B2B website design that does the selling

A consumer site usually has one reader making one decision quickly. A B2B site has several readers, making one decision slowly, mostly while you are not in the room — and at least one of them is looking for a reason to say no.

Almost every design decision that distinguishes good B2B websites follows from that.

Design for four readers, not one

By the time a B2B purchase is decided, your site has usually been read by a handful of people with different jobs. They do not want the same things, and a site that speaks only to the first one loses in the room where the decision is actually made.

The researcher

Often junior, building a shortlist of three to five. Skims fast, in a tab among many. Needs to categorise you correctly in about ten seconds or you are not on the list. This reader is why the top of your homepage has to say plainly what you do.

The champion

The person who wants this solved. Reads properly. Needs the details, and needs material they can forward — because they are about to argue your case internally without you. This reader is why a page worth sending matters more than a page worth reading.

The sceptic

Technical, financial or legal. Looking for the flaw. Needs specifics, constraints and honesty — vagueness reads as evasion. This reader is why "we're not right for you if…" is a conversion asset.

The signer

Skims the champion's summary and the price. Needs to see that you are a credible organisation and a defensible choice. This reader is why proof and clarity about cost matter more than cleverness.

A practical exercise: take your homepage and ask which of the four it is written for. Most B2B homepages are written for the signer's ego and the founder's taste, and read by the researcher.

Say what you do, immediately, in their words

The most common and most expensive fault in B2B web design is an opening statement that could belong to any of forty companies. "Transforming the way teams work." "Intelligent solutions for modern business." These are not claims; they are the absence of one.

The test is simple and brutal: could a competitor put their logo on your homepage headline and leave it unchanged? If so, it is saying nothing.

What works is specific and slightly narrower than feels comfortable: what you do, who for, and what is different about how you do it. Naming the audience is not a limitation — it is the strongest signal of relevance a visitor can get, and the people you exclude were not going to buy anyway.

A homepage order that works

Not a template — an argument. Each section earns the next scroll by answering the question the previous one raised.

1. What you do, for whom. Plain language, one sentence, plus a primary action. No preamble.
2. Proof you exist and are trusted. Client names, sectors served, or a number you can stand behind. Early, because everything after this is read differently once credibility is established.
3. The problem, as your buyer would describe it. If they recognise their own situation here, they keep reading. This is the section most sites skip and most buyers need.
4. How you solve it. Two or three things you actually do, in concrete terms. Not nine capabilities in a grid of icons.
5. Evidence. One case study told properly beats six logos. Situation, decision, outcome — and an outcome you can defend.
6. What working with you is like. Process, timeline, what you need from them. This defuses the main unspoken objection, which is not price but risk.
7. Money. A range, a starting figure, or an honest explanation of what drives cost. More on this below.
8. Objections, answered. The three things people actually hesitate over, in their real phrasing.
9. One clear next step, with the friction stated. "A 30-minute call, no deck" converts better than "Get started".

The order matters more than the visual treatment. A plainly designed site in this order outperforms a beautiful site that opens with a slogan and puts the evidence on page four.

Publish something about price

This is the highest-leverage change most B2B sites can make, and the most resisted.

The argument against is that price depends on scope, and that a number without context invites the wrong comparison. Both true. The argument for is stronger: buyers are building a shortlist, and a site with no price signal at all is the hardest one to put on it. You are not withholding information from a competitor — they know your rates. You are withholding it from your buyer.

You do not have to publish a price list. Any of these does the job:

• A starting figure. "Projects start at $8,000." One sentence, and it qualifies out everyone who was never going to buy.
• A range with the variables named. "Most engagements are $10,000–$30,000, depending on how many templates and whether we write the copy."
• Typical examples. Three real project shapes with what each cost and what it included.
• An honest explanation of what moves the number, even without a figure. Less good, still better than silence.

The secondary benefit is that sales conversations start from a different place: instead of establishing whether the buyer can afford you, you are discussing whether the scope is right. That is a better conversation for both of you.

How we do it — We publish ours, including what is excluded, because a price behind a form wastes the buyer's time and ours.

Case studies: the format that persuades

Most B2B case studies are written as compliments to the supplier. The ones that persuade are written as evidence for a decision, and they share a structure.

The situation, specifically

Not "the client wanted to modernise". What was actually happening — who was struggling, what was breaking, what deadline existed. The reader is matching their own situation against yours.

The constraint

What made it hard: a deadline, a legacy system, a stakeholder who disagreed, a budget. Constraints make a story credible. A project with no obstacles reads as fiction.

The decision, and the alternative

What you chose to do, and what you chose not to. This is the only part that demonstrates judgement, which is what the buyer is actually shopping for. Features demonstrate capability; decisions demonstrate judgement.

The outcome, honestly

Numbers when you have them and can defend them. When you do not, say what changed in terms the client would recognise. A vague but true outcome is better than an invented precise one, and buyers can tell the difference more often than suppliers assume.

What you would do differently

Rare, and disproportionately convincing. It signals that you assess your own work.

If a client will not let you name them, you can still publish the case study: sector, situation, constraint, decision, outcome, no name. Anonymous and specific persuades. Named and vague does not.

The pages B2B sites keep missing

• A real process page. What happens in week one, week three, at launch. This addresses risk, which is the actual objection behind most stalled deals.
• A "who we are not right for" section. Counter-intuitive and effective: it reads as confidence, and it saves you the calls you did not want.
• A page per service, written for someone searching for that service, rather than one page listing everything you do. This is both a conversion and a search problem.
• An about page about the work rather than the founding story. Buyers want to know who will do it and how they think.
• A page the champion can send that summarises everything in one place. Frequently the highest-value page on a B2B site and almost never deliberately made.

Mistakes that quietly cost enquiries

A carousel of value propositions

Nobody waits for slide three. If three things matter, put all three on the page.

Nine services in a grid of icons

Signals a generalist. Buyers hire specialists for the thing they need. Lead with the two you want more of.

Stock photography of people in meetings

It is instantly recognisable as decoration and it makes every other claim slightly less believable. Real photography, product screenshots, or honest typography and space — all better.

A contact form with eleven fields

Every field is a reason to leave. Name, email, and one open question is usually enough; you can ask the rest in the reply.

Gating everything

A gate is a price, and it should buy something. Gate the thing that is genuinely valuable; leave the case studies open.

"Learn more" as the only call to action

It asks for a click, not a decision. Say what happens next: see the pricing, read the process, book a 30-minute call.

Ignoring the phone

Much B2B research happens on a phone between meetings. If your case studies are unreadable on a small screen, your champion cannot use them.

A homepage that never says the price, the process, or the people

These are the three things a buying committee needs. A site can be beautiful and still answer none of them.

The things that are not design but decide the outcome

Three prerequisites. If any is missing, no amount of design work compensates.

1. Speed. B2B buyers read on hotel wifi and phones on trains. Google's thresholds — largest contentful paint under 2.5 seconds, interaction to next paint under 200 milliseconds, layout shift under 0.1 — are a reasonable floor, not an aspiration. A slow site loses readers before it can persuade them.
2. Accessibility. Keyboard navigation, real contrast, proper headings, labelled forms. It is the right thing to do, it is increasingly a procurement requirement in enterprise and public sector, and it makes the site better for everyone.
3. Being findable for the thing you sell. One page per service, written in the buyer's vocabulary, with internal links that make the relationship between them obvious. A beautifully designed site that exists on no search result is a brochure with a URL.

Technical SEO — Crawlability, structured data and internal linking — the part that decides whether the site is found at all.

How to tell if your current site is the problem

Four questions, answerable this afternoon:

1. Show your homepage to someone outside your industry for ten seconds, then ask them what you do and who for. If they cannot answer, your researcher cannot either.
2. Open your three best case studies on your phone. Would you send them to a prospect as they are?
3. Look at where enquiries actually come from. If it is entirely referral, the site is not doing sales work — it is doing reassurance. That may be fine, but know which you are buying when you redesign.
4. Count the clicks from your homepage to a price signal. If the answer is "there isn't one", that is the cheapest fix on this page.

If the answers are bad, the good news is that most of the fix is structural and much of it is writing. That is a cheaper problem than it feels like.