The benchmark

    How UK manufacturers score on their own front door

    One hundred UK made-to-order manufacturers in ten sectors, each scored on six things any customer can check on its website in two minutes. Nothing came from a survey, the firms themselves or a data broker.

    100
    companies, each checked by hand
    4
    median Front Door Score out of 10
    63%
    score 3 or 4
    23%
    score 7 or better

    Most firms score 3 or 4 out of 10

    I expected a spread. There is not one. 63 of the 100 firms score 3 or 4 out of 10. A few stand well clear of the rest.

    The gap between an ordinary firm and a good one comes down to four or five cheap, specific things anyone can check. Almost nobody has done them.

    Every score

    Front Door Score out of 10, higher is better. Each bar shows how many companies got that score.

    01
    13
    21
    336
    427
    52
    67
    720
    82
    91
    100

    By trade

    Treat these as indicative only. Each trade here is nine or ten firms. My rule is that a sector median needs at least twenty. The overall figure above, from 100 firms, is the one to rely on.

    The best and worst trades are three points apart, less than the spread inside almost every trade. Where a firm sits depends far more on the firm than on its industry, so nobody can say "that is just how our trade works".

    The six things we checked

    Each is a fact on a public page. Any company can re-check its own in about two minutes.

    1. Can the enquiry form carry a drawing? The strongest signal, and the cheapest to fix
    2. How many people with an estimating or commercial role are named on the site?
    3. Is the firm currently advertising for an estimator, QS or sales engineer? The firm has spotted the problem and budgeted for it
    4. Is a quote turnaround published anywhere? You do not publish a number you cannot hit
    5. Does the enquiry form ask for more than five things?
    6. Is there published evidence of high volume or long lead times? Most have the demand. Turning it into orders is the hard part

    Limits of this benchmark

    • An independent audit found eleven errors in the first hundred rows. All eleven were corrected, and each correction is on record. An 11% first-pass error rate is normal for careful checking by hand. Anyone who claims zero has not measured it
    • Ten per sector is too few to call a sector median, which is why the table above says "indicative"
    • It is a sample. The hundred were chosen to cover ten made-to-order trades, not drawn at random from Companies House
    • Websites change. Every observation is dated August 2026 and some will already be out of date
    • It only measures the front door. A firm can score badly here and still be excellent. It cannot show how long an enquiry sits before someone owns it

    No company is named with its score on this page. A wrong observation about a named firm could harm its reputation. Any company can ask for its own score, with the evidence and the date.

    See how much of your work never gets a price

    The Quoting Starter Kit takes five numbers from a typical month and emails you a report within minutes. It shows the work you never price, your turnaround against your own target and the three fixes to make first. Free.

    Get the Quoting Starter Kit

    Or compare your process with this study in five minutes using the Faster Quotes Score.

    Then see where your own enquiries slow down

    Five of your own numbers in, a short report by email: the work that never gets priced, your turnaround against your target, three fixes and an acknowledgement template.

    Get the free Quoting Starter Kit