We scored 24 B2B websites against a simple test: can a buyer recognise their situation in the first 30 seconds?
The average score was 13.6/30.
The design is fine.
The site fails at the moment that matters most: helping a buyer recognise their own situation.
Many could not.
One $6bn enterprise scored 11/30
Homepage: contact form plus "global leader" language
Zero connection to the buyer's actual starting point
No buyer reads that and thinks: This is for me.
As April Dunford explains in her revised and updated book, 𝗢𝗯𝘃𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗹𝘆 𝗔𝘄𝗲𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲, https://amzn.eu/d/0784Bzt1, as markets get more crowded and products easier to build, the real constraint shifts to positioning and distribution.
The buyer is not asking: "What does this company do?"
They are asking: "Is this relevant to my situation, right now?"
Typically, websites answer the first. Very few answer the second.
Why customers chose them
What problems they solved
Where they created value
It was just buried. Case studies. Services pages. Internal language.
They describe what they do. But not why it matters at the moment a buyer decides to act.
T𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗲.
If your homepage does not translate the buyer's situation:
Traffic does not convert
Sales compensates with narrative and discounting
Customers buy for the wrong reasons, and churn risk increases
This is a positioning problem. It sits upstream of everything else.
The situation the buyer was in before they searched
The trigger that forced action
The language they used to describe it
Then they translate that customer truth into decision-ready communication.
The gap between 13.6/30 and a high-performing site is rarely budget or design.
It is whether the company has aligned its message with how buyers actually decide.
We run demand-side website assessments for B2B software and services companies.
If you want to know where your site sits, the framework is at shift90.partners.