What B2B software buyers need from your website before they talk to sales

What do B2B buyers want from a website before they call sales?

Enough to do most of the buying without a salesperson. In 6sense's 2025 survey of nearly 4,000 buyers, 94% had ranked their shortlist before they engaged a seller, and first contact came about 61% of the way through the purchase.

B2B buyers also start that contact themselves: in the same survey, 79% of engagements were buyer-initiated. The shortlist they start with usually wins, too. The vendor buyers chose was on their first-day shortlist 95% of the time, and buyers evaluated 5.1 vendors on average.

Gartner's research on the B2B buying process points the same way. In a survey of 646 B2B buyers, run in August and September 2025 and published on March 9, 2026, 67% said they prefer a rep-free experience. In a release of May 20, 2026, Gartner reported that 70% of the 645 buyers it surveyed preferred a completely digital, self-service buying experience.

For your website, that means it does most of the early selling before your sales team is involved. A buyer who can't answer a basic question on it may move to the next vendor on the list instead of booking a call.

Where do buyers look before they reach your website?

Increasingly in AI chatbots and on review sites. In G2's 2026 report, 37% of software buyers named AI chatbots a top source shaping their shortlist, just behind review sites at 38%.

Estimates of AI use depend on the question asked. Gartner found that 45% of buyers used AI during a recent purchase, while Forrester and 6sense each report that 94% of buyers use AI or large language models while buying. TrustRadius found that 72% of buyers had seen Google's AI Overviews, and 90% of those clicked through to a cited source.

B2B buyers don't take AI answers at face value. Forrester notes that buyers check AI output against trusted sources such as peers, product experts, and industry analysts. In Gartner's May 2026 release, 69% preferred to validate AI-generated insights with a sales rep. Asked where they were more likely to meet misleading information, 51% pointed to generative AI and 49% to a sales rep.

Your website is where both checks land: an AI assistant or a search engine quotes it, and the buyer verifies it. The facts on it should be specific, current, and the same on every page.

What should your pricing page tell buyers?

Enough to judge fit and budget before a call. In TrustRadius's 2025 survey of 2,058 technology buyers, more transparent pricing was the change buyers most wanted from vendors, named by 49%.

Pricing models are shifting, which makes clear explanations more useful. G2's 2026 report found that the share of buyers who prefer outcome-based pricing rose from 11% to 23% since 2025, and half had been offered a variable-cost option instead of a seat license or subscription. Finance is closer to the decision as well: it was involved in 46% of software decisions, up from 31% a year earlier.

A pricing page that helps the whole buying team shows:

• prices or a starting price, or, if you can't publish one, the factors that set it;
• what each plan includes and where the limits are;
• how usage-based charges are measured and billed;
• the contract terms finance will ask about, such as billing cycle and minimum term.

The B2B SaaS website pages guide covers what the pricing page and the other core page types should hold.

What do security and IT reviewers need to find?

Answers that let them start their review before anyone books a call. In G2's 2026 report, IT security review was the biggest single source of delay in software purchases: 39% of buyers overall and 50% of enterprise buyers named it.

Procurement weighs in as well. Forrester's 2026 research found that procurement professionals are decision-makers in 53% of business buying cycles.

Give these reviewers a page on your website they can work from:

• a security or trust page that lists your certifications with their dates, how you handle customer data, and how to request reports;
• one page per integration, with setup steps and known limits, so IT can check fit with the stack;
• a named contact for security questions, so the review doesn't wait in a general inbox.

What proof do buyers need before they shortlist you?

Proof from people other than you. TrustRadius found that 77% of buyers read user reviews, and Forrester reports that more than 60% of business buyers use a trial before they buy.

Buying groups are large. Forrester counts 13 internal stakeholders and 9 external influencers in a typical buying decision, so with multiple stakeholders involved, one champion has to convince many people who will never visit your website. Give that champion material to forward to the rest of the buying team: a case study with numbers and a named customer, reviews from other customers on independent sites, and a trial or a recorded demo that shows the product doing the job.

If your product uses AI, explain how. In 6sense's 2025 report, 58% of buyers said the need to evaluate how vendors implement AI led them to engage earlier, and the report found that most vendor websites don't yet give buyers the clarity they want on these topics.

How do you make these answers easy for AI assistants to repeat?

Write each answer in plain sentences that make sense on their own, and keep the same facts on every page. AI assistants and search engines that summarize your website can only repeat what they find there.

In practice, give one person on your marketing team ownership of these facts, and:

• put prices, limits, certifications, and integration details in text, not only in images or PDFs;
• answer the question a buyer would type, near the top of the page that owns it;
• date the facts that change, and update every page that repeats them when they do.

For the wider picture of how B2B companies get cited in AI answers, see AEO and GEO for B2B SaaS.

Which pages should you fix first?

Start with the pages on your website that answer the questions B2B buyers bring to a first call with your sales team: pricing, security, integrations, and proof.

We design and build websites for B2B SaaS companies, so we have an interest in the topic.