How B2B buyers search for suppliers: the site’s first 10 seconds.

A supplier site’s first screen should answer a B2B buyer’s three questions: what does this company make, can it prove it, and whom do I write to. Our observation is that if these three answers are not on the first screen, the buyer continues the search not on the site but with the next supplier on their list.

The ten seconds in the title are not a statistic. We have no data measuring the time a buyer spends on a site, and we will not make up a number. The framing exists to say one thing: a B2B buyer does not read a supplier site, they scan it. The observations below come from the sites of the two textile exporters we manage and from this site’s own measurements; they are not the result of a general study. We describe our method on the B2B website page; this article is a reading framework independent of it.

Where do B2B buyers find suppliers?

The channels vary: search engines, industry trade fairs, B2B platforms and marketplaces, member lists of professional bodies, recommendations from existing customers. Even the e-export Circular of Turkey’s Ministry of Trade, when describing what it expects from a B2B platform, lists a product or company search filter and the product catalogs of member companies as requirements; in other words, buyers largely find suppliers by searching.

Our observation is that whichever channel the buyer comes from, they eventually visit the company’s own site, because it is the only place where the company describes itself in its own words. A marketplace profile follows a standard template, a trade fair stand lasts two days; the site is open at all times and under the company’s control.

Which question should the first screen answer?

Three questions, in this order:

• What do you make? — the product family, in one sentence and in the buyer’s language; a definition, not a slogan.
• Can you prove it? — a production declaration, a certificate, a measurable quality promise.
• Whom do I write to? — a visible route to a quote or to contact.

One example of a first screen that answers all three is Karcem’s home page: the site’s own statement gives its color tolerance as ΔE*ab ≤ 1 and says every batch is verified in an accredited laboratory. For a fabric buyer, this does what the adjective “quality fabric” cannot: it gives a number they can test in their own laboratory. The site of Fersan Tekstil does the same job with a production sentence — “We produce our yarn in our own facility” — and says its declarations are audited by independent bodies; the certificates sit on a separate page, with their documents.

Does the buyer wait if the page loads slowly?

Load time is the first item of the first ten seconds, because no question can be answered before the page opens. The measurements on the case pages are taken on a cold load, as the median of three runs: in the 16 September 2026 measurement, Karcem’s main content appeared in 440 milliseconds and Fersan’s in 620 milliseconds; layout shift was close to zero on both sites (0.004 and 0.001). In this site’s own real-user measurement the worst value is 420 milliseconds. These numbers are not a ceiling but a floor: the buyer also opens the same page in a trade fair hall, on a weak mobile connection. The name and definition of the metric are in the glossary: LCP.

Where does the buyer look for product information?

On the product page, and preferably in a table, because the buyer is comparing products and comparison is a job for a table. When we opened the fabric pages of the two cases on 23 September 2026, both presented their products in a real HTML table: Fersan with columns for weight, stretch, application, strength and point of caution; Karcem with columns for composition, weight and typical use. The “Caution” column is a small but meaningful detail: a supplier that states a product’s limits itself does part of the buyer’s screening on their behalf. The comparison with a PDF catalog: product catalog: PDF or web page.

What should a certificate tell the buyer?

A certificate is not a logo but an answer. The buyer’s question is not “do you have a certificate” but “which certificate, with what scope, valid until when, and does it cover the product I am going to order”. When we opened the certificate pages of the two cases on 23 September 2026, both answered this question beyond the logo. Fersan’s page groups its documents under management systems, product safety and recycling, states the issue and validity dates of the documents and also answers the negative question a buyer would ask: to the question of whether it holds a GOTS or organic cotton certificate, it plainly says “no”. Karcem’s page explains that a batch-level claim is documented with a Transaction Certificate issued per order.

Writing “no” for a certificate you do not have looks, at first glance, like the opposite of sales language. Our observation says the opposite: the buyer will ask that question anyway, and a buyer who finds the answer on the site completes their screening and skips a round of emails.

How can quote requests be made easier?

The last question of the first ten seconds is “whom do I write to”. The answer may be an email address, but on most B2B sites it is a quote form. The form should stay short: product, approximate quantity, target market and contact. Each additional required field asks the buyer to give information to a company they have not yet built a relationship with. Error messages should sit next to the field and also be announced to screen readers; on this site touch targets are no smaller than 44 pixels and the keyboard focus ring is 2 pixels — values that are measured and retested in every release. The guide form error messages explains why.

What the form says after it is sent is also part of the first impression. A confirmation sentence saying when and from whom the reply will come sets the company apart from the others on a day when the buyer sends the same request to three suppliers at once. A form that stays silent leaves it unclear whether the request even arrived; in our observation, the buyer moves on to the next name on their list rather than trying a second time.

What drives a buyer away from a site?

The list below is not a survey result; it is a list of the places where we got stuck when we put ourselves in a buyer’s shoes and opened supplier sites:

• A first screen that opens with only a slogan — it does not say what is made.
• A half-translated site — the menu in English, the product description in Turkish.
• Undated certificate logos with no scope.
• Product information available only in a large file that has to be downloaded.
• A contact form that does not say what happened once it was sent.
• A page that loads slowly on a phone or shifts while it loads.

The simplest way to look at your own site with the same eyes: have an acquaintance who has never seen the site and does not speak Turkish open it on their phone, and after ten seconds ask, “what does this company make and whom would you write to?”. If the answer is hesitant, the problem is not the design but where the information is.

What else affects finding customers through a B2B site?

Two more things. The first is findability: if the buyer is going to find you in a search engine or an answer engine, product pages need to be in that language, with that language’s words, and at their own addresses. Google determines a page’s language from the visible text, not from a tag in the code, and recommends a separate address for each language version. Product information can also be marked up with structured data; Google’s product structured data documentation sets out the rules for this.

The second is continuity: a site works not on the day it goes live but for as long as its products, certificates and language versions are kept up to date. An expired certificate or a discontinued product casts a shadow over the rest of the site in the buyer’s eyes. The full skeleton from the foreign buyer’s perspective is in the guide what an exporter’s website should look like.

For a site that presents your products to foreign buyers in their own language, B2B website builds and measures the path to product, certificate and quote in the target market’s language.