A Page Showing How Your Product Is Made

Finished products and a price list

A furniture maker builds every table in its own shop. A small brewery brews every batch on site. A sign shop cuts, paints and gilds every sign by hand.

Their websites show finished products on white backgrounds, a price list and a contact form. Nothing on them shows the workshop at all.

A buyer comparing a solid wood table with an imported one at a much lower price sees two photographs and two numbers. Without the work in view, the higher number looks unexplained.

What a buyer cannot see

The difference lives in things a product photograph does not show: the timber chosen board by board, the joints cut rather than screwed, the finish rubbed in by hand over days.

In the shop, a customer sees that at a glance. Online, the finished table looks much like any other, and the price has to justify itself without help.

A page that shows the making gives the price its reason. The buyer may still choose the cheaper table, but no longer because the more expensive one looked overpriced.

What a making page shows

A good making page walks through the work in the order it happens:

• The materials, what they are, where they come from and why they were chosen.
• Each stage of the work, in order, with what it does for the finished product.
• The workshop and its tools, shown as they really are.
• The people, with their names, roles and years at the bench.
• The checks each piece passes before it leaves.
• The time it takes, in honest hours or days.

The last two matter most to a buyer weighing the price. Time and care are exactly what an imported product cannot claim.

Real photographs, not stock

Use photographs of the actual workshop, sawdust and all. A buyer can tell a stock photograph of a craftsman from the person who will build their table.

A professional photographer who spends half a day in the shop, following one piece from raw material to finished product, will produce more usable pictures than a year of phone snapshots.

Caption each one with what is happening and why. Ask staff before showing their faces, and let them see the pictures first.

A worked example

A telescope shop in a small Interior city sells imported telescopes and accessories, and also builds its own reflecting telescopes in a workshop behind the showroom.

Its own telescopes cost several times as much as imported ones of the same size. The website showed them in a row with the imported models, each with a photograph and a price.

The owner explained the difference to every caller: mirrors ground and polished by hand, tested and corrected over many sessions, wooden tubes and mounts built to order.

The shop added a page following one telescope from a disc of glass to a first night under the sky, photographed over three weeks, with the two people who build them named.

Each of the shop's own telescopes now links to that page. Callers arrive having seen the work, and the conversation starts with which size suits them rather than why the price is so high.

Words no reseller has

Resellers of imported goods often share the same manufacturer descriptions, so search engines find the same text on many sites and have little reason to prefer any of them.

A making page is entirely your own: your materials, your methods, your town, described in words nobody else has published.

It also matches the searches of people who care how things are made, who look for hand-built, locally made or made to order rather than a model number.

Written in the maker's words

The best source for the text is the maker. Ask them to describe each step as they would to a customer standing in the shop, and write it down close to their words.

Explain trade terms the first time they appear, and say what each step does for the buyer: a joint that will not loosen, a mirror that shows fine detail on a planet.

Leave out superlatives. A plain description of a careful process persuades better than claims about quality, which every seller makes.

Linking it to the products

Link every product the shop makes to the making page, and link back from each stage of the making page to the products it describes.

On each product page, add one sentence about how that piece is made, with the link beside it. A buyer looking at the price is the buyer who needs the explanation.

Mention the page in quotes and emails too. A link sent with a quote answers the price question before anyone raises it.

Keeping it honest

Show only what the shop really does. If some parts are bought in, such as hardware, glass blanks or cans, say so plainly; buyers respect the distinction.

Keep the page current. A workshop that has moved, changed its methods or lost a maker should not still be showing the old bench and the old faces.

The page should survive a customer's visit to the shop. If it would not, it says more than the shop can stand behind.

The counter-case

Some products are bought on price and specification alone, and buyers do not care how they are made. A making page adds little to a commodity.

Some processes are also trade secrets, or too dull or too messy to show. A business can still show the materials, the people and the checks without revealing the method.

But any business whose price depends on work the buyer cannot see should show that work. Otherwise the website argues on price alone, the ground that suits imported goods best.

Building the making page

1. List the stages of the work in order.
2. Ask the maker to describe each one aloud.
3. Book a photographer to follow one piece through.
4. Name the people who do the work.
5. Say what is bought in and what is made.
6. Link each product to the making page.
7. Send the page with quotes and price enquiries.

Step three carries the page. Photographs of one real piece taking shape show the work more convincingly than any paragraph about it.

Recipes built around what a food shop sells, photographed in its own kitchen, do a similar job, as recipes that sell the ingredients shows.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.