ZodiemIf most of a purchase is decided before anyone speaks to you, your website is your sales team for that stretch. 6sense's 2024 Buyer Experience Report puts a number on how much of the decision has happened by then.
What 6sense reported
- B2B buyers are nearly 70% through their purchasing process before they engage with sellers.
- Buyers initiate first contact more than 80% of the time.
- 81% of buyers already have a preferred vendor at the time of first contact.
A later 2026 report from the same company, covering 4,611 recent buyers, put the share choosing the vendor they favoured before contacting a seller at 82%. The 2024 release did not state its sample size, and the two reports use different wording, so we cite them separately and do not blend them.
What this means for a website
You are usually judged before you are contacted. By the time a buyer fills in your form they have often formed a preference. The page has to answer their questions without a person.
Most visits are not the visit that matters. The buyer you meet is the survivor of a long silent process. The questions they could not answer on your site are the reasons you were never shortlisted.
Silence is not a signal. Analytics show clicks, not confusion. A buyer who left because pricing was unclear looks identical to one who left because they were not interested.
Three practical changes
- Answer the awkward questions in public. Pricing logic, limits, what you cannot do. A buyer who finds it will trust the rest.
- Capture the questions. A live agent or a visible Q&A inbox shows what visitors ask. Fix the page, not just the answer.
- Make the product visible early. Seeing it beats reading about it, whether through a walkthrough or a live demo.
A caution on the numbers
Surveys of buyers measure what buyers remember and report. They are valuable, but they are not a measurement of your funnel. Use them to set priorities, and check them against your own data.