Contract Manufacturers
Make Your Website Work for the Buyer, and for the AI That's Comparing You.
We update or rebuild contract manufacturer websites, for a fixed price, so they say what a buyer and an AI tool need to see. Buyers hand AI a shortlist and ask which shop to call. AI answers from what your site states: materials, tolerances, sizes, lead times, the work you're good at. Most sites don't state them.
Free. If your site is doing its job, we'll tell you that.
The website project, at a glance
The plant tour
If I Walked Your Floor Tomorrow, What Would You Show Me?
You'd introduce me to people who've been with you twenty years. You'd walk me through engineering and tell me about a hard job your team figured out. On the floor you'd show me the equipment, but you wouldn't stop there. You'd tell me what you do with it: the materials, the tolerances you hold, the turnaround, the jobs other shops turn down.
By the end of the tour, I'd know why to send you the work.
Now look at your website. Does a buyer who's never set foot in your building come away with any of that? For most of the shops we look at, the answer is no. There's an equipment list, a capabilities page and an About Us. It's a brochure.
A brochure talks about you. A website built for the buyer answers their question. That's the difference, and it's the same difference whether the visitor is an engineer, Google, or an AI tool deciding who to recommend.
Why it matters more now
They Look You Up Before They Call. Now AI Does It for Them.
of technical buyers use supplier websites when they research a purchase.
GlobalSpec, 2026 State of Marketing to Engineersof the technical buyer's journey happens online, before they contact anyone.
GlobalSpec, 2026 State of Marketing to EngineersThat's true even when someone refers you: the referral gets you looked up, and what they find decides whether they call. And now AI does the looking. It does two jobs for a buyer.
Job 1
Find suppliers
An engineer describes the part and asks who can make it. AI names a few companies.
Job 2
Compare the shortlist
The engineer hands AI the shortlist and asks which one to call first. You never see either conversation. Your website is the only thing in the room.
Adjectives don't survive that comparison. "Tight tolerances" and "a wide range of materials" count as nothing. A buyer's request names an alloy, a tolerance, a quantity. AI matches numbers to numbers.
What a buyer-ready site states
Eight Things a Buyer Needs to See
These are the eight things we check a contract manufacturer's site for. They're also what your audit scores. You can check your own site against the list right now.
Who you serve and what you make, in the first few seconds
A stranger landing on your homepage should know at a glance whether they're in the right place and what to do next. A mission statement doesn't do that.
The buyer's problem, not your history
Most sites open with the company: founded in 1987, family owned, committed to quality. A buyer isn't reading to learn about you. They're reading to find out whether you can solve what they're dealing with: a part their current supplier can't hold tolerance on, a program that needs a second source, a print nobody local will quote. A buyer-ready site speaks to that first. The company's story comes later.
What you can do, in numbers
Materials, tolerances, sizes, lot sizes and typical lead times, plus the work you don't take. An equipment list tells a buyer what you own. This tells them what you can do with it. It's also the page AI reads when it compares you to someone else.
Proof
Jobs you'd point to: the problem, what you did, how it came out, with photos of your own parts. Certifications a buyer can open. The industries you serve. If it only lives in a directory or on Google, your site doesn't get credit for it.
The people
Names, faces and years in the trade. A company with no people on its site reads as anonymous, to a buyer and to AI.
An easy way to ask
A quote request reachable from any page, a way to attach a drawing or a CAD file, and a line on who answers and how fast.
Answers to the questions your estimators hear every week
Minimums, materials you'll work with, finishing, turnaround, what a complete RFQ needs. Each one of those is a page. Buyers search for them, and so does AI.
A site that works
Loads fast, works on a phone, and has page titles and descriptions that say what you make and where. Search and AI tools use these to figure out who you are.
Update or rebuild
An Update or a Rebuild, Depending on What Your Site Needs
Usually the problem isn't how the site is built. It's what the pages say, and more often what they don't. Most sites we look at aren't wrong so much as silent: the materials, tolerances and lead times a buyer needs are simply missing. When the site you have is worth keeping, we update it: the message, the pages that matter, the proof. When it isn't, we rebuild it, because fixing it would cost more than replacing it.
We look at your site first and tell you which, before we quote.
Signs a site probably isn't worth keeping
- Nobody supports the platform anymore, or you can't log into it
- It doesn't work on a phone
- Your capabilities live in a PDF or a photo
- Adding a page takes a developer
- It has fewer than five real pages
- It's technically broken underneath: broken links, pages that load slowly, titles and descriptions missing or wrong
We know what a shop's marketing budget looks like. We're not going to tell you that you need a rebuild when an update will do, and if your site is already doing its job, we'll say that too.
What it costs
One Fixed Price, Set Before We Start
Depending on what your site needs. At the low end we update the site you have. At the top end we rebuild it.
What moves the number
- How many capability pages you need
- How many case studies we build
- Whether it's an update or a rebuild
Every project includes
- A kickoff interview with your owner, sales and estimating people
- All copy written for you and approved by you before it goes live
- The build, on your site
- A re-run of the AI comparison at 90 days, so you can see whether the answer changed
Not included
- Photography and video (we'll tell you what to shoot)
- Hosting, domains and platform licenses
How it works
Four Steps, Six Weeks to Three Months
Step 1
We look at your site
The audit tells us what's missing. We tell you update or rebuild, and give you a price.
Step 2
We interview your people
One hour to get what they know out of their heads.
Step 3
We write. You approve.
Nothing goes live without your sign-off.
Step 4
We build it, and show you how to keep adding
The questions your people answer every week are the pages buyers and AI are looking for. We set up the structure and show you how to add one a month yourself.
An update usually runs about six weeks. A rebuild with several capability pages and case studies runs closer to three months. The biggest variable is how quickly your people can turn around the interview and the copy reviews.
Who you're working with
We Came From Your Side of the Desk
Bob Engelhart ran a manufacturing company for 23 years before starting Cobalt. He runs the interview and sets the plan for every project: which pages, which specifics, what the buyer needs to see. A team that works only on manufacturing sites does the writing and the build. The update lives or dies on getting the specifics right, the material, the tolerance, the quantity, and those are the things a generic web agency gets wrong.
Start With the Audit
We'll search the way your buyers search, run the AI comparison against your competitors, and send you a short report: where you win, where you don't, and the three gaps that cost you the most.
Bob Engelhart · bob@cobaltsalesgroup.com · 612-361-6725