Industrial website: what it needs to receive quote requests

An industrial website receives good quote requests when every visitor finds their proof without having to call and the form asks for what your team needs to quote. That takes a page per product or capability, technical documentation on the website, languages with their own URL and a form that qualifies enquiries. Below you will find the page map, a form template with the reasoning behind each question and a table to decide which languages to open.

Your website is read by 4 profiles, and each looks for different proof

Before asking you for a quote, people with different questions reach your website. This table is our approach, not a statistic.

There is a fifth visitor who is not your client: the private individual who wants 20 m² of tiles. Send them to your distributor network: they do not take up your sales rep’s time and they do not leave empty-handed.

We are talking about the public website, the one that brings in new clients. A B2B portal for clients who already place repeat orders is a different project.

The page map: one per product or capability, not a PDF catalogue

Google indexes PDF files, so the problem with a PDF catalogue is not that it cannot be found. It is what happens next: whoever opens it does not see your menu or your form, and you do not know which product they were interested in.

The solution is a page per product or series, with the PDF as a download. If you manufacture to order, the unit is the capability: laser cutting, machining, injection moulding or refrigerated transport, each with its measurable limits.

Specifications go in text: that way Google reads them, an AI can cite them and the engineer can copy them. For AI Overviews, Google sets no requirements beyond those of standard SEO. We explain this in what GEO is.

The map is approved before the website design. And if your website already gets visits, do not change its addresses without a plan for redesigning without losing rankings.

Technical documentation is website content too, and sometimes the law requires it

Treat every data sheet as one more page. Our approach: a stable URL per document and per language, and no forms to download. If you have the data sheet in several languages, the hreflang HTTP header method also works for PDFs.

Construction products: the declaration can be on your website

If you manufacture construction products covered by a harmonised standard, the declaration of performance backs the CE marking. According to UNE’s ceramic tiles committee, tiles and their related products are covered by Regulation 305/2011 (2018 article).

Two regulations currently coexist. Regulation (EU) 2024/3110 has applied since 8 January 2026 (art. 96) and refers to a “declaration of performance and conformity”. It repeals Regulation 305/2011, except for one part that remains in force until 8 January 2040 (art. 94).

Which one applies to you depends on your product’s standard: confirm it with whoever advises you on CE marking.

Both allow you to publish the declaration on your website:

• Under the 2011 regulation, on the conditions set by the Commission (art. 7.3).
• Under the 2024 regulation, if you meet 6 conditions (art. 16.2). Among them: a format that cannot be modified, a downloadable copy, free and permanent access, and a link between the product and its declaration.
• Under both, in the language required by each Member State where you sell (art. 7.4 and art. 16.4).

On the website, that means a stable URL per reference, with no registration, in the languages of your markets.

Machinery: digital instructions from 20 January 2027

Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 on machinery applies from 20 January 2027, according to its corrigendum. It allows instructions to be provided in digital format (art. 10.7). The machine, its packaging or an accompanying document must indicate how to access them.

They must also be printable and downloadable, and remain online for the expected lifetime and for at least 10 years. If the user asks for them on paper at the time of purchase, they are provided free of charge within one month at most.

The EU declaration of conformity can be replaced by the internet address where it can be consulted (art. 10.8). If you manufacture machinery, prepare that library now, not in January.

Certifications: what can be checked is worth more than the seal

Whoever approves suppliers does not trust a logo. They want to know who issued the certificate, what it covers and until when it is valid.

CE marking is not a certificate or a quality seal

The European Union’s guide to CE marking makes it clear:

• It is only compulsory for products covered by EU rules that require it. If yours is not, it must not carry it.
• There is no central body that grants it. The manufacturer assesses conformity, sometimes with a notified body, and affixes it.
• If a notified body is involved, its 4-digit number goes next to the marking.
• The “voluntary certificates” offered by some organisations are no use for CE marking.

Cautious approach: show the marking on the page of each product that carries it, with its declaration linked. Not as a logo in the header of the whole website.

ISO and other certificates: issuer, scope and validity

For each certificate, 4 details: who issued it, which activities and sites it covers, until when it is valid and how to check it. ENAC, Spain’s national accreditation body, points out that its accreditations are recognised in more than 120 countries, provided the certificate carries its mark. Your buyer can check the body in ENAC’s search tool for accredited bodies.

On the website we built for Maestrat Global, a geotechnical laboratory that works for construction projects and engineering firms, the accreditations have their own page. That is where its entry in the General Register of the Technical Building Code (Registro General del Código Técnico de la Edificación) appears.

Your EU VAT number, verifiable in VIES

To supply goods to companies in other EU countries you need the EU VAT number (NIF-IVA): you get it by registering in the Register of Intra-Community Operators (Spanish Tax Agency). Any buyer can validate it in VIES, the European Commission’s service. Put it in the footer, together with the details required by the Information Society Services Law (LSSI, art. 10.1): company name, registered address, email, tax ID (NIF) and company registration details.

Template: the quote request form, question by question

A “name, email and message” form forces your sales rep to write back and ask the basics. One that qualifies enquiries asks a few closed questions, each with a reason.

The quantity ranges are an example that each company adapts: pallets if you make tiles, units if you make parts, trips if you do transport.

The International Chamber of Commerce’s Incoterms 2020 rules are 11 terms of 3 letters each. They set out the tasks, costs and risks of delivery. If you always quote the same way, remove question 8.

Do not ask for turnover, number of employees or a mandatory target price: they do not help you quote and they put people off sending the form. The GDPR requires data that is “adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary” (art. 5.1.c), and privacy information at the time it is collected (art. 13).

Each combination of answers leads to one of these 4 outcomes:

• It fits: a specific response time and the name of whoever will reply.
• There is a distributor in their area: you tell them which one and pass on the contact, if you agreed that with the distributor.
• It is a private individual: a distributor or retailer finder.
• It does not fit on quantity, timescale or requirements: an honest reply and, if you can, who to turn to.

Filtering like this does not cost you clients: it saves you conversations that were never going to end in an order. That is the job of conversion optimisation: every request arrives with what you need to answer it well first time.

Languages: few, complete and each with its own URL

In 2025, the Spanish ceramics industry exported €3,484 million of its €4,834 million turnover, to 186 countries (ASCER, provisional figures). If your company sells like that, the website’s language decides who can ask you for a quote. If you also work in Spanish and Valencian, we cover that in websites in Spanish and Valencian.

Google’s guide to multilingual sites comes down to 4 rules:

1. A different URL for each language, instead of switching language with cookies or according to the browser.
2. No redirecting by IP. Google puts it like this: “Don’t use IP analysis to adapt your content”. Its crawler mostly crawls from the United States and may not see the adapted versions.
3. Each page in a single language, text and menu. Google detects the language from the visible content, not from the lang attribute or the URL.
4. Visible links to the other versions, so visitors can switch whenever they want.

hreflang annotations tell Google which version to show each user. Each version lists all the others and itself: if two pages do not point to each other, Google ignores the tags. And x-default indicates the page for people who speak a language you do not offer.

<link
	rel="alternate"
	hreflang="es"
	href="https://www.ejemplo.com/es/porcelanico-60x120"
/>
<link
	rel="alternate"
	hreflang="en"
	href="https://www.ejemplo.com/en/porcelain-tile-60x120"
/>
<link
	rel="alternate"
	hreflang="fr"
	href="https://www.ejemplo.com/fr/carrelage-gres-cerame-60x120"
/>
<link
	rel="alternate"
	hreflang="x-default"
	href="https://www.ejemplo.com/en/porcelain-tile-60x120"
/>

3 more decisions:

• Subdirectories rather than country domains. According to Google, they are easy to set up and cheap to maintain. A country domain only targets that country.
• Translated URLs, not just translated text. That is what we did on the blog of Zoundroom, our own project: 6 languages published and the seventh under way.
• Language names, not flags. The W3C advises against using flags to identify languages: some countries have several languages and some languages are spoken in several countries.

Cautious approach: machine translation is a draft, not a final version. Google classes as scaled content abuse generating many pages with AI or other tools without adding value for users. Ten unreviewed languages look too much like that.

And an unmaintained language does more harm than good. Maestrat Global’s previous website had abandoned versions in other languages. When we migrated it, those addresses were set to report that they had been removed.

Decision table: which languages to open and how

Say a manufacturer in Castellón sells where the sector sells. In 2025, the top 5 destinations for Spanish ceramics were the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Israel (ASCER).

Our approach would be to start with English and French, which cover 3 of those 5 markets, and add Italian when there is someone to reply. Israel and Morocco, which came sixth, would be handled through each country’s distributor. Deriving languages from markets is a commercial decision, not a fact.

Structured data: Organization yes, Product only if you can complete it

Structured data is code, invisible to visitors, that explains to Google what each piece of information is. Google does not guarantee that it will be shown, even if it is done properly.

Organization, on the home page or the company page. It helps Google understand your organisation’s administrative details and tell it apart in search results. It has no required properties.

On the EU VAT number (vatID), Google says it builds trust because it can be looked up in public VAT registers. A minimal example:

{
	"@context": "https://schema.org",
	"@type": "Organization",
	"name": "[Trading name]",
	"legalName": "[Registered company name]",
	"url": "https://www.[domain].com/",
	"logo": "https://www.[domain].com/logo.png",
	"vatID": "ES[NIF]",
	"telephone": "+34 [phone number]",
	"address": {
		"@type": "PostalAddress",
		"streetAddress": "[Street and number]",
		"addressLocality": "[Town]",
		"postalCode": "[Postcode]",
		"addressCountry": "ES"
	},
	"sameAs": ["https://www.linkedin.com/company/[company]"]
}

Product, only if you can complete it. For product snippets, Google requires a review, an aggregate rating or an offer with a price. If you do not publish prices and have no reviews, do not expect a price or stars in the result.

Trade fairs and directories: the website is where they look you up afterwards

The 2026 edition of 360 by Cevisama took place from 28 September to 1 October at Feria Valencia. For the next trade fair, prepare 3 things:

• A page for the fair, in the languages of the visitors you expect, with what you are presenting.
• QR codes that lead to the product page in the visitor’s language, not to the home page.
• “Trade fair” as an answer to “How did you hear about us?”, with the name of each one.

Directories, too, are worth only as much as the requests they bring in. Our list of verified directories for industry includes Europages, Kompass and the Spanish Chamber of Commerce’s free directory of exporters. Question 10 of the form will tell you which one pays off.

What to measure: requests that fit, not visits

What matters is how many requests fit and how many end in an order, by product, country and channel. The general method is in how to measure your website’s enquiries.

Analytics with cookies needs the visitor’s consent (LSSI, art. 22.2), so Analytics does not see everyone. How to set up the banner is covered in legal notice, privacy and cookies. The reference figure is the one in your inbox or your CRM. To put a value on each order, use the customer value calculator.

What to do on Monday

1. Look up your main product in the version for your first market. If it has no page of its own with specifications in text, start there.
2. Replace the form with the template and decide which outcome each answer leads to.
3. Review the certifications page: issuer, scope, validity and a link to check it. Remove expired seals.
4. Check your languages: own URL, hreflang in both directions and no IP redirects. Finish or remove half-done versions.
5. If you manufacture construction products or machinery, prepare the library of declarations and instructions by reference and language.
6. Put your EU VAT number in the footer.
7. Run the free audit of your website to review technical SEO, speed and access for AI crawlers.

If you would rather have help, at NOR studio we start from this map, this template and this language table. We explain how in websites for industrial and ceramics companies.