What should a B2B website include?

Ten years ago, a B2B website had a modest job: exist, look professional and give people a phone number. Buyers met you through a referral, an event or a sales call, and the website was where they checked you were real. Many firms still run a site built on that brief.

The brief has changed underneath them. Buyers now decide a great deal before they speak to anyone: 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report found buying groups had ranked their preferred vendors before first contact in 94% of cases, and bought from that first choice 77% of the time. More of that research now starts with an AI assistant. In G2's April 2026 survey of software buyers, 51% said they start in an AI chatbot, up from 29%. For Helm Club, "1 in 5 new members this year came through an AI recommendation."

So your website now has two readers making the same decision: an AI assistant deciding whether to name you, and a buyer deciding whether to believe it. A brochure satisfies neither. This guide sets out what a B2B website should include, page by page, and the five jobs those pages have to do.

#What should a B2B website include?

A B2B website should include the pages a buyer needs to shortlist you without calling: who you serve, what you do, proof, how an engagement works and roughly costs, who will do the work, and how to start. Each page should answer one question clearly enough that an AI assistant could repeat it in a sentence.

Add a current privacy notice and cookie information, which every UK business site needs.

#Job one: say plainly who you serve and what you do

A buyer should know within a few seconds whether you are relevant, and an AI assistant should be able to state it in one sentence. That means naming your clients' sectors and size, the problems you solve and the services you offer, in plain words, on the homepage and on every service page.

Vague positioning is the most common failure we see. "Integrated solutions for ambitious businesses" could describe anyone. "Outsourced finance teams for UK manufacturers with 50 to 500 staff" can be matched instantly.

Structure does the same job at the scale of the whole site. arum advises banks, governments and major brands on collections technology, with "more than 500 projects in 23 countries, from offices in London, Atlanta and Sydney". In its rebuild, "Services organised the way a client buys them: five stages from advice to optimisation, plus three specialist services." The work covered "310 pages rebuilt across three regions, in weeks." As Jamie Waller, arum's CEO and Executive Chair, put it: "For most people, our website is the first time they meet arum. It now does us justice."

#Job two: prove it with specific, recent evidence

Claims are cheap, so buyers and AI assistants both look for evidence. The strongest evidence on a B2B site is specific, attributed and recent: case studies with a clear problem and result, quotes from named clients, the people who will do the work, accreditations that matter in your sector, and writing that shows how you think.

Lead with the number. On arum's new site, "Each of the 12 case studies leads with a number, and each of the nine sector pages names the regulation in play."

Recency matters too: a case study from four years ago proves you once did the work; one from last quarter proves you are doing it now. We look at the signals that make buyers trust one firm over another in what makes a buyer trust a website enough to get in touch.

#Job three: answer the questions buyers ask before they call

A good B2B site answers the questions a buyer would otherwise have to ask on a first call. How does an engagement start? How long does it take? What does it roughly cost? Who is it right for, and who is it not right for? What happens if something goes wrong?

Firms often hold these answers back for the first call. The effect is the opposite of what they intend: a buyer who cannot find the answers picks a firm that provides them. An AI assistant asked how much an ISO 27001 audit costs a small business will draw on a firm that has published a clear answer, and it cannot quote a page that says "contact us".

To find the questions, ask your sales team and read your inbox: the same dozen questions come up in almost every first conversation. We explain how to answer them in should our content answer the questions customers actually ask.

#Should a B2B firm put its prices on its website?

In our view, yes, at least as a starting price, a typical range or a clear explanation of how pricing works. Buyers who are shortlisting without calling use price to rule firms in or out, and a firm that publishes nothing is often ruled out by default.

You do not need a rate card. Say what drives the cost, give typical ranges for common projects, and say what is and is not included. If every job really is bespoke, publish two or three worked examples with round figures. We publish our own prices on one page for the same reason.

#Job four: be readable by AI assistants

The site has to let AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot in, and serve its words in the page itself rather than filling them in later with scripts. Clear headings, one page per service and sector, and structured data that matches the visible text help assistants describe you accurately. Our technical checklist for an AI-ready website sets out what to ask your developer to check.

#Job five: make getting in touch easy

Every page should offer a clear, low-effort next step: a visible phone number and email address, a short enquiry form, a plain statement of what happens next, and an option to book a call.

Many buyers first look you up on a phone, often straight after an AI assistant named you. If the contact route is buried, slow or needs a long form, they move on. We cover the details in do our B2B buyers really look at our website on their phones.

A site that loads slowly, or cannot be used with a keyboard or screen reader, loses people at the moment they were ready to act, so aim for WCAG 2.2 AA. We explain the thresholds in does our website's speed and accessibility really affect enquiries.

#What do AI agents need from our contact form and booking link?

AI agents that browse sites and complete tasks for people already exist, and they need the same plain forms that disabled visitors need. OpenAI launched ChatGPT agent for paid plans in July 2025, and Google's Chrome auto browse, which can fill in forms and get quotes, launched in the US in January 2026. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 90% of B2B buying will be AI agent intermediated. That is a prediction, not a measurement.

Google's guide to agent-friendly websites (April 2026) asks for real buttons and links rather than styled boxes, labels linked to their form fields, a stable layout, and no transparent overlays hiding the controls. In practice, for a B2B contact route:

• Keep the enquiry form short, with a visible label on every field.
• Use real buttons for "send" and "book a call", with plain wording.
• Make the booking link open a calendar that works without an account or login.
• Keep spam protection that does not demand a puzzle before the form can be sent, where your tools allow it.
• Put your email address and phone number on the page as text, not only inside an image or a script.
• Say what happens after an enquiry and how quickly, so an agent can report it back to the buyer.

#What is the difference between a brochure website and a lead generation website?

A brochure website describes the firm; a lead generation website answers buyers' questions and asks for the next step on every page. The difference shows in what each page contains and whether anyone looks after it.

#Should a B2B website have an AI chatbot in 2026?

Only if it answers from your own published content, hands over to a person quickly, and does not slow the site. A chatbot cannot replace clear pages: AI crawlers read your pages, not your chat widget, so anything the bot knows but the pages do not say is invisible to the assistants buyers use.

Chat widgets also slow a page's response to taps, so load one only when a visitor asks for it. For most founder-led firms, a clear page on price and process and a booking link do more.

#How long does it take to build a B2B website in the UK?

Usually a few months. Rudo, a UK agency, puts a mid-market B2B project at 10 to 16 weeks from kick-off to launch (April 2026), and says content production is almost always the bottleneck. Bigfork says a redesign can take anywhere between 4 to 14 weeks or more (October 2024).

What decides the timescale is usually content and sign-off rather than code. For arum, "No workshops and no weekly status meetings. Jamie reacted to real, working pages within weeks." Have your case studies, service descriptions and team details ready before the build starts.

#Why does the website have to keep changing?

Because a site that stands still drifts out of date, and both buyers and AI assistants notice: people who have left, a newest case study that is years old, services you no longer sell.

The fix is not constant redesign. It is a monthly routine owned by one named person: update one existing page, publish one new page or article, and add one new piece of proof. We explain the cost of letting it slide in what it costs to leave our website unchanged for years.

#How do you tell whether your website is doing these jobs?

Score it out of ten on the five lenses we use in our free Growth Review:

1. Found: what does Google return for the questions your buyers ask, and are you there?
2. Named by AI: when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity or Google AI Mode who to use, are you named, and is the description accurate?
3. Website: does each page answer a buyer question, prove it and ask for the next step?
4. Authority: where does your firm exist outside its own site, in trade press, directories, review sites and LinkedIn, and do the facts agree everywhere?
5. Pipeline: what does a buyer see after the site, on the founder's LinkedIn and the company page?

Then record where every enquiry came from and whether it became work. We set out a fuller method in how to tell whether your website is working, and what the site should do for buyers who arrive already told about you in what your website should do now that visitors arrive pre-sold by AI.

#What to do this month

1. Rewrite the first screen of your homepage so it names who you serve, what you do and how to start.
2. Check your site against the page table above and list the service and sector pages that are missing.
3. Add or refresh one case study that leads with a specific, recent result and a named quote if the client agrees.
4. Write one page that explains how you price, how long work takes and what happens after an enquiry.
5. Fill in your own enquiry form and booking link on a phone, and fix every step that is slow or unclear.
6. Name one person as the website's owner and agree a monthly routine of one update, one new page and one piece of proof.

#Frequently asked questions

#How many pages should a B2B website have?

Enough to give each service and each sector its own page, plus the core pages in the table above. One clear page per buyer question beats a few long pages that try to cover everything.

#Most of our work comes from referrals. Do we still need more than a brochure site?

Yes, because referred buyers check you too. A recommendation gets you considered, but the buyer will still look at your website, and often ask an AI assistant about you, before calling. A site that confirms the recommendation turns more referrals into conversations.

#Do we need a blog?

You need somewhere to publish useful writing, ideally a guides section organised by topic and linked to your service pages rather than a list of posts by date. Each piece should answer a real question your buyers ask.

#What should be on our homepage?

Who you serve and what you do, one or two lines of proof and an obvious way to get in touch, all visible without scrolling. Below that, routes to your services and sectors, a recent case study and your people.

#Do we need a full rebuild to meet these standards?

Not always. If your site is technically sound and easy to edit, rewriting key pages, adding proof and fixing the technical basics often gets you most of the way. Rebuild when the platform blocks those changes or the structure no longer matches how you sell.

A website that does these five jobs becomes a working part of how you win business. To have one built to do that from day one, see how Website That Sells works, or book a free Growth Review to see your five scores and the three fixes we would make first.

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