B2B buyers now make first contact with a seller about 61% of the way through their purchase, down from 69%, according to 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report, a survey of nearly 4,000 buyers by a company that sells intent data. The same report says buyers often find details on security, pricing, capabilities and AI training data missing from vendor websites, and that this gap is one reason they call sellers earlier. Missing content is not a design problem. It is a writing problem that design cannot fix.
This guide covers who writes each part of a B2B site, the writing order, a page brief template, pair writing with experts and the handover to design. It draws on Nielsen Norman Group research, the UK Government Digital Service and survey data from 6sense and the Content Marketing Institute.
Why copy has to come before design
Nielsen Norman Group's Page Laubheimer put it plainly in 2017: placeholder text such as Lorem Ipsum is convenient early in design, but creates problems when the real content has different characteristics. In practice that means a three-word headline slot that must hold a nine-word claim, or a grid built for six features when the product has four.
The deeper reason is that the words decide the structure. NN/g's eyetracking research, summarised by Kate Moran in 2020 across 13 years and more than 500 participants, found that people rarely read online, and that almost every gaze pattern seen in 2006, including the F-pattern, was still present in 2019. Kara Pernice's 2017 article on the F-pattern says people fall into it when text is unformatted and they are not interested enough to read every word. Her fix is editorial: put the most important points in the first two paragraphs, start headings with the most informative words, and make sure a reader who sees only the first two words of a heading still gets the gist.
A designer can make room for a heading, but cannot decide which two words lead it. So the sequence is words first, then wireframes built with those words, then visual design. The strategy document that comes before both is covered in how to write a B2B website strategy before anyone opens Figma; this post starts where that one ends, with an approved page map.
Who writes what on a B2B website
The most common failure is unclear ownership, not bad writing: the founder rewrites the homepage at midnight and nobody owns the security page. The Content Marketing Institute's 16th annual B2B survey, of more than 1,000 marketers and published in October 2025, found that 96% of organisations create thought leadership content, yet in many companies fewer than 5% of employees contribute to it. Expertise is spread across the company; writing time is not.
Separate three jobs: the person who writes, the people who know, and the person who approves. On GOV.UK, content designers write all their copy and consult or pair write with subject experts, as the Office for National Statistics described in 2017.
| Content | Drafted by | Facts supplied by | Approved by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Message hierarchy and homepage | Lead writer | Founder, sales lead | Founder or CEO |
| Product and capability pages | Lead writer | Product manager, solutions engineer | Product lead |
| Pricing and packaging | Lead writer | Sales lead, finance | Founder or revenue lead |
| Security and trust | Lead writer, pair writing | Security or compliance lead | Security or compliance lead |
| Case studies | Lead writer | Customer, account manager | Customer, then marketing lead |
| Integrations and technical pages | Solutions engineer | Engineering | Product lead |
| About, careers, legal | Lead writer, legal for terms | Founders, HR, counsel | Founder, counsel |
Source: our recommended split, built on GDS and ONS descriptions of content designers and subject experts
The lead writer. One person, in-house or agency, writes or edits every page so the site has one voice. They need to be good at asking questions and cutting words, not to be the expert.
Subject experts. Product, security and sales people supply facts, objections and proof. They approve accuracy, not tone. Integration pages are the exception: the engineer who built the integration drafts, and the writer edits.
The order to write the pages in
Most teams write the homepage first. That is backwards: the homepage summarises claims made in full on deeper pages, so writing it first means inventing claims the other pages then have to support. We would write in this order.
| Step | What gets written | Why at this point |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Message hierarchy: category, problem, outcome, proof | Every page borrows from it |
| 2 | Page briefs for every page in the map | Sets the job and proof before drafting |
| 3 | Proof inventory: case studies, logos, numbers, quotes | Shows which claims are allowed |
| 4 | Product and capability pages | The detailed argument the homepage summarises |
| 5 | Pricing, security and integrations | The pages 6sense says buyers often cannot find |
| 6 | Case studies and comparison pages | Need customer approval, so start the clock early |
| 7 | Homepage | A summary of steps 1 to 6 |
| 8 | Navigation labels, metadata, form and button copy | Depends on final page names |
Source: our recommended order; the 6sense finding is from its 2025 Buyer Experience Report
Start case studies in week one, even though they are step six. The customer's approval is outside your control, so book the interviews the day the page map is signed.
Pricing and security are not optional pages. Buyers who cannot find these details contact sellers earlier, but 6sense also found 94% had ordered their shortlist by preference during selection, so a site that leaves questions unanswered can be filtered out before anyone calls. If pricing cannot be published, write the page that explains how it is built and what drives it.
The page brief template
A brief turns a row in the page map into something a writer can draft against and an approver can check against. It is one page, written before the copy.
| Field | What to write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Page and URL | Name, URL, parent page | Security, /security, under Company |
| Reader | One main audience, at most one secondary | IT security reviewer; procurement second |
| Question answered | In the buyer's words, from interviews | "Where is our data stored, and who can see it?" |
| Job | One sentence with a verb | Show the reviewer data handling meets their standard |
| Primary action | The one next step | Download the security pack |
| Key message | One sentence the reader should remember | Customer data stays in the EU and is encrypted at rest |
| Proof required | Named evidence, and whether it exists yet | Certification letter (exists); subprocessor list (to write) |
| Expert and approver | Who supplies facts, who signs off, by when | Security lead, pair writing session, approval by day 10 |
Source: our template; fields adapted from GDS pair writing (user needs and acceptance criteria)
Acceptance criteria are the hidden field. In the GDS pair writing method, Sue Davis describes agreeing "user acceptance criteria" before writing: the information the content must include to be useful, plus anything legally required. Put them under the question. When the draft answers every criterion, it is done, which stops the endless "can we add one more thing" round.
Key message, not key messages. If the brief has three key messages, the page has three jobs. Split it or cut two.
Pair writing: getting experts to contribute without writing
Experts are busy and most do not want to write. Pair writing solves both problems. Davis's 2016 post on the GDS blog sets out four steps: agree user needs and acceptance criteria, agree a structure ordered by the questions users ask, write together while the content designer removes jargon, and gather feedback against strict deadlines. The subject expert starts at the keyboard to get their knowledge down; the content designer challenges jargon and asks questions. The Digital Marketplace team used the method to write 17 guides in under three months.
The Welsh government's GOV.WALES guidance, last updated in January 2025, adds the practical limits: sessions of no more than an hour, swapping who types about every 15 minutes, getting the facts down first and leaving formatting for later. The content designer then edits and formats, and the subject expert gives the final fact check.
For a B2B site we would send the brief a day ahead, run one session per page, edit the same day and return the draft with a deadline. One hour of a security lead's time can produce the page that would otherwise slip.
Writing rules that survive scanning
Experts scan too. Hoa Loranger's 2017 NN/g study with domain experts in science, technology and medicine found that highly educated readers want succinct content that is easy to scan; one IT manager disliked invented brand terms he did not recognise. Her recommendations become rules:
Short sentences. No more than 15 to 20 words, one idea per paragraph.
Reading level. Grades 10 to 12 for expert audiences, grades 6 to 8 for general ones.
Familiar words. Use the term your buyer uses, not the one your product team invented. Shared industry jargon is fine; internal brand terms are not.
Lead with the conclusion. Amy Schade's 2018 NN/g article on the inverted pyramid says to put the most important information, even the conclusion, first, then rank details from broad to narrow, and front-load every heading and paragraph.
Name the author where readers expect one. Google's guidance on people-first content, updated in October 2026, asks creators to make clear who wrote content, how and why, and calls trust the most important part of E-E-A-T. That means bylines on articles and case studies.
Review and sign-off without the content stalling
Davis's GDS post warns that feedback without strict deadlines drags on and delays publication. A commenter on the post reconciles review comments within two weeks of the first draft, accepting each change or explaining why not.
We would set three rules. One approver per page, named in the brief. Review against the brief, not taste: a comment counts if the page fails a criterion or is inaccurate. And a fixed window, such as three working days per round and two rounds per page, after which silence counts as approval.
Who writes the copy also changes the budget, as our post on website redesign cost and who writes the copy sets out.
How finished copy hands over to design
Copy is handed over as a structured document: headings in order, body copy, button labels, form copy, metadata and every piece of proof with its approval status. The designer then wireframes with real headline lengths, real feature counts and real form fields.
For CMS pages such as case studies or integrations, write the copy as fields rather than a page: title, summary, customer, industry, challenge, result, quote. That lets the marketing team publish the next one without a designer, which our post on building a marketing website the team can actually edit covers in detail. Design decisions that follow from the copy, such as how the hero and the demo path are laid out, are in the nine decisions that shape B2B website design.
Our four-week marketing-site process keeps design behind the words for this reason. We build marketing sites in Webflow, so we lean towards CMS-structured content, but the order applies on any platform.
What this means for your next B2B website
Treat content as the critical path. Sign the page map, brief every page, book experts and customers on day one, write the deep pages before the homepage, then let design start on real words. If a page's proof does not exist yet, find out in week one. Our marketing websites service page explains how we scope copy and build together.
