October 08, 2026
An importer in Dubai or Nairobi gives your website a minute or two. In that time they look for six things: the product in the size and finish they need, packing details and container loading, certificates they can download, the minimum order and the port you ship from, a language they can read, and a WhatsApp number that answers. If any one of those is missing they open the next tab, which is usually a competitor in the same industrial town as you.
We have built export websites for tile, stone and laminate businesses out of Morbi and Rajkot, including one in seven languages with a right to left Arabic edition and one rolled out across six countries. This is the list of what those buyers check, in the order they check it, and what each item means for the pages you need.
It is for a stranger in another country to decide, without a phone call, whether you are worth a phone call.
That reader is an importer, a distributor, a project buyer or a sourcing agent. They already know the product category and usually the exact specification. They are comparing you with three or four other suppliers, some of them in your own town, and they cannot visit the factory this week. So the site has to do what a factory visit would do: show the plant, show the product, show the paperwork, and make it obvious how to place an order.
A domestic business website can lean on a phone number and a local reputation. An export website cannot. The buyer will not phone an Indian number at 3 am their time, they have never heard of you, and they have no way to check your reputation except what the site shows them. Every claim on the site should therefore come with a document, a photograph or a number attached to it. "ISO certified" means nothing; the certificate as a PDF with a valid date means something.
The specification, the packing, and the container maths, all as text.
For each product: sizes in millimetres, thickness, finishes, weight per piece, the technical values your category is judged on, and the standards it is tested to. Then the packing: pieces per box, square metres or kilograms per box, boxes per pallet, pallets per 20 foot and 40 foot container, and the loaded weight. An importer decides on a container, not on a tile, so a product page that stops at the tile makes them do the sum themselves, and most will not.
On the tile exporter's site we built in seven languages, the product pages carry packing details and an e-catalogue, and a coverage calculator turns a buyer's area into boxes and containers. That calculator does the arithmetic the buyer would otherwise ask for by email, which shortens the first conversation by a day.
Keep all of this as text on the page rather than in a PDF or an image. Text is what an overseas search engine reads, what a buyer can copy into a comparison sheet, and what a translation tool can render if you have not translated the page yourself. A tile manufacturer in Morbi we work with earned 134 search impressions in 90 days for "wooden floor tiles india", which is how an overseas buyer phrases it, from product pages that name the country and the sizes in plain text.
Whatever your industry's buyers ask for by email today. Put all of it on one downloads page and stop answering the same email.
That usually means the quality management certificate, the product test reports against the standards your buyers' markets require, any country specific conformity marks, the company registration and import export code, the product catalogue, a packing list template and, where you have them, a sample commercial invoice format and your bank details on letterhead. Sort them by product series and by document type, name the files sensibly, and show the issue and expiry dates so a buyer can see they are current.
Two rules. Every certificate should be the real scan, not a badge, because a buyer's compliance team will ask for the file anyway. And nothing should be behind a login or a form. Gating the catalogue behind an email address costs you the buyers who will not fill it in, which are the serious ones with three other tabs open.
Minimum order quantity and port, yes, always. Price, as a range or a basis, wherever you can.
The MOQ is the first filter a buyer applies. If it is one container, say so. If you will do a mixed container across sizes, say that, because it is a real advantage over a competitor who will not. The port of loading (Mundra, Kandla, Pipavav, Nhava Sheva or wherever your goods actually leave from) belongs on the product page and the contact page, because the buyer needs it to get a freight quote before they can compare landed cost. Lead time from order to loading belongs next to it.
Price is harder, and most Indian exporters refuse to publish it. The honest middle ground is a price basis: FOB or CIF, by size and finish, as a range, with the factors that move it (quantity, finish, packing, season). A buyer who sees a range and the reasons for it will send an enquiry; a buyer who sees nothing assumes you are expensive or not serious. Our solar and tile clients' Search Console data shows the same thing: cost and price queries bring the most impressions of any query type, and the pages that answer them honestly hold the best positions.
If your buyers read in a language other than English, yes, and the Arabic edition is the one Indian exporters most often need.
English gets you through Europe, East Africa and much of Asia. It does not get you through the Gulf, Francophone Africa, Latin America or Russia, where a buyer who lands on an English page bounces even if they could read it, because the competitor's page is in their language. On the tile exporter's site we built, seven languages run from one codebase, including a fully mirrored right to left Arabic edition where the navigation, the tables and the calculator all flip. A second tile client's site was rolled out across six countries from the same build, each edition carrying the country in its content and its search setup.
Translation costs time as much as money. Someone has to translate the product tables, the packing details, the certificates' descriptions and the enquiry form, and someone who speaks the language has to check it. Article 14 covers how the build works and what it involves. The short version: decide the languages before design starts, because retrofitting a right to left edition onto a finished site is a rebuild.
Short form, WhatsApp button, and a reply during the buyer's working day rather than yours.
The enquiry form on every product page should ask for the product (filled in automatically), the quantity, the country and a WhatsApp number or email. Nothing else. Next to it, a WhatsApp button that opens with the product name already typed. Buyers in the Gulf and Africa live on WhatsApp, and a manufacturer whose export desk answers it during the buyer's business hours gets the order over the one that replies to email two days later.
Behind the form, the enquiry should land in a system, not a personal inbox: a shared sheet, a CRM or the WhatsApp Business API routed to the export team. We connect forms to Google Sheets, Zoho or HubSpot depending on what the company already uses. The contact page should also carry the port, the time zone you work in, the languages the export desk speaks, and a real photograph of the people who answer. An importer wants to know who they will be talking to.
Through search, marketplaces, trade fairs and referrals, and the website is where all four end up.
Search first. Overseas buyers type the product, the size, and often "india" or the industrial town: "wooden floor tiles india", "tiles manufacturers in morbi", which is searched about 1,600 times a month from India alone and more from abroad. A product page that names the size, the country and the town in plain text can earn those queries. A country edition, with its own language and its search settings pointed at that country, can earn them in that country's Google. That is how the six country rollout for the tile client works: the same product content, presented for each market.
Marketplaces and trade fairs bring the buyer to the website to check you are real. A buyer who found you on a B2B marketplace listing will open your site before replying, and the six items in this article are what they check. The same goes for a trade fair contact scanning your card in a hotel room that evening.
A Google Business Profile for the factory, with the address, the photos and the hours, helps here more than exporters expect, because a buyer who searches your company name sees the factory on the map and the reviews before they see the site.
In India today a 5 to 10 page business website costs roughly 10,000 to 40,000 rupees from a freelancer, roughly 40,000 to 1,50,000 from a small studio, and roughly 1,50,000 to 5,00,000 and above from an agency that also does the strategy and writes the content. An export site tends to sit in the upper part of a band, for three reasons that are worth understanding before you compare quotes.
First, it is bigger. A product page per series with packing and container tables, a downloads page, quality and capacity pages, a contact page built for time zones, and a calculator is 20 to 30 pages before any translation. Second, languages multiply the content, and a right to left edition changes the design as well as the words. Third, the content is specialised. Specification tables, packing data and certificate descriptions have to be written and checked by someone who knows the trade, and photography of the plant and the loading bay is a separate job most quotes leave out.
What the fee should cover: a written brief, design in Figma, the build, responsive images, speed tests on a throttled connection (your buyer in Nairobi is not on fibre), training and documentation at handover, and ownership of the code, design files, hosting and every credential in your own name. A focused site is 2 to 4 weeks of design and a similar stretch of development; a multilingual export site takes longer and is best planned in stages, with the main language first.
Yes, with real photographs of the plant, the packing line and the loading bay, and the address on a map. A buyer who cannot visit this week is looking for proof that the factory exists and ships. Stock photographs do the opposite.
Usually one site with clear routes for each. Dealers and domestic buyers get their own page and form; importers get the packing, container, port and certificate content. A separate export site only makes sense when the products or the brand differ by market.
It brings enquiries, but the buyer opens your website before replying, and a listing cannot hold your certificates, your packing tables or your languages. The site is where the marketplace enquiry is won or lost.
The one your best current buyers read. For most tile, stone and laminate exporters out of Gujarat that is Arabic for the Gulf, and it is the edition that changes the design most, so plan it before design starts.
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