A customer emails you to ask for one value, and the answer is sitting in your PDF catalog. You've probably seen this. When the catalog lives only in a PDF, buyers can't find the model and specs on your site. Most will leave, or send an email to ask. The first costs you an inquiry. The second adds a round of back-and-forth. As for how many buyers you lose, no survey measures that directly.
Buyers come to your site to check specs
Technical buyers visit your website mainly to get specs they can verify. In a US survey of engineers (2024), datasheets were the content format wanted most: 40% of all respondents and 56% of hardware buyers.
Among hardware buyers, 37% want technical articles and 31% want CAD files. They want something they can use to compare and to verify, not a company profile.
On your product page, put the specs first and move the company profile further down.
When they can't find it, buyers have two options
If buyers can't find the value they need, they either leave or send an inquiry email. Below, we separate what has survey numbers from what is only opinion.
What has survey numbers
The 2026 edition of the same engineer survey series asked why buyers first contact sales: 26% asked about price or availability, and 23% wanted to verify what they found online. These are the things your site didn't make clear, so buyers had to email.
What is opinion only, with no survey
- A consultant article from Bootstrap Creative lists what frustrates buyers on industrial B2B sites: missing product details, outdated or incomplete technical documents, poor site search, and manuals that require an account to view.
- A consultant article from RefractROI also notes that buyers arrive with a specific question in mind, and when the navigation doesn't match it, they go back to the search results in about 6 seconds.
Use these as things to check. Try your own site search to see if it finds a model number, and see whether your manuals need registration to open.
The 4 types of buyers a PDF catalog misses
What a PDF catalog most easily misses is the person who only wants to confirm one value. The 4 types below are our inference from the data above. They are not survey results.
- People checking a single spec. If they have to flip through the whole catalog to find one value, many won't.
- People comparing models side by side. Engineers choose models by spec, so they need several models in one table.
- People checking on a small screen. On a phone, a PDF means zooming and dragging, and tables are hard to read.
- People who need CAD or drawings. In the 2026 survey, 34% would share their details in exchange for CAD files. A PDF catalog usually doesn't have them.
Use these 4 types of buyers as a test: go through your catalog and see which of them can't find what they need today.
Locking the file behind a form also turns people away
Putting a PDF behind a form makes some buyers give up. In the Demand Gen Report content preferences survey (2024), 51% of buyers said there are too many steps to get content, up from 30% in 2023.
Put the spec table right on the page, ungated. Keep the "give us your details first" step for CAD files or full technical documents.
The fix: move the specs onto the web first
The smallest change is to break the PDF's information out onto web pages and keep the PDF as a download. Follow these 4 steps:
- One web page per model, with specs as a web table.
- The original datasheet PDF on the same page, ready to download.
- Model numbers and specs that site search can find.
- How you quote, lead times, and minimum order quantity, placed where buyers can see them.
When the 4 steps are done, go through our B2B Catalog Website Checklist: 10 Features to Check item by item to see what's still missing.
If you want to turn your catalog into a website buyers can search, compare, and send inquiries from, take a look at our catalog website service, or send us a message.
About these numbers
- No survey directly asks "what share of buyers did you lose because they couldn't find specs." So this article keeps what has data and what is only opinion apart.
- The Bootstrap Creative and RefractROI pieces are consultant opinion, not surveys. They agree with each other, but neither gives a sample size, so use them only as things to check, not as survey results.
- "The 4 types of buyers a PDF catalog misses" is an inference from the data above. It is not a survey result.
- The Demand Gen Report survey asks about content, not the whole website, so treat it only as supporting evidence. Its sample size is also not disclosed in the report.
Sources
- GlobalSpec, 2024 State of Marketing to Engineers, 2024, overall n=927, hardware buyers n=448. Report PDF
- TREW Marketing × GlobalSpec, 2026 State of Marketing to Engineers, 2026, n=708 (reasons for contacting sales), n=787 (content buyers would share details for). Report PDF
- Demand Gen Report, 2024 Content Preferences Benchmark Survey, 2024, sample size not disclosed. Report PDF
- Consultant opinion articles (not surveys): Bootstrap Creative, RefractROI