What a buyer looks for on your website first, in order

6 days ago
3 min read

Introduction

Website advice is mostly about design, and buyers are mostly not looking at design. They arrive with a small set of questions, scan for the answers, and leave when they have them or when they conclude the answers are not there. The questions are consistent across almost every kind of business, and they are asked in a predictable order.

Most sites are organised around the business — services, about us, our approach, case studies, contact — which is a reasonable filing structure and a poor answer to a scan. A page organised around the buyer's questions, in the order they ask them, converts better than one that is more attractive and organised around anything else.

1. What a buyer looks for on your website first is whether you do their thing

Question one, within seconds.

Not what you do in general. Whether you do the specific thing they need. This is a matching exercise and it is either satisfied immediately or the visit ends. A list of eleven services answers it worse than one sentence naming the three things you actually want to be called about.

2. Whether you cover their area or situation

Question two.

Location, property type, sector, size. This is a disqualification check, and an unanswered question is resolved against you because enquiring to find out is more effort than trying somebody else. Put the answer in text rather than only on a map, because a map requires interpretation.

3. Roughly what it costs

Question three, whether or not you answer it.

They are estimating from every available signal. A range, examples with figures, or an explanation of what drives the price all prevent an elimination based on an invented number. Even a sentence explaining why you cannot quote without seeing the job is better than silence.

4. Whether other people were satisfied

Question four.

Reviews, ratings, named clients, examples. Third-party evidence is weighted more heavily than anything you say about yourself, and its absence is a strong negative rather than a neutral. Recent evidence counts for considerably more than a large volume of old evidence.

5. Whether you seem competent at their specific job

Question five.

Photographs of that kind of work, a description of how you approach it, evidence you have done it before. General assertions of quality do not answer this.

6. How to contact you and what happens next

Question six.

A visible phone number, a short form, and what you will do when they get in touch. Buyers who have decided to contact you still leave if this takes navigation.

7. Who they would be dealing with

Frequently underestimated.

For a service where somebody enters a home or works closely with a team, knowing who they are matters. A real photograph and a name outperform a stock image substantially.

8. Put the answers above the fold and repeat them

The structural advice.

Not on separate pages reachable through a menu. The first screen of your main page should answer questions one, two and three, because a large share of visitors will not scroll or navigate.

9. Watch what they actually do

The check.

Which pages they visit, in what order, where they leave. If most visitors never reach the page that answers a key question, that page is not the answer, and the answer needs moving.

Be careful about the assumption that visitors read. They scan for specific things, in a hurry, frequently on a phone. Text that requires reading to extract the answer is functionally the same as no answer.

Conclusion

Organise the page around the buyer's questions in the order they ask them.

Answer whether you do their specific thing first, then whether you cover their area or situation, then give a price signal because they are estimating regardless, provide third-party evidence that others were satisfied, show competence at their particular job rather than in general, make contact and next steps visible without navigation, say who they will be dealing with, put the first three answers on the first screen, and check where visitors actually go.