents your range and collects enquiries, or takes part in how orders run.
What a B2B buyer is doing on your site
The person reading your product pages may not sign the order. It could be an engineer checking a component against a drawing, a buyer shortlisting suppliers, or a distributor looking for a line to add. None of them arrived to pay. They want three answers: do you make the thing, does it meet the specification, and where does the request go.
A consumer shop shortens the path to a checkout. A manufacturer's site lets a technical reader find the right product, confirm the numbers, and send an enquiry your sales team can price instead of answering with questions.
The three parts that carry the site
A range buyers can find their way through
Products sit in a hierarchy: range, family, product, and variants by size, material or rating. Navigation should follow how buyers think about it, not how your part numbers are organised. When the range outgrows scrolling, add filters on the attributes buyers select on, such as diameter, pressure rating or finish.
Specifications as data, not only as PDFs
A specification that lives only inside a PDF is harder to search, harder to compare, and easy to leave out of date. Stored as structured CMS fields, each value is edited in one place and shown the same way on every product page, and part numbers, materials and standards land in the page text, which is what a buyer types into a search.
An enquiry that arrives ready to price
A generic contact form produces messages asking for more information. A form on a product page can carry the product reference and variant, ask for quantity and delivery country, and accept the drawing the buyer already has. This is why we treat design and engineering as one job: navigation, specification table and form are a single path for the buyer.
What moves the quote
- The state of your product data. A clean spreadsheet with one row per product and one column per attribute can be imported. Specifications scattered across old catalogues, PDFs and one engineer's memory have to be gathered first, and that is the part that waits on you.
- Families with their own attributes. Fasteners and pumps do not share a specification table. Each family with its own fields is another template to design, build and test.
- Languages. Selling into export markets can mean Dutch, English and German. Each adds another set of product text and labels to translate and keep current.
- Anything that connects to your systems. A live ERP or PIM link, enquiries flowing into a CRM, a distributor login or ordering with payment moves the project to step 04.
On page count: step 03 covers 4 to 7 pages, and forty products do not mean forty designed pages. The product template is built once and each product is a CMS entry. Who loads those entries at launch is settled in scoping and written into the fixed quote.
What each step means for a manufacturer
The full ladder is on the packages page. This is how it maps onto a manufacturing business.
| Step | Price | Timeline | When a manufacturer needs it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Single-page landing | EUR 600-900 | 1-2 weeks | One new product line or an exhibition, with an enquiry form |
| 02 Mini-site | EUR 900-1.500 | 2-3 weeks | A narrow range sold through a few distributors, catalogue as a download |
| 03 Business website | EUR 1.500-3.500 | 3-6 weeks | A structured range in a CMS, specification pages, datasheet downloads, an enquiry form per product |
| 04 Advanced site / web app | EUR 3.500-7.500 | 6-12 weeks | Distributor login with price lists, ERP sync over an API, enquiries into a CRM, reordering with payments |
| 05 Custom SaaS platform | from EUR 7.500 | After discovery | A platform your dealer network works in, with its own accounts, billing and admin |
Process and timeline
- Scoping. The range, the attributes each family needs, the languages, and what an enquiry must capture. A fixed quote follows.
- Product data. You supply specifications, images and downloads in whatever form they exist, and we agree the structure. This waits on you, so start gathering early.
- Structure and design. Range navigation, product template, specification table and enquiry flow, designed as one path.
- Build and import. Templates and CMS fields built, product data loaded.
- Testing. Every form submitted from desktop and phone, with attachments, and checked at the inbox it should reach.
- Launch and handover. Your team gets CMS access to add products and edit specifications.
Step 03 runs 3 to 6 weeks. Step 04 follows the same order over 6 to 12 weeks, with integration added: agreeing what your ERP or PIM exposes, building the sync, and testing accounts and payments against real orders.
Care and search
Care runs EUR 100 to 300 per month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes. It does not cover a redesign or new features, and a product family with new attributes counts as a new feature.
SEO foundation is a one-off EUR 450 to 750: Search Console, analytics, indexation, technical hygiene, titles, internal links and a 3 to 6 month plan. SEO growth, at EUR 500 to 800 per month, covers technical and on-page work, service and location pages, internal links and reporting. For a manufacturer, service pages can be application pages: which product suits which use.
When to spend less
If your orders come from a small number of distributors who already know your range, a structured online catalogue may do less for you than it costs. A step 02 mini-site at EUR 900 to 1.500, with a clear company page, the range as a downloadable catalogue and a contact flow, gives a new distributor enough to take you seriously.
The same test applies to step 04. Do not build a distributor login because a competitor has one; add it as a client login add-on, EUR 1.500 to 4.000, when price list requests by email cost your team real time. Do not connect the ERP if the range rarely changes and a spreadsheet import covers it. If every order is quoted by hand, online payment solves a problem you do not have.
If you are launching one product line and want to test the response before rebuilding everything, step 01 at EUR 600 to 900, over 1 to 2 weeks, is a sound start.
Questions manufacturers ask
Should we publish prices?
That is a commercial decision more than a technical one. Prices that depend on volume, contract and region are hard to show as one number. Customer-specific price lists need accounts and a login, which is step 04. A site with no prices and a quantity field in the enquiry form stays at step 03.
Can the site pull product data from our ERP?
If your ERP or PIM exposes the data through an API, yes, and that is step 04 at EUR 3.500 to 7.500. If it can export a spreadsheet, a one-time import into the CMS at step 03 may be all you need.
Can buyers reorder parts online?
Ordering with payment, customer accounts and order history is step 04. First look at how repeat orders arrive today. If they come by email with a purchase order and are invoiced on account, a reorder request form carrying part numbers and quantities may be enough.
Can our team add products after launch?
Yes. Each family has its own fields in the CMS, so adding a product means filling in its specifications, uploading images and attaching the datasheet. No developer is needed.
Who owns the site?
You do. The code, the repository and the database are yours. We can host the site as well, and whether we do is agreed per project.
Send the range, a sample datasheet and the kind of enquiry you want more of, and we will scope it and quote a fixed price. Start here.
Building something?
JP Studio designs and builds websites, storefronts and product interfaces.