A process engineer looking for a machining subcontractor does not read your mission statement - they check whether your machines can cut their part and whether anyone will answer a drawing. They have a model on the desk, a deadline handed down by their own customer, and a list of shops to call. So when a shop owner asks me what a website for a CNC machining company should look like, my answer is that it has to work like a capability sheet, not a photo album: state what sits on the floor and what that floor can do, then accept a drawing without three rounds of follow-up email.
The difference from an ordinary service website is concrete. In machining you are not selling a project or an implementation, you are selling the ability to make someone else’s part to someone else’s tolerance by someone else’s date. The reader does not want to be persuaded, they want to filter. A site that makes filtering easy lands on the shortlist. A site that forces a phone call just to establish the basics drops out by the time they reach the second shop on the list.
A website for a CNC machining company - the machine list does the selling
A carousel of photos of machining centres is not a machine list. A photo says the machine is new and clean. The engineer needs something else: whether their part fits at all, and whether it can be finished in a single setup. Which means the machine list belongs in a table, not in a slideshow.
One row per machine, the same columns throughout:
- Type and purpose - vertical or horizontal milling centre, CNC lathe, lathe with a Y axis and a bar feeder, five-axis work
- Number of axes and the control - this is the first field people filter on, and the control tells the engineer whether their programs travel
- Working envelope - axis travels for milling, maximum turning diameter and length; use your own figures, read off the machine
- Extras that change a quote - bar feeder, rotary table, sub-spindle, pallet changer, tool capacity
- Whether the machine runs a second shift - in practice, this is the answer to every question about lead time
A table like that is boring, which is exactly why it works. The reader knows within half a minute whether to call. If they cannot tell, they assume the worst case and call somewhere else. The same logic applies to a website for a manufacturing company generally, not just a CNC machine shop: the more input data you hand the reader, the fewer dead-end enquiries you get and the more of the right ones.
There is a side benefit. A machine list written out as plain text is also what search engines and AI assistants read. The names of machining operations, materials and controls are the exact phrases an engineer types into Google. I have written up the general rules for structuring a B2B site so that it produces enquiries rather than just existing in the article on a B2B website that generates leads.
What the engineer is really checking: materials, tolerances, inspection
The machine list answers “will it fit”. That leaves three questions which decide whether an enquiry is worth sending at all.
Materials. List the ones you cut every day, and the ones you turn down. Structural steel, stainless, tool steel, aluminium, brass, titanium, engineering plastics - each one means different tooling and different experience. The “we do not take this” list is as valuable as the other one, because it saves both sides a phone call. Say as well whether you buy the stock or the customer supplies it, because that changes the whole quote.
Tolerances and finishing. This is not about claiming “high precision”, which means nothing. It is about which tolerances you hold as a matter of routine, which ones are a matter of agreement, and which you will not take. Add what happens to surface finish, deburring, and heat or surface treatment - whether you arrange that with partner shops or the customer has to sort it out themselves. A subcontractor who takes a part “from bar stock to anodised and ready” is selling something different from one who hands back raw parts.
Inspection. Here it is enough to name what you measure with and what you issue. A coordinate measuring machine, a measuring arm, gauges, an inspection report per part, mill certificates for the material, a quality system if you are certified. For a customer in automotive or aerospace this is often the first question, ahead of price. Name standards the way your own paperwork names them, without copying someone else’s requirements.
An RFQ form that takes the drawing
A “name, email, message” form is wasted space in machining. The customer writes “I need a part quoted”, you reply asking for a drawing, they answer two days later, and by then someone else has quoted it. A proper RFQ form collects everything at once:
- Files - the model and the drawing; accept the formats your customers actually use, and say which ones so nobody has to guess. This is the single most important field on the site
- Quantity, and whether this is a one-off or repeating batches
- Material - a specific grade, or a note that they are waiting for your suggestion
- Critical tolerances - a free-text field; if the drawing carries them, a reference is enough
- What happens after machining - raw parts, or coated, heat treated, marked
- Date - when it is needed, and whether that date is fixed by an end customer
- Contact - phone, company and job title; an engineer and a buyer are two different conversations
Mark anything the customer may not know as optional. Nothing kills a form faster than demanding a material grade from a buyer who only has a drawing number from their design office.
Two things are worth handling outside the form itself. First, the attachment size limit. A package with a model and several drawings gets large, and a form that rejects a file without explaining why looks like a broken website. Second, confirmation. After sending an enquiry the customer should get an email listing what arrived and saying when they will hear back. If you have traffic but no enquiries, I work through the causes in order, the way I set them out in the list of reasons a company website converts badly.
An enquiry from a form like this does not have to land in an inbox between marketing offers. It can go straight into the sheet or system where you run your quotes, with the customer’s date as the deadline and the files to hand. At a few enquiries a day that is the difference between an orderly queue and hunting for a drawing in last week’s email.
Prototype, short run, repeat production - three different enquiries
A machine shop usually serves three kinds of work, and most websites treat them as one. Yet the reader after a single prototype part and the reader after a standing subcontractor for monthly batches are looking for completely different things.
For prototypes and one-offs what counts is how fast you reply and whether you take small orders at all. Plenty of shops do not, and it is better to say so plainly. If you do, say how quickly you quote and what size of job is worth a conversation.
For short runs what counts is setup, and whether you will cost the preparation honestly. It helps here to explain what you do with fixtures and programs between batches.
For repeat production the conversation changes entirely: capacity on a second shift, material stock, measurement stability, what happens when a part fails inspection, payment terms. This is the customer who will visit the shop before placing a first order.
The simplest layout that handles all three is three entry pages named in the customer’s language rather than yours: “quote a part from a drawing”, “short runs and setups”, “ongoing subcontracting”. All three lead to the same form, but open with a different first question and a different set of proof. That is the scope I design as part of my work on websites for businesses, and it is where we settle which of the three paths you actually want more of. I covered the neighbouring case - selling implementation projects rather than production capacity - in the article on a website for an industrial automation firm.
Drawing confidentiality, and what to say about it
In machining the drawing belongs to someone else, often under an agreement with an end customer. That has two consequences for the website.
First, when you show past work you do not show a customer’s parts without permission. The way round it is the same as in other industries - a description instead of a photograph. “Stainless housing, milled in a single setup, repeating batches for a food industry customer” gives nobody away and tells the reader what they came for. Photographs of your own test parts and your own shop floor are yours to use.
Second, a customer about to upload a drawing wants to know what happens to it. One sentence next to the form is enough: the files are used for quoting only, they go no further, and you will sign a confidentiality agreement if the customer needs one. That is housekeeping information rather than legal advice - draft the agreement itself with a lawyer and leave only the fact that this route exists on the site.
Cost and timeline
The scope described here - a machine list table you can extend yourself, a capability sheet with materials and inspection, three entry pages, an RFQ form with file upload and confirmation, and a template for past work - fits a fixed-price project with me, with a written quote after a conversation, billed in stages. Two things push the quote up: an English version if you quote for customers abroad, and wiring enquiries into the system where you run your quotes. What else moves the price, and which costs arrive on top of the build itself, I set out in the article on how much a website costs.
I put the delivery date in writing in the quote, but in this industry one thing sets it: access to data from the shop floor. The machine table and the capability sheet have to come from machine plates, inspection paperwork and your own knowledge, not mine. So I suggest the move that shortens it most: start with the machines you actually sell, rather than a complete inventory of everything standing in the building. The rest goes into the finished table row by row, without me, as you gather the figures.
Frequently asked questions
Should the website state actual tolerances and machine specifications? Yes, because they decide whether an enquiry reaches you or your competitor. Use your own figures, from the machines and from practice, not ones copied out of a manufacturer’s brochure. If you do not hold something routinely, say that it is a matter of agreement.
Is it worth writing about what you do not do? It is, and it is one of the most underrated sections on the site. Filtering out the enquiries you do not want is worth as much as attracting the ones you do, because every quote you do not have to prepare is a day of engineering time saved.
Will a website replace a salesperson in machining? No, but it will take the first stage off them. Instead of a conversation about whether a machine is suitable, the salesperson receives an enquiry with a file, a material and a date, and starts at the quote. That first stage is where shops lose the most time.
Should the site be in English as well? If you quote for customers abroad, or you subcontract for a Polish plant owned by a foreign group - yes, at least the machine list, materials, inspection and the form. Those four are what someone at head office compares between suppliers.
Need something like this on your side? I design and build websites for B2B companies - from scratch or as a rebuild of what already stands. Let’s talk about your project.