Why a Technical Company's Website Fails to Communicate What the Company Does

This article sorts out a frustration that comes up constantly with technical and B2B company websites: the site looks polished, yet what the company does never comes across. To state the conclusion up front, the problem is not the design on its own but the fact that the roles of the top page, the service pages, and the company information page have become mixed together.

Sometimes a website gets a refresh and inquiries still do not increase. The reflex at that point is to ask whether the design is weak or the SEO is weak, but in practice the problem usually stalls at an earlier stage.

• The top page does not convey the overall picture of the company
• The service pages do not make clear what can be requested
• The company information and the representative profile lack the material needed to judge trustworthiness

At technical companies, service descriptions fill up with jargon easily, and handing that to a general-purpose web agency as-is blurs the message. That is exactly why the first thing to fix is not the look but what you communicate and how. KomuraSoft’s website development work also starts by sorting out those roles, all the way through to how the company information is presented, before any design work begins.

flowchart TB
    accTitle: Where to look when inquiries do not increase
    accDescr: A diagram showing that when a website refresh does not increase inquiries, the problem often stalls at a stage earlier than design or SEO, where the top page does not convey the overall picture, the service pages do not make clear what can be requested, and the company information lacks the material needed to judge trustworthiness.
    a0["Inquiries are not increasing"] -.-> a1["There is a place to look before suspecting design or SEO"]
    a1 --> a2["The top page does not convey the overall picture"]
    a1 --> a3["Service pages do not show what can be requested"]
    a2 --> a4["Company information lacks decision material"]

Figure 1: What to fix first is not the look but the earlier question of what you communicate and how.

1. What Is Not Coming Across Is the Role, Not the Company Name

The biggest reason a technical company’s website becomes hard to follow is that the role of each page is ambiguous.

For example, if the top page carries all of

• a description of the business
• a list of services
• a company introduction
• a showcase of past work
• links into the blog
• a contact section

it becomes hard to see what should be read first on that single page.

flowchart TB
    accTitle: What happens when page roles are ambiguous
    accDescr: A diagram showing that putting the business description, service list, company introduction, past work, blog links, and contact section all on the top page makes it hard to see what should be read first on that single page, which is the biggest reason technical websites become hard to understand.
    b1["Put everything on the top page"] --> b2["Business, services, company, past work, blog, contact"]
    b2 --> b3["No way to see what to read first"]
    b3 --> b4["The biggest reason it fails to land is ambiguous page roles"]

Figure 2: It fails to come across not because information is missing but because one page mixes several roles.

1.1 How the Wording Changes

A page with mixed roles almost always has the company’s own attitude as the subject of its sentences. Simply changing the subject to the work the company takes on turns the same description into something else entirely. Here are two pairs from fictional companies.

The “before” sentences are not badly written. The problem is that a competitor in the same business could use them verbatim and they would still work. Any sentence you cannot tell apart from a competitor’s when you read it with the company name hidden is a candidate for rewriting.

Google also recommends putting the words users actually search with into titles, headings, and link text (the text that appears on screen as the link). When the roles a page carries get mixed, those words blur too.¹²

flowchart TB
    accTitle: Changing the subject changes the wording
    accDescr: A diagram showing the fix for pages with mixed roles, where the subject is the company own attitude and any competitor could reuse the sentence verbatim, so the subject changes to the work the company takes on and any sentence that is indistinguishable with the company name hidden becomes a candidate for rewriting.
    c1{"What is the subject of that sentence"}
    c1 -.->|"Our own attitude"| c2["A competitor could use it verbatim"]
    c1 -->|"The work we take on"| c3["One sentence tells you what the company does"]
    c2 --> c4["If it reads the same with the company name hidden, rewrite it"]

Figure 3: Change the subject from our attitude to the work we take on, and the description becomes a different thing.

Knowledge map for this article

On a technical B2B website, the reason visitors cannot tell what the company does is that the roles of the top page, the service page, and the company information page are mixed together. The recommended order for reworking them is to describe the company as a whole briefly on the top page, then make the subject of an inquiry concrete on the service page, and finally reinforce the evidence a visitor uses to judge trustworthiness on the company information page. Packing company information and a list of services into the top page is not recommended, and the state of each page can be checked by whether a single sentence in the H1 heading conveys what the company does. Google recommends placing the words people use in their searches in the H1 and in link text, and the blog also plays the role of guiding readers to the service page through link text.

flowchart LR
    accTitle: Website structure that conveys what a company does
    accDescr: Diagram showing the order in which the top page, the service page, and the company information page divide their roles, and how the H1 heading and link text connect to SEO and to checking the state of each page
    top_page["Homepage"]
    service_page["Service Page"]
    company_info_page["Company and Founder Profile Page"]
    h1_heading["H1 Heading"]
    company_blog["Company Blog"]
    link_text["Link Text"]
    seo["SEO (Search Engine Optimization)"]
    top_page -->|"should come before"| service_page
    service_page -->|"should come before"| company_info_page
    top_page -->|"verified by"| h1_heading
    service_page -.->|"verified by"| h1_heading
    company_info_page -.->|"verified by"| h1_heading
    company_blog -->|"verified by"| link_text
    h1_heading -->|"recommended for"| seo
    link_text -->|"recommended for"| seo
    company_blog -->|"recommended for"| service_page
    top_page -.->|"uses"| seo
    service_page -.->|"uses"| seo
    company_info_page -.->|"uses"| seo
    company_blog -.->|"uses"| seo
    top_page -->|"not recommended for"| company_info_page
    top_page -->|"not recommended for"| service_page

In the diagram a solid line marks a relation that always holds and a dashed line marks a conditional one (the conditions are given per relation on the detail page). The full list of relations (15 in total, with evidence and certainty) and the definitions of the main concepts are collected on the knowledge map detail page (in Japanese). Data: JSON-LD / Turtle

2. The First Thing to Fix Is the Division of Roles Between the Top Page and the Service Pages

Consultations tend to open with “we want to make the top page look nicer,” but the thing to fix is not the top page alone. These are the three to look at, in order.

Rather than finishing everything on the top page, it is more natural to review the copy on the service pages and the company information page at the same time. Fix the three at separate times and the roles get mixed again while you are writing.

3. What Works for Technical B2B Is Separating the Explanations

At technical companies, services that look like the same kind of thing are often different in practice. Windows custom software development, modification of existing software, bug investigation, technical consulting, and website development, for example, each have a different consultation entry point and a different way of being presented.

What matters here is not trying to say everything on one page.

• The top page gives the overall picture
• Service pages are individual consultation entry points
• Company information backs up trustworthiness
• The blog supplies supplementary explanation and material for comparison

Once this separation is in place, readers can judge more easily whether this is a company that takes the kind of question they have.

KomuraSoft went through the same rework on its own site. The structure used to be one in which every page, from the top page through company information, the representative’s background, technical case studies, and the contact page, read as a Windows custom software development site. Three things changed.

1. Standardized the headline wording on website development, SEO, and Windows Custom Software Development
2. Rebuilt the top page around two entry points
3. Added new parent pages for website development, for SEO and inquiry-flow improvement, and for Windows development

The point is not that pages were added but that we avoided looking like an agency that can do anything.

flowchart TB
    accTitle: The three things KomuraSoft redid on its own site
    accDescr: A diagram showing that from a structure in which every page read as a Windows custom software development site, three changes were made - standardizing the headline wording, rebuilding the top page around two entry points, and adding a parent page for each service - with the key point being not to look like an agency that can do anything.
    d0["Every page read as Windows Custom Software Development"] --> d1["1. Standardized the headline wording"]
    d1 --> d2["2. Rebuilt the top page around two entry points"]
    d2 --> d3["3. Added a parent page per service"]
    d3 -.-> d4["The point is not looking like we do everything"]

Figure 4: What we did was not adding pages but sorting out the entry points and the headline wording. On the web side we limited the scope to technical and B2B clients, on the condition that the strengths and case studies on the Windows side would not be weakened. The full story is in how we reframed the site around two clear pillars.

4. Company Information and the Representative Profile Are Decision Material, Not a List of Credentials

The company information page and the representative profile page are not places to simply line up a career history. What readers are looking at is whether it is safe to bring their problem to this company, and how much this person actually understands.³

So the following elements come across better when they are given priority.

• Which technical domains the company is strong in
• What kinds of consultations come in most often
• What it specializes in, and what is out of scope
• How it handles existing assets
• How it organizes technical content so that it can be understood

If the company information presents several lines of business side by side, the representative profile should be written so it is equally clear that this is someone who can distill complex technical content into a structure that communicates. Then the two fit together. The more lines of business a company covers, the more it matters whether the company information and the representative profile are saying the same thing.

flowchart TB
    accTitle: What to write on company information and the representative profile
    accDescr: A diagram showing that company information and the representative profile are not places to line up a career history, that readers are judging whether it is safe to consult and how much the person understands, and that decision material such as strong technical domains, common requests, specialties and what is out of scope, and how existing assets are handled comes across better.
    e1["What readers are looking at"] --> e2["Is it safe to consult and how much do they understand"]
    e2 --> e3["Write decision material, not a career list"]
    e3 --> e4["Strong domains, common requests, scope, existing assets"]
    e4 -.-> e5["Do company info and the profile say the same thing"]

Figure 5: Company information and the representative profile should prioritize decision material for the reader over a career history.

5. Checkpoints You Can Fix Right Away

When you actually sit down to review, this order makes things easier to organize. The person who wrote the copy will always assume it comes across, so decide how you will check at the same time.

Each of these takes five minutes. You can only use the same person once, so ask a different person for each item in turn.

When these five are in place, the website changes from a pretty company brochure into an entrance for consultations.

flowchart TB
    accTitle: How to run the checks
    accDescr: A diagram showing that because the person who wrote the copy assumes it comes across, you decide in advance how to check by showing the page to someone in the company who was not involved in building the site, and since the same person can only be used once you ask a different person for each item, and when all five are in place the site changes from a pretty company brochure into an entrance for consultations.
    f1["Show it to someone not involved in the build"] --> f2["Rewrite where the answer misses or does not come"]
    f2 --> f3["Ask a different person next (same person only once)"]
    f3 --> f4["All five turn a brochure into a consultation entrance"]

Figure 6: Checking means showing the page to someone seeing it for the first time and hearing their answer, not rereading it yourself.

Summary

The most common failure on a technical company’s website is not that information is missing but that it is ambiguous where information belongs. Start by separating the roles of the top page, the service pages, and the company information page, then organize website development on that foundation, and the site moves closer to a presentation that leads to inquiries.

If you feel that what your company does is not coming across, the shortcut is to review the division of roles in the copy before touching the design.

Related Articles

• The Three Places to Fix First on a Site That Gets No Inquiries
• How to Build Service Pages - An Organizing Procedure for Technical B2B
• Website Development
• Company Information

References

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Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about the topic of this article.

We rebuilt our website, so why are inquiries not increasing?

The problem usually stalls at a stage earlier than design or SEO. Concretely, the top page does not convey the overall picture of the company, the service pages do not make clear what can be requested, and the company information and representative profile lack the material a reader needs to judge trustworthiness. The biggest cause is that the role of each page is ambiguous, and the first thing to fix is not the look but what you communicate and how.

How should the top page and the service pages divide the work between them?

The top page is the entrance to the whole company and briefly conveys what the company does, the service pages make the topic of consultation concrete and convey what can be requested, and the company information and representative profile reinforce who is involved, with what experience, and how far their scope extends. If the top page carries the business description, the service list, the company introduction, past work, and blog links all at once, it becomes hard to see what should be read first. The important thing is not to say everything on a single page.

What should a company information page or representative profile contain?

Prioritize decision material for the reader over a list of credentials. Readers are asking whether it is safe to bring their problem to this company and how much this person actually understands, so it comes across better to write about which technical domains the company is strong in, what kinds of consultations come in most often, what it specializes in and what is out of scope, and how it handles existing assets.

Is there a quick way to check whether a website is failing to communicate?

Five checkpoints will tell you. Does the H1 on the top page say in one sentence what the company does, does the opening of the service page make clear what can be consulted on, does the company information page convey who is good at what, does the contact page make clear what kinds of questions are welcome, and can readers get from the blog back to the service pages naturally. When these five are in place, the website changes from a pretty company brochure into an entrance for consultations.

Author Profile

Profile page for the article author.

Go Komura

Representative of KomuraSoft LLC

Focused on Windows software development, technical consulting, and investigations into failures that are difficult to reproduce.