The B2B website playbook that will drive pipeline in 2026

(0:10) Craig: I think it's important to say for any clients that are watching that many of the sites that we have built and are working on right now are probably more in the guise of a traditional website. Today we're not trying to scaremonger or suggest that things need to change overnight or that any of that investment or work is wasted. What we're talking about really is the evolution of the website through the course of 2026 and beyond to give people a really good understanding of the direction of travel. So if we start with what we would consider a traditional B2B website.

(1:10) James: Effectively a brochure website. It's informational based. It's ensuring that your value propositions represented, that the brands represented, that you've got all the right pages and all the right words on a page and limited interactivity. Some basic form of ability for someone to get in contact with you but nothing really there to enable the buyer and you know limited levels of interactivity. That's effectively what we mean.

(1:37) Craig: Yeah so it's a platform that you control the narrative on. It enables you to get your messaging across clearly and without any influence outside influence and we'll touch on why that's important later. You know certainly from a digital experience this is the place that you're driving people to typically and we don't think that should change. Back in the day when a lot of new social media platforms were a thing and they were really advocating the opportunity for brands to use their platform to promote themselves. Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook and so on. As a result of this trend we went through a very similar cycle where many experts were suggesting that the website is now dead. You can build your whole shop window if you like on these new platforms and naturally some tried to do that. People quickly realized that they haven't got control over the changes that might occur to the algorithm on social. You're at the whim of a last minute algorithm change that could completely blow up your presence on one. Yeah. Suddenly you've got this great presence on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever social platform that you're focused on and then it all changes. Yeah. And suddenly you've lost traffic overnight and there's nothing you can do about it. You need to be on the earned platforms. You need to be maybe investing in paid but ultimately you need a platform that you own where you can really control the story. So why then are the prominent voices that you mentioned saying that that platform is dead?

(3:11) James: The first thing back to the social media platforms what most companies were doing the traditional model was to have an informational website where you control the narrative where you had your products and services clearly positioned in a way that you had had full control over. But then you would leverage the social platforms to engage with buyers because that's where they were hanging out and then you would try and drive links to your website from those social platforms. The big change that happened over the last few years is that increasingly those platforms have suppressed any activity that would try and drive people away from those platforms. So if you put a post on LinkedIn with a website link that's going to get far less reach than something that is solely built in terms of content for that particular social platform. The previous conventional wisdom was that the lead flow should look something like produce content, publish on website, publish on LinkedIn, get loads of reach, get clicks, get form submissions, convert those leads, jobs are good. I think the reason that the current conventional way to publish a website needs to change is partly because of that changing because the links that you add to LinkedIn for example are getting so heavily suppressed that traffic from that platform is massively reduced. Effectively that previous model of engagement from a prospective customer is gone.

(4:44) Craig: Yeah and today you know if you're going to really focus on LinkedIn as a vehicle to engage with your buyers you have to do it in a way where you just you're really just accepting the fact that everything's going to stay on platform. Yeah so in other words you're taking your website completely out of the equation. Yeah. Which I suppose could be one reason that these prominent voices are saying what's the point in having one?

(5:06) James: Well that's that's the first reason and I think but nevertheless you know we're talking pre-AI here. There was sort of question marks at that point to say well if all the engagement at the top of the funnel is happening outside of your website is there really a need to continually invest in having a really strong website? And you have to weigh up the pros and cons of of that dynamic versus you're now shifting to platforms again that you don't own and where you you're at the mercy of any algorithm change. But I think that was that sort of just became acceptable because websites were still being found because of traditional search and this is where the next big impact comes into it which is why I think a lot of people are or some people are calling for you know calling the demise of the website.

(5:57) James: So as a result of increased AI search we're now seeing almost what 80 percent zero clicks. So the old blue links the open internet is shrinking because of AI. You no longer need to go onto a website to find information based on basic search. AI is going to give you all the answers that you need. Which again draws into question why the informational website that we described at the start draws into question its value in in the world that we live in.

(6:28) Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Information searches now are all being done by AI in many respects. Traditional search still plays a part but increasingly that would just you know it would just go into decline. So even even more than it is. But at the moment I mean it's important to say whilst we've seen an impact with certain businesses that we work with both positive and negative. Yeah. Many of our clients are still haven't really seen the sort of significant drop offs in traditional search traffic as maybe some experts would suggest. And some have seen a big. So this is the silver lining of this equation I suppose is some have seen fairly significant amounts of AI based traffic going to their sites of which the conversion rate we've seen with our own clients is six seven times higher but we've seen stats that can say up to 13 times higher conversion rate from our traffic.

(7:18) James: And there's a reason for that isn't there. You know the reason is ultimately that they're reaching your Web site at a much later stage. They've already done that research have probably done it much more quickly much more effectively much more comprehensively and they've ended up on your Web site in a position where they are now fully informed and now need to make a decision. They need help with that decision via your Web site rather than all that information that they've got from AI.

(7:46) Craig: Interesting I was talking to a partner of ours yesterday. They're a global research company. They in the last just the last few weeks they've seen a real increase in the number of opportunities coming to them through AI search. They're almost surprised by that sort of shift in dynamic. What what they said was the actual opportunities themselves are so much further advanced they're even at proposal stage.

(8:10) James: They have the benefit as being a global research company that every piece of research they do they're typically cited as the research company that was conducting that research on behalf of whoever it was Capgemini SAP Oracle. So they constantly appear in every press release every articulation of it because it brings credibility to the brand that's used them to justify the research and make the research credible. So as a result of that when AI is doing its searches obviously it's picking up their name every time. So if as a as a as a brand that's never worked with them you go on AI to identify a global research company they're going to show up and they do show top of the list.

(8:54) Craig: And let's be honest that partner probably has a traditional Web site in the.

(8:59) James: Very much so yeah.

(8:59) Craig: So it's it's ironic then isn't it that those that are calling the B2B website in traditional form dead are doing so based upon the changes to buyer behavior that AI is driven. You've just given an example of where that traditional Web site has been captured or been used to capture new opportunity that wasn't there before. So I think that's the first thing that we probably used to push back on that assertion that the Web site is dead.

(9:22) James: The difference is if you go into their Web site and you didn't know who they were and you maybe come through a traditional search. The first thing you're trying to understand is you know are they a good fit for us. Do they work with the types of businesses that we are. What do they offer as a service etc etc. When you go to the Web site now as a result of an AI search you already know all that information. So what you're looking for now is kind of validation. You're probably looking for maybe examples of clients that work with just just an extra bit of validation that supports what AI has told you during that search which comes back to the really important point around consistency.

(10:00) Craig: Yeah. But as a result they at this stage maybe because we're still very early early early into this whole shift the particular buyers that approach them as a result of these AI searches they weren't really looking for more information on the Web site. They didn't need to have their kind of whole funnel mapped out. They just they're ready to go. They need a research company. These guys have shown up on the list several times and this brings into another sort of dynamic with this because we're using AI all the time even though we know that sometimes it's a little bit flaky may not serve up the right results because it's a trusted tool that we always turn to. We always trust its results. Even if we know that there's an element of doubt using the tool because we use it all the time we're going to start to really believe what it's telling us even when it's wrong. It's like a really credible referral engine. So what we're talking about there then and what I'm really what we mean by the two examples you've just given is that the Web site itself isn't dead. It's just changing. Its role is changing.

(11:06) James: What you've just described is that because of AI because people are no longer reliant on Web sites for information or educational information at least and they're arriving at that Web site in a much deeper stage of the buying journey that the role is therefore not to inform and educate. The role is to enable them to take the next steps in that process. The role is to validate what they already believe based upon what they've been told by AI through various things. Their role is to be able to continue that journey on their own which I think ties into the third thing I think is worth talking about which is the concept of the dark funnel which actually came probably in the middle of those two things. The old playbook of sales teams and SDRs you know the whole submit a form to download a guide then get hammered for two weeks later by the SDRs. I think that has eroded a lot of trust. I think AI has eroded a lot of trust so people are generally steering avoiding where they can that engagement with the salesperson and nothing against sales people I just think that ultimately people are fatigued by that so they're wanting to complete more of that process themselves. They're therefore wanting a Web site to provide more than basic information. They're going to want to maybe complete an early stage pricing assessment. They may want to configure a product before they take this step of booking a discovery call. They might want to log in and understand more information in a deeper way before they take that next step.

(12:46) James: So I think that third thing has also been a fairly the dark funnel. The reason it's called the dark funnel for those that don't know is it's the part of the funnel that you can't see. It's the research element that people are doing in in corners of the internet that you have all over in the physical world that you don't have any insight into i.e. not on your website. It could be in on Reddit. It could be events. People are preferring those ways of receiving information or those referrals because they know that they're not going to get followed up by an SDR for three or four weeks afterwards. And if you can only provide basic information on your website and the opportunity to book a call with the sales people then people will go elsewhere. However if you're providing a much better experience from a buyer enablement perspective than anywhere else, than YouTube, than Reddit, than speaking to someone on a stand at an event, then people will choose to do that. If you have a configurator that allows you to do much of what you might do in a scoping exercise, if you have a early stage pricing analysis, then the value of that outweighs basically the reasons that someone might choose to avoid engaging with you directly.

(14:05) Craig: Let's talk about the modern website and what it looks like, but let's maybe start with the we see that you've got essentially three audiences that you need to be taking into account when you're building the modern site. And again we're not suggesting this needs to happen overnight. It's an evolution, but certainly over the next 12 months anyone that's watching this we're starting we're just at the end of 2025 going into the new year. Certainly in the next 12 months you want to be really building the pace of transition to move to this more modern looking website. So the three audiences, firstly we've got your traditional buyers. Real people. It's mental that we're having that conversation isn't it?

(14:39) James: Yeah. About why you'd build a website and real buyers is one of three.

(14:44) Craig: Yeah, yeah. Well really even a couple of years ago it's still two.

(14:50) James: Yeah you still, I mean SEO is the second one isn't it? Google is the second one. And people have always been writing content for websites particularly with Google in mind.

(15:01) Craig: I suppose.

(15:07) James: Yeah and it was still intended to draw people to whatever was being written. Obviously the third persona is AI. AI agents yeah. And there are again prominent voices out there saying you should write content and publish it on your website and optimize your website purely for the benefit of LLMs. Which is a bit of a departure I think from even optimizing just for SEO. So those are the three audiences. How do you cater for those individually?

(15:34) Craig: Well the obvious place to start is with real people. You know the website is still going to be engaged with by real people. If it wasn't then there would be limited need for it. And of course that requires you to do what people have always done with websites. Which is say the right things to the right people. And that means making sure the value proposition is properly represented. It means making sure the brand is properly represented. It means making sure that there's a good user experience on the website for the buyer. It means making sure that all the information that they require is available to them. And it means making sure that the appropriate mechanisms for them taking the next steps are all there.

(16:17) Craig: Is that much different from a traditional site? No it isn't. But the traditional site is ultimately designed to provide that information to the user. The way that it's evolved is that the information that's required is different. You know at the end of the day it's still out of stages of the buying process. Exactly. Ultimately why else would a user want to visit a website? Yeah there's got to be reasons to visit.

(16:48) Craig: The key challenge that most marketeers businesses are going to face is ensuring that it's ensuring consistency. So whatever AI is telling people in their searches when you arrive at the site it's a really consistent experience. And that's going to be a real challenge for a lot of marketeers. It's quite easy to control the narrative and the positioning on your own website. But to do that in all of the areas that AI will be searching for and providing information based on your company to potential buyers, that's a lot harder to control. Understanding how AI is finding you in their searches and referencing you in those searches is going to be increasingly important to ensure consistency when someone comes through to your site.

(17:26) Craig: So I think you've mostly talked through the third there, how you cater for AI. I mean this podcast isn't about how you AO and how you optimize for AO. And we've had this debate on the podcast before I'm sure. But ultimately starting with understanding how you're perceived by AI is the best first step.

(17:44) Craig: Through something like XFunnel. Then in a similar sense to SEO, and I say similar because there are clearly some crossovers but it is absolutely not the same thing, optimizing your content for AO, GEO is of course the logical next step. And we're not going to spend ages talking about how you optimize for SEO because there'll be people out there that know a lot more than that than I do. But the same principles apply there.

(18:14) James: Yeah, I mean you still have information about your products and services on your website. It may be just in a, it presents in a different way that's a lot more in tune with how AI would search your website or how an agent would search your website as opposed to how a buyer might review those pages. And understanding the questions that people are asking AI and trying to make sure your content is going to be served up in those answers is going to be the real challenge. Because again, we're moving from a world of keywords to questions and there's a lot more questions than keywords. That could mean a lot more content. Yeah, absolutely. Is that something you really want to embark on as a brand, as a marketeer? That's going to be a big challenge.

(18:57) James: But I think circling back to buyers, understanding the buyer journey in the latter stages in real depth is increasingly important to make sure that the buying jobs that they need to complete, you're actually helping them do so through your website. And there's two elements to it. The first is, are you providing all the information they need to assess the solution that you provide? And are you going to go into real depth in terms of how you do that? And the second is a validation of your ability to deliver on that.

(19:36) Craig: That's a good segue into how people can build a modern B2B website. And from my perspective, at least there's three pillars. Buyer enablement, which links very much to what you've just talked about. You've got the experience, which is obviously critical. And you've got the AI engine, basically, how your website performs on AI effectively and how you've built it to perform better.

(19:57) Craig: Yeah. Yeah. So if we take the first, buyer enablement. What kind of things are we talking about?

(20:02) James: I think I mentioned some of them earlier, but I think it's good to recap. I think the one in our particular area, you know, B2B tech services, professional services, complex sales, the one that is often overlooked or challenged, if ever we've recommended this is pricing. Pricing is always something, particularly in complex sales where, you know, no proposal is ever the same. You're not providing a standard SaaS platform with different subscription options, maybe three to choose from. You know, it's very difficult to provide one kind of pricing page that really covers everything and gives the buyers enough of an idea of whether they're in the right place, you know, the right ballpark.

(20:45) James: Marcus Sheridan is a notable HubSpot expert has talked about the need for companies in this kind of complex B2B world to provide some kind of pricing calculator. Even if it's indicative. Not necessarily a quoting tool, but some kind of pricing indicator. It's not rocket science, is it? As a buyer, I don't think, let's say I was buying a house and I needed an estate agent. If there wasn't some form of indicative pricing there, you would skirt over them. There are other estate agents that do offer that information to you. So to suggest that you can't because you're bespoke, you're a boutique consultancy, whatever it may be, it's kind of missing the point, because if other people in your world are, then you're going to be overlooked. And as a buyer, it makes sense for them to want to know at least an indicative price so that they know if they're in the right place or not.

(21:50) Craig: And one thing that we've when we've had this conversation with clients that we talk about is you also want them to do that. You don't want to be having discovery calls with people that are shocked by the pricing. You've completely wasted your time and theirs. What's the point in that?

(22:04) James: Yeah, absolutely. It's often pushed back on, isn't it? There's no way we can provide a standard price. Increasingly, your competitors will do. It has to play the role of a salesperson as much as possible. A salesperson would provide an indicative quote, even knowingly understanding that the buyer may be at the early stages.

(22:28) James: So I mean, we had a request for the build of an app recently. And we know that the client isn't really going to be looking at this until maybe Q2 of next year. But they're looking to build a business case. They need some indicative idea of how much it might cost them, even if they're clear that when it comes to the crunch and we go through a proposal phase, the cost may turn out to be when we fully scoped the project. But if we're refusing to give them an indicative quote, they're just going to go to someone that can.

(23:03) Craig: Yeah, absolutely. And I've got an example of a very complex client that is doing that, and despite the complexity. So we're working on at the minute, effectively, an evaluation application, which takes loads of very complex data from various sources and spits out a recommended service, effectively, or product, if you want to think of it that way. And it takes in vast amounts of really detailed information, type of environment it might be worked in, the slopes that are in that environment, the weather, the conditions of that environment, who's using it, what it's being used for, lots of detailed information. They're building that out so that ultimately their customers can go and fill all of that information out, generate themselves a quote, sign it, complete it for something which is extremely complex.

(23:54) Craig: And I suppose I use that example as an example of the fact that you can, I suppose, sit there and say, yours is far too complex. You couldn't possibly do that. Others are doing that and they're going to ultimately undercut you with their experience, I suppose, if you want to think of it that way, by doing so. I think it's too easy to say, no, we couldn't possibly.

(24:23) James: It's a maturity thing. I mean, going back to that client, they've done several, they've gone through several projects and built applications and experiences on their website that have proven to work and be successful in engaging buyers and accelerate the sales process. And that's why they take the next step to go even further. So this stuff does work and increasingly more and more people will adopt it.

(24:51) James: I think going back to making sure that your website plays a role of a salesperson, I think increasingly your conversational agents that sit on the site will be there to answer questions. You get an AI to, again, play that kind of, maybe even objection handle some of the inquiries that come in. So again, people will probably want to do that because at least they're getting their answers and they haven't had to sit through a discovery call to get them.

(25:27) Craig: Yeah. And I suppose we're starting to bleed into the experience part of the equation now as well, because a lot of the tools that we've talked about, they're also part of providing that experience. You talk about AI agents, et cetera. We talked about calculators, the general interactivity on the site are all contributing to that experience that people have or people want to have. But that's more kind of in the realm of buyer enablement, isn't it?

(25:49) James: It is. And some of those experiences are intended to enable the buyer. So there's a lot of overlap there, but there is also something that we've seen a lot recently, which is around effectively creating experiences, which are membership based, I would say, you know, that allow people to save progress and log in and return and generate. And that is effectively an experience which creates an output. I think that's the best way to think of it.

(26:25) James: It's not just a case of your website providing static information, people making a note of that and going away and maybe submitting a form. The website experience going forward should produce output on its own. It should become more application-like in the fact that you can generate your own value in the sales process through the website independently. An example might be a report from an online audit that you could do in a fairly basic fashion. It could be a pricing calculation. It could be a quote, even like the example I gave. The experience shouldn't be static and informational. It should be output driven, which is what I mean by the membership kind of logging approach that means people can save progress, et cetera.

(27:07) Craig: Yeah, it's and again, McKinsey just recently released a report that was based on a survey of I think 350 CMOs from across Europe. And the main finding was the number one priority for CMOs is to focus on developing brand. And McKinsey's recommendation is to do that. It needs to be a two-way interactive process because that's really where you'll get true authenticity. And part of that is how do you create that interactivity on your website? You've got to give people reasons to come to the site. It used to be we'd go to your site because we're on the open web. There's no way to get answers quickly. You create a lot of useful guides and resources and webinars, and we can get rich insights from that educational material. That world, as we've talked about, is increasingly disappearing. So what are the other reasons people will come?

(28:02) James: Exactly. And it has to be output because otherwise your website is clearly only there for a communication channel. If that information has already been captured and delivered to the user through AI, then you're effectively cutting out the whole of the middle of that journey because you just use it. You may as well just have a website with a form on it.

(28:25) James: So that's the way that it needs to evolve. It needs to evolve to provide output, which as we've talked about at length already, covers that middle to bottom part of the funnel, that decision phase of the funnel.

(28:36) Craig: Yes. A good example of the experience content that is outside of the buyer enablement sphere is something like an in-depth research survey that we do see increasingly. You might get the answers from AI and the findings from the report, but you'd be presented in a very basic visualization summary through whatever interface you're using, GPT or Claude or whatever it is. It's not a particularly engaging experience, but if you go to the website and it's an interactive survey or report, you'll get a much better experience with the brand. You can maybe interact with it and ask questions. You can participate in the survey. You can maybe have spin-off experiences like assessments and so on. So you're creating a real experience there.

(29:30) Craig: Another example is creating communities as well through your website, as you say, using things like the membership portal. So you have to be thinking about, okay, it's not just about putting a new blog on the website or promoting our latest webinar. What are the other reasons to get people to come to our site? How can we interact? How can we make the experience a lot more valuable for the potential buyers?