B2B website: how your site wins leads in long sales cycles

The sales director often says it in the first meeting: “Our customers don’t buy through the website. They buy because they know us.” It’s true that the contract is signed after a meeting. But when we look in the CRM, almost every new customer has visited the website several times before they called. They read case studies, checked whether you have done something similar before and sent a link to their manager. What the website often decides is whether you make the shortlist at all.

What makes a B2B website different from a B2C website?

In B2B there is rarely one buyer. There is a user with the problem, a manager with the budget, a buyer comparing suppliers and sometimes an IT lead who must approve the security. They visit the site at different times and look for different things. The sales cycle stretches over weeks or months, and the decision has to be defensible internally. That places different demands on content and structure.

Which pages should a B2B website have?

The table shows the pages we believe every B2B website should have, and which stage of the buying journey each supports. The order roughly reflects how much they typically matter for sales.

Note the security and compliance page. It is missing from most B2B sites we review, yet it is the one that most often stalls a deal late in the process, because procurement or IT can’t find answers. A simple page describing hosting, backups, access control and the data processing agreement can save weeks.

How does a B2B website generate leads?

Most B2B visitors aren’t ready to talk to a salesperson the first time they come. So the site should offer several ways in that match how far along they are. A “contact us” form only catches those who have already decided. These are the types of conversion we recommend most often:

• Book a meeting directly in a calendar, choosing topic and length.
• Request a quote with a short form asking only what you need to give a price.
• A price calculator that gives an estimate immediately and sends the details to sales.
• Download a checklist, a template or a guide to building a business case.
• Sign up for a webinar or a breakfast meeting.
• A newsletter with professional insights, with clear consent.
• A phone number and direct email to a named function, such as sales or support.

Forms that qualify without scaring people off

B2B forms tend to grow, because sales want to know everything up front. Every field costs enquiries, though. Ask only for what you use in the first call: name, company, email and one question about the need, such as a dropdown of typical tasks or budget level. The rest can be fetched automatically, such as company data from the Danish CVR register, or asked in the conversation. Our guide to conversion rate optimisation shows how to test whether a shorter form brings more and better leads.

How does the website support a long sales cycle?

A long sales cycle is a series of small decisions. For each one, the buyer looks for a particular kind of content. When you know the stages, you can make sure there is something to find at each of them, and that every piece of content points on to the next stage.

Many B2B companies have strong content for stage three and nothing for stages one and four. That means they aren’t found early, and their contact is left alone when the manager asks why you in particular. Stage-one guides are also what bring traffic from Google. See how to build the site so it gets found in SEO-friendly website, and how to write the content in website copywriting.

How do you connect the website to your CRM?

A lead that lands in a shared inbox gets answered late or not at all. When forms, meeting bookings and downloads go straight into the CRM, they are assigned to the right salesperson immediately, and you can see which pages and campaigns create customers. It is one of the most valuable integrations a B2B website can have, and it is usually straightforward to build.

• Decide which fields are sent and how they map to fields in the CRM.
• Record the source: which page, campaign and keyword led to the enquiry.
• Assign leads automatically, for example by region, industry or service.
• Store marketing consent with time and wording, so it can be documented.
• Send a confirmation to the person who wrote, saying what happens next and when.
• Create a task for the salesperson with a deadline, so no enquiry is forgotten.
• Look up the CVR number automatically, so company data is correct from the start.

What does a B2B website cost?

A worked example: the 25-person industrial supplier

An industrial supplier with 25 employees wants a site in Danish and English with services, industry pages, case studies, a security page and meeting booking that sends leads into their CRM. At Ceptiv that typically fits our Large package at DKK 54,000 plus DKK 1,200 a month, with 36 features and 3 integrations, such as CRM, meeting booking and CVR lookup. Over three years that is DKK 97,200 including hosting, updates and support. If an average new customer is worth DKK 100,000 in contribution margin, the site needs to win one extra customer in three years to pay for itself. See what the package includes under the Large package.

Which numbers show whether a B2B website works?

Traffic and page views say very little in B2B, where a few visitors can be worth a lot. Follow the numbers that can be tied to sales. That requires the website and the CRM to talk to each other, which is one more reason to build the integration from the start.

1. Number of qualified leads per month, as judged by sales.
2. Pipeline and won deals where the first contact came from the website.
3. Conversion rate per service page and landing page.
4. Response time from enquiry to first contact.
5. Organic impressions and clicks on the keywords your customers use early in the process.
6. Which case studies and guides were read before a customer got in touch.

Which mistakes do we see most often on B2B websites?

• The site talks about the company and skips the customer’s problem.
• One page listing every service, which neither ranks nor persuades.
• Case studies without numbers or without a concrete starting point.
• No prices and no explanation of what the price depends on.
• Forms with ten fields landing in an inbox nobody owns.
• No page on security, hosting and the data processing agreement.
• Content that speaks only to the technical user and leaves out whoever holds the budget.

What do we see in practice as B2B websites grow?

The natural next phase for many B2B companies is moving part of the collaboration onto the website. First, leads flow into the CRM automatically. Then comes a price calculator or product catalogue. And finally a customer area where customers find documents, reorder and follow their cases themselves. For Grundfos we have built customer portals for iGRID, field research and clickable prototypes, and you can read more in the Grundfos case.

We recommend building the website so it can grow in that direction without starting over: the same technology, the same login system and the same integrations. We build in Next.js and TypeScript, have more than 40 pre-built integrations, and you own the code. Read more about the next step in customer portal development and in our guide to B2B webshops and ordering portals. And if you want a price for your B2B site, get a fixed price within 24 hours.