Websites · 6 min read
Buyers drop you from the shortlist and never tell you why
The five facts your site must answer before a buyer ever picks up the phone.
The short answer
Most B2B buyers research suppliers online long before they make contact, checking capability, capacity, price range, accreditation and past work on your website and Google listing. If those five facts aren't visible, you're quietly dropped from the shortlist without ever knowing you were on it.
By Raja Wahab, Co-founder, Fixby Studios · Published · Updated · 6 min read
Why the rejection never shows up in your inbox
A buyer with a shortlist of six suppliers doesn't email the five they're dropping. They just close the tab and move to the next one. Your enquiry count looks steady, so you assume demand is flat, when actually your website is the problem nobody tells you about.
This matters more than it used to. A decade ago, a buyer with a vague question would simply phone round. Now the phone call is the last step, reserved for suppliers who already looked right on paper.
'Call us to discuss'
- — Reads as evasion
- — Buyer assumes the worst
- — Enquiry goes elsewhere
Published price range
- — Filters out poor-fit buyers
- — Speeds up serious enquiries
- — Buyer already knows what to expect
How B2B buyers research suppliers online in practice
Before anyone picks up the phone, a buyer will typically check your site, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and LinkedIn. They're scanning for five specific answers, usually in under two minutes, often on a phone between meetings.
| What they check | Where they expect to find it |
|---|---|
| Can you do the specific job, not just the general category | A dedicated service or product page, not the homepage |
| Can you handle their volume, and how fast | Capacity, lead time or MOQ stated on the page |
| Roughly what it costs | A price, a range, or a worked example |
| Are you accredited or insured to their standard | Certifications with dates, not just logos |
| Has someone like them used you before | Case studies or reviews naming the sector |
Miss two or three of those and a buyer doesn't flag it as a problem with your business. They simply assume the answer is unfavourable, or that you don't do that particular thing well enough to say so plainly.
Why 'call us to discuss' costs you the enquiry
It feels sensible to you: every job is different, so why publish a number that might not fit a given enquiry? To a buyer with four tabs open, it reads as evasion, or as a sign you're too small or too busy to have worked out a standard price.
Publishing ranges does the opposite of what people fear. It filters out the wrong enquiries, because buyers who can't afford your range self-select out, and it speeds up the right ones, because the serious buyer already knows roughly what to expect before they call.
“Buyers rule suppliers out silently — you never see a lost enquiry.”
What to fix first
- Add a price range or 'from' price to your main service pages.
- State lead times, MOQs or turnaround in plain numbers.
- List accreditations with certificate numbers and renewal dates.
- Add one case study per sector you actually want more work from.
- Check your Google Business Profile matches your site exactly.
None of this needs a full redesign. It's mostly editing existing pages so the five checks above are answered without a phone call, which is a few days' work rather than a new website.
Sources
Your questions
- How do B2B buyers research suppliers online before contacting them?
- They check your website, Google Business Profile, reviews and LinkedIn for capability, capacity, price range, accreditation and past work — usually in under two minutes, without ever contacting you.
- Should I publish prices if every job is different?
- Yes, as a range or 'from' price. It filters out poor-fit enquiries and keeps you on shortlists where competitors who stay vague get quietly dropped.
- What's the single biggest fix for a B2B website?
- Giving each real service or product its own page with capability, capacity, price range and proof, rather than one page trying to cover everything at once.
Raja Wahab is co-founder of Fixby Studios, a Huddersfield studio building websites, SEO, social media and business software for small, owner-managed businesses across West Yorkshire.
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