For businesses in the Chemicals industry, knowing how to design and develop a good website is essential for successful growth, awareness, engagement, and operations. Online business platforms have been getting more advanced for every organization, big or small, and the web is an especially powerful tool for Chemicals companies.
With so much competition in the market, prospects and clients will do more business with chemical brands that make great first impressions through their website designs.
Every component of a chemical company website, from the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) to the product or service listings, plays a big role in the site’s success or failure.
It is not just the job of the web designer to make the site look good. Everyone major stakeholder in the business has distinct needs that must be served by the website’s design and UX. Combine that with defined external audience needs, and designers can then create a comprehensive and user-friendly website that customers will love to visit.
For chemical companies, a great website is more than a great design. Ultimately, design and user experience must be combined through navigation, content that matters to your target audience and supports the marketing funnel, technical optimization for faster pages, and key messaging that aligns with the brand.
Here are some of the best websites in the Chemicals industry that example these UX and web design principles:
The Best Chemical Industry Websites
To get an understanding of what makes a chemical website great, let’s analyze some examples of the best websites for chemical companies, and examine the specific characteristics that make them great website designs.
Exxon Mobil | Great Messaging
Great messaging stands out on ExxonMobil’s corporate website. Headlines visible throughout the homepage help differentiate ExxonMobil as a brand focused on how it impacts the environment, actively innovating to make its own energy operations more sustainable and less harmful to ecosystems.
The messaging resonates with the site’s target audiences: businesses, customers, the general public, and environmental watchdogs. Visitors land on the homepage and instantly see climate-forward headlines in the top fold, such as:
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- “Lowering emissions across all sectors of transportation” and “Enabling a lower-carbon energy future” are both seen in the hero slider navigation bar.
- “ExxonMobil is committed to advancing innovative climate solutions” is the subheading under one of the main headlines.
- “Climate solutions” is the first option in the main navigation menu; “Sustainability” is also present in the menu.
Ease of navigation is another feature of ExxonMobil’s website that supports visiting web users. Throughout the site, messaging is clearly crafted and deployed within page content and even in the site map to help the user browse the site intuitively. Combined with a simple navigation menu, the pages and information are structured to help the visitor quickly access content on all key topics about the organization.
Mosaic Chemical | High-Quality Imagery
Eye-catching visuals are the first thing that stands out when visiting the Mosaic Company website. As a global leader in the crop nutrient industry, Mosaic ensures the aesthetics, colors, and interactive elements are engaging on every page.
The top fold of the homepage is impactful and layered in a way that leads the eye to the next important topic, from “Advanced Crop Nutrition That’s Proven to Perform” to “We Help the World Grow the Food it Needs.”
High quality imagery and faded background imagery within the main content of the website is used throughout to support storytelling about the organization. This leaves a lasting impression on the user by not distracting from the messaging, allowing text to stand out in the right places to attract the reader’s eyes and attention.
Fast loading times also elevate the user experience of Mosaic’s site, since many of the pages include designs with high resolution imagery that often leads to slower page speeds.
Dow | Smart Calls-to-Action
Strategic CTAs on pages visible throughout the site help to entice the visitor’s engagement. Every CTA is evenly spread out through the pages encouraging the user to click through for more information. Strategically placed CTAs allow for the user to “learn more” about the key selling points of “Air Products” as the global leader in the supply of liquefied natural gas process technology and equipment. These CTAs are positioned within the content in a way that doesn’t disrupt the viewing experience, and instead entices users to click through.
Communicating key selling points is clearly important based on the site’s content. Clear navigation helps in the process of providing information on essential industrial gases, related equipment, and applications expertise relative to industries like refining, chemicals, metals, electronics, manufacturing, and food and beverages.
Kao Collins | Content that Drives Leads
Great content is the main appealing factor of the Kao Collins website. This is demonstrated by the website’s microblog, known as The Ink Tank, which contains informative and comprehensive articles about the industrial printing industry. This content positions Kao Collins as thought leaders and industry experts, while also offering value to every visitor who lands on the site.
Extra interactive tools like the “InkAnswers” search engine for industrial inkjet printing solutions help the user choose the best ink to use for printing any substrate based on the desired print technology or ink performance needs.
The homepage design is intentionally minimalistic, focusing the visitor’s attention on impactful messaging and callouts designed to help them quickly navigate to the content they are seeking.
Dupont Chemical | Targeted Video Content
Concise messaging is the leading factor throughout the website. The great tag-lines and concise messaging are communicated well throughout the contents of pages.
Emotionally targeted video content is used to engage the audience and form a connection between the customer and the organization’s goals.
Great tag lines like “95% of today’s smart devices are enabled by DuPont’s materials” or “Let’s invent a better now. Right now” capture the attention and imagination of the audience.
Ecolab | Persuasive Visuals
What matters to the target audience is clearly established by Ecolab’s visual positioning as solution providers to varied industries, from restaurants to power plants and manufacturing facilities who use EcoLab’s hydro-engineering and technologies for consumer impact, financial savings, and sustainability goals across the globe.
Powerful messaging with tag lines like “Creating Value, Protecting Resources” and “Ecolab – Everywhere It Matters” and other self-descriptive videos establishes their global leadership at three million customer locations in more than 170 countries.
Exclusive branding throughout their subsidiary websites also helps to promote their water management capabilities under the brand name “Nalco Water.”
Chevron Phillips | Interactive Design Experience
Great Messaging on Chevron’s website takes the users on a journey to the value-adds of the Chevron Phillips brand–such as how they impact the environment in a positive way. Even though they are manufacturers of plastics, which are inherently bad for the environment, the message is “Our solutions are essential. Because we care, they’re designed to improve lives around the world”. Or “Products That Perform. People Who Care”. Sustainability is prominently placed near links for “Who We Are” and “What We Do”. That’s a clever way of designing navigation to support brand messaging that resonates well with the audience, especially when it comes to how Chevron Phillips products impact everyday life in ways that often go unnoticed by most.
Eye catching design and sharp imagery gives a real life feeling, especially the career page that attracts talent. The first imagery gives a real feel of working inside an Chevron Phillips lab and the next imagery gives a real feel of being at one of their plant sites.
Zeon Chemicals | Intuitive User Navigation
Concise and impactful messaging adds instant appeal to the website for Zeon Chemicals, especially as multinational optimization is important (The immediate messaging is the 60+ years of business, Innovation, and other non-elastomer products as well as upcoming webinars that will allow for direct engagement with their audience).
Clean navigation within details and product insights optimizes the UX of product pages by limiting the amount of options the user has to choose from, helping Zeon Chemicals eliminate the “paradox of choice.”
Data Sheets available right at the very beginning of the user journey through the website helps those audiences get the information they need right away, instead of searching for it.
Get the Best Web Design for Your Chemical Company
While these are some of the elements that create great chemical company websites, there is much more needed for websites to perform in search engines and generate more leads. Luckily, DBS has been building high performance websites for businesses in industries such as chemicals for over 21 years (and counting).
Contact us to discover how we can create an award-worthy chemical website that increases your organic search traffic and website leads to drive growth for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
The key elements of a compelling call-to-action are valuable incentives, sense of urgency, and an emotional or enthusiastic tone.
A great chemical website includes compelling CTAs, attractive and interactive design, assists in lead generation and overall business goals, and has high-quality, informative content.
Navigation is one of the core website pillars that will assist and lead your visitors through the site to find the information they need in the simplest and quickest way possible, with the ultimate business goal of converting them into qualified sales leads.
Creating a high quality website that includes relevant information and content that qualifies the user, paired with compelling CTAs that draw the user to conversion, will help your website generate leads for your sales team.
