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A business website that gets visits and almost no enquiries raises an awkward question: what did the visitor not find? The answer is rarely the design. It is almost always a missing block: they did not understand what you do, found nothing to make them believe you, had no idea of the price, an objection went unanswered, or the form lost them on the way. This article goes through the five blocks one by one. If your site first needs a change of technology, our guide to migrating to a static site with Astro sets the frame.
In short
Visitors decide fast: the promise must say what you do, for whom, and what it changes, before anything else.
Proof counts if it can be checked: a dated case, a sourced figure, a screenshot. Invented proof costs more than no proof at all.
Showing a price, or at least priced examples, reassures more than it scares.
Objections (timing, commitment, risk) are answered on the page, before the visitor leaves to ask them elsewhere.
A short form, and every enquiry saved before the email goes out: a lost enquiry is the most expensive kind.
A visitor’s path
From visit to enquiry
- Understand
What you do, for whom.
- Believe
Proof they can check.
- Place
Your offers, and a price range.
- Clear doubts
Timing, method, limits.
- Ask
A form that loses nothing.
Each block answers one step. When one is missing, the visitor does not complain: they leave, and the visit count does not say why.
1. The promise: what you do, for whom
Visitors give a page little time before deciding whether to stay. Jakob Nielsen measured it long ago, and the finding has not aged:
is often all it takes for a visitor to leave a page
is the window to get the value proposition across, according to the study, to earn several minutes of attention
The promise has three parts: the trade (“web, automation and AI agency”), the audience (“for teams of 20 to 500 people”), and the expected change (“lower operating costs”). We did this exercise on this site in September 2026: the home page title stated an ambition, it now states the trade. A vague promise (“innovative solutions”) sorts no one: neither the right prospect, who does not recognise themselves, nor the wrong one, who will contact you for nothing.
2. Proof: verifiable or nothing
Proof is what lets a visitor believe you without knowing you: a client case with a dated result, a figure and its source, a screenshot of real work, the name of a client who agreed to be named. The test is simple: can a stranger check it?
Watch out
Fake proof is paid for twice
On an online plush toy store we are putting back on its feet, the theme displayed simulated visitor counters and a same-day delivery promise shown permanently. These devices were removed: they count as misleading commercial practices, and a visitor who spots one doubts everything else on the page.
On this site the rule is written down: no figure published without a verifiable source, and a client case is cited anonymously until the client agrees to be named. Less proof, but proof that holds. Testimonials work the same way: a first name and an initial prove nothing; a name, a role and a company prove something.
3. Offers and prices
This is the block that companies selling to other companies leave out most often, for fear of scaring people off or tying their hands. The Nielsen Norman Group, which studies visitor behaviour, observed the opposite:
Hiding the price can give the impression that it is too scary to be displayed.
The same study adds that a hidden price can make the company look dubious, as if it were hiding something. When the price really depends on the project, Jakob Nielsen already recommended showing representative cases and their prices.
That is the choice made on this site: each offer shows a price, fixed for the smallest, “from” for the largest, with what makes it vary. The business website starts at €3,900, the static site migration at €5,900. What makes a quote vary is covered in our article on business website cost.
4. Answers to objections
An interested visitor always has a reason not to write: “it will take too long”, “I’ll be locked in”, “what if it doesn’t work?”, “is this for a company my size?”. Each one is answered on the page, before it is asked:
- The method, in four or five steps, with what the client provides at each;
- The timeline, in weeks, and what makes it slip;
- Honest limits: what the offer does not cover, and who it is not for;
- The first step, and what it commits you to.
On this site, the first step depends on the amount: offers from €6,500 propose an audit first, the others a twenty-minute check that it is the right project. A short FAQ, with questions prospects actually ask, closes each offer page.
Key takeaway
Saying who an offer is not for does not push the right prospects away. It saves them a useless call, and it makes everything else credible.
5. The path to the enquiry
The last block is the most technical, and the one whose failure costs the most: the visitor has decided to write, and their enquiry gets lost.
A short form
Name, email address and a free field to describe the need are enough for a first contact. Each extra field is one more question before sending. What needs qualifying (size, budget, timing) is better qualified in the reply, by a person. One call to action per page, visible and repeated at the bottom, beats three buttons offering three things.
An enquiry saved before the email
From the field
A form that said “thank you” in the middle of an outage
Palmora Property, a real estate portal we operate, learned it the hard way: sending the notification email was treated as optional, its failure was ignored, and visitors saw the thank-you page even when nothing had gone out. Since then, every enquiry is saved in a database before the email is sent, and an outage shows.
This site applies the same rule: every enquiry is first saved in storage located in Europe, then the email goes out. If saving fails, the email remains a record; visitors only see an error if both fail. How to do this on a static site is covered in our article on forms and search.
An interface that does not trap
On the same portal, a search saved by a visitor was never confirmed: a confirmation window opened, and the reflex of closing it cancelled everything. It was not an outage, it was an interface trap. Test your enquiry path like a visitor in a hurry, on a phone, all the way to the email received.
What carries the five blocks
The five blocks are useless on a page that loads slowly (Core Web Vitals for business leaders) or that some visitors cannot use (the EU accessibility obligation). A hacked site loses the trust the proof has built (why WordPress sites get hacked). A redesign that adds these blocks keeps what already pays off (which pages to keep, merge or delete) and sets its 301 redirects. Texts produced with AI are reviewed and signed (should you disclose it?), and a blog feeds the proof over time (Markdown in the repository or a CMS, or a headless site with Astro and Sanity if several people publish). For an audience in several countries, each language carries the five blocks (one language, one URL), and hosting is also chosen for the enquiries it stores (hosting your website in Europe, and Cloudflare, Netlify or a VPS).
Our business website is built around these five blocks, starting from your offers and your clients. If your site already exists and gets visits, the static site migration adds them while keeping every URL that pays off.
Frequently asked questions
How many pages does a lead-generating business website need?
Fewer than you think: a home page that carries the promise, one page per offer with its proof, prices and answers, a page that tells who you are, and a contact page. Five well-built pages bring more enquiries than thirty vague ones. The blog comes next, to feed the proof over time.
Should a B2B website show its prices?
Yes, at least as a price range or priced examples. The Nielsen Norman Group observes that a hidden price can give the impression of being too high, or even make the company look dubious. A “from” price, with what makes it vary, also filters out enquiries that would not have gone anywhere.
Which fields should a contact form have?
Name, email address and a free field for the need are enough for a first contact. Each added field is one more hesitation before sending. Qualifying questions (size, budget, timing) are better asked in the reply. Above all, check that every enquiry is saved before the email is sent.
Why does my website get visits but no enquiries?
Because one of the five blocks is missing, most often the promise or the price: visitors do not understand fast enough what you do, or cannot place themselves. Also test the form itself, end to end, on a phone: an enquiry lost in silence looks, in the statistics, exactly like an enquiry never sent.
Sources
Nielsen Norman Group, Show Prices for Common Scenarios, April 2006
Read on nngroup.com(new tab)Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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