Before
Would not buyIT lead · StakeholderDana Okafor, 41
Left at the footer, step 6
“No security page, no word on SSO. I can’t send this to procurement.”
Find what makes buyers walk away.
Barbwire is AI website testing with buyer personas built from your site. Watch them explore your pages and see what makes them hesitate or leave.
Your first test is free.
Somebody almost bought from you today.
She came from your ad. She read the headline twice. She opened Pricing to find a plan for her team of six. She found “Contact sales” and closed the tab.
You won’t get an email about her. In your analytics she is one more exit on /pricing. Your recordings show her scroll, stop, and leave. They can’t show what she was looking for.
Your team can’t see it either. You know the product too well, so every sentence on the page makes sense to you.
Testing with real people finds this, and it’s worth doing. It also takes weeks to recruit and costs real money. Most small teams run it once a year.
We built Barbwire for the weeks in between. It reads your site and builds personas of the people who visit it. Each one has a reason to be there and a reason to leave. One walks your real site and tells you what it thinks at each step.
Pricing · yourproduct.com
StarterSolo$19
Team5–10 seatsContact sales
Business50+ seats$899
She wanted to buy. The page didn’t answer her.
We build your personas. Then they’re yours.
Paste your site.
Give us any public page. You install nothing.
We build personas for your site.
Barbwire reads what you sell, who it’s for and what they use today. Then it builds five buyers for that market, not stock profiles: an ideal buyer, a skeptic, a borderline fit, a skimmer, and someone checking it for their boss.
Send one in.
It opens your real site in a real browser. It reads, scrolls and clicks, and says what it thinks at every step.
See where they stop.
You get a yes or no, a replay of every step, and the fixes ranked worst first. Share it with one link.
Fix it. Send them again.
Your personas stay saved. Send the same one after each change and see if the no turns into a yes.
Every persona has a reason to be here today
IT lead · StakeholderDana Okafor, 41
at a 300-person logistics company
- Why today
- Her ops team wants this tool. She has to approve it by Friday.
- Uses now
- Spreadsheets and a vendor that IT already approved.
- Must see
- A security page, SSO, where data is stored.
- Deal breakers
- No security documents. “Contact sales” for every answer.
Bring your own persona.
You know the one. The CFO who asks for an annual discount on every call. The developer who scrolls straight past your hero to find the API docs. Take any persona we built and give it that one thing in a line, like “buys because of the GitHub integration”. Then send them in and see if your site is ready for them.
Fix it. Send the same persona again.
Your personas stay saved. After you change the page, send the same person in from the same start page. You see if the no became a yes.
You changed
A Security link in the footer, with SSO and where data is stored.
Send again
After
Would buyIT lead · StakeholderDana Okafor, 41
Decided on /security, step 5
“SSO, data in the EU, and a page I can forward. Sending it to procurement.”
Same site, different persona, different reason to leave
- Barbed wire
- They want to believe you and keep looking for proof. They can’t find it.
- Landmine
- They find a reason it isn’t for them and leave on the spot.
B2B SaaS · project tool
IT lead · StakeholderDana Okafor
Approving the tool for her ops team.
LandmineFooter, step 6The footer has a blog and a careers page. Security, SSO and data location appear nowhere.
“I can’t send this to procurement. Next vendor.”
B2B SaaS · same project tool
Design studio owner · Borderline fitTomás Reyes
Runs a 5-person studio on a spreadsheet.
Barbed wireHomepage and Customers, step 4Every screenshot shows a 200-person org chart. Every customer story is a large company.
“Is this built for a team my size? I can’t tell.”
Online shop · furniture
Sofa shopper · SkimmerJana Horká
Came from an Instagram ad, three minutes to spare.
Barbed wireProduct page, then FAQ, step 3Delivery cost isn’t on the product page or in the FAQ.
“A 40 kg sofa. What does delivery cost? I’ll check somewhere else.”
Online shop · running shoes
Amateur runner · Ideal buyerHana Sato
Training for her first half marathon.
Barbed wire“Size guide” link, step 5The size guide link opens the homepage.
“I still don’t know if a 39 runs small.”
Would buy if she finds a size chart on the product page.
Agency · web studio
Head of marketing · Ideal buyerEva Marková
Works at a mid-size brand, budget approved.
Barbed wireWork page, step 7Six case studies with big logos and nice mockups. None says what changed after launch.
“Pretty work. Did any of it sell anything?”
Agency · performance marketing
CFO · StakeholderKarel Dvořák
Checking the agency for his CMO.
LandmineServices, then Contact, step 5“Let’s talk” is the only path. No price range anywhere.
“I’m not booking a call to learn if this is 5k or 50k.”
Developer tool · API monitoring
Backend engineer · SkepticSam Kowalski
Pays for a tool he half likes.
Barbed wireHomepage and menu, step 2Every button says “Book a demo”. No link to docs or a code sample.
“Show me the API first. Then maybe we talk.”
SaaS · invoicing for freelancers
Freelance translator · Ideal buyerElla Novak
Does her invoices on Sunday nights.
Barbed wire“See how it works” link, step 4The link opens a 404. She finds the tour from the menu.
“Broken link, a bit worrying. The pricing is clear, though. I’d try it.”
Made-up personas on made-up sites. Your personas come from your site, and every finding links to the step and screenshot where it happened.
Each persona tells you where they stopped, and why
Each fix names the page, the change to make, and who it costs you. Copy it into your tracker. When it ships, send the same persona again.
Operations lead · SkepticMaya Lindqvist, 38
at a 40-person agency
“Nice promise. I looked for one real customer story and found a logo wall.”
Fix these first
Barbed wire/customers
Add one customer story with a name, a team size and a result.
Costs you: Skeptic, Stakeholder
Landmine/integrations
Say when the Asana integration ships, or link the Zapier workaround.
Costs you: Skeptic
See which buyers each page costs you
Send every type of persona. Each page that stops one gets a mark. You see where you lose the buyers you want most, so you know which page to fix this sprint.
Find where they stopWho you lose where
You lose 4 of 6 ideal buyers, most on /pricing and /security.
Share of that type stuck hereall of themBarbed wireLandmine
| Page | Ideal buyer6 personas | Stakeholder2 personas | Skeptic3 personas | Skimmer2 personas | Stuck here |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /pricing | 3 of 6: Barbed wire on /pricing | 1 of 2: Barbed wire on /pricing | 4 | ||
| /customers | 3 of 3: Barbed wire on /customers | 3 | |||
| /security | 1 of 6: Landmine on /security | 1 of 2: Barbed wire on /security | 2 | ||
| /integrations | 1 of 3: Landmine on /integrations | 1 | |||
| Would buy | 2 of 6 | 1 of 2 | 0 of 3 | 2 of 2 |
Fix these first:/pricingstopped 3 of your 6 ideal buyers.
Heat maps need visitors. Barbwire brings one.
Keep your heat maps, recordings and funnels. They show what your real visitors did. Barbwire adds one persona who says what it thinks at each step, and it works on a page that launched this morning.
Your analytics, heat maps and recordings
- Show where real visitors clicked, scrolled and left
- Get better as traffic grows
- Cover all your visitors at once
- Show you a number changed
Barbwire
- Shows what one persona was looking for at that moment
- Works before launch, with zero traffic
- Follows one persona: the IT lead, the skimmer, the skeptic
- Gives you a likely reason in words, with a screenshot
How to use them together
Your heat map shows people leaving the pricing page.
Send in the persona that matches them. It says it couldn’t find a plan for a small team.
Fix the page. Then watch your analytics to see if it worked.
The check you run before real users do
Barbwire catches the obvious reasons a persona would doubt your page or leave it. It finds them before you pay for the traffic.
It doesn’t predict your conversion rate. It doesn’t replace talking to your customers. Use it to decide what to fix first and what to test with real people.
Every finding links to the step and the screenshot where it happened. If you disagree with a persona, check its reasoning.
See how to test a SaaS website with AI personasStep 7/customersBarbed wire
Operations lead · Skeptic
“Eight logos and no story. I can’t tell if a team like mine got a result.”
Why: needs proof from a similar agency before they book a demo.
Start free. Pay when you check every change.
You pay for the runs you send. A run is one persona walking your site once.
See pricingBefore you paste a link
Isn’t AI feedback always too nice?
Our personas start doubtful and lose interest when the page gives them nothing new. Every run includes a skeptic built to say no. Leaving is a normal result.
Are these my personas, or generic ones?
Yours. We build them from your site: what you sell, who it’s for, and what they use today. You pick which one goes in, and you can make a variant of any of them with one line, like the buyer you meet on every sales call.
I already use Hotjar, Clarity or GA. Why add this?
Keep them. They show what real people did. Barbwire gives you one persona’s reasons in words, and it works before you have traffic.
Can it check my signup path?
Up to the form. A persona who leans toward buying clicks your signup, trial or demo button and tells you what the next page says to them. One who gives up tells you where. It doesn’t type into forms, so it never sends one.
What counts as a run?
One persona sent through your site once, up to 15 steps. Sending the same persona again after a fix counts as one more. Free covers 10 runs.
Will it fill in my forms or create fake sign-ups?
No. A persona reads, scrolls and clicks links. It never types or submits a form, and it stays on your domain.
Does it work if my product is behind a login?
It tests public pages: your homepage, pricing, docs and anything a stranger can open. It doesn’t log in.
What if my site blocks bots?
If a captcha or bot check stops the persona, the report says so. It doesn’t try to get around it.
How long does it take?
Your personas are ready in about 20 seconds. A run takes about a minute, and at most 6 minutes on slow pages. Patience is 8 to 15 steps, based on the persona; a scroll, a jump to a section or a search on the page counts as half a step, and a persona who gets keen earns a few more. You watch it live. Your plan sets how many tests run at once: 1 on Free, 2 on Pro and 5 on Team.
What happens to my data?
We store the pages the persona saw, its screenshots and its notes, so you can open the replay later. When you delete your account, all of it goes with it.
Can I share the report with my team or a client?
Share it with your team: everyone in your organization sees the same reports. For a client, export the report as a PDF.
Who is behind Barbwire?
VectorLabs.
Your visitors already hit something. Find out what.
Paste a link. Meet the people who visit your site. Watch one walk through it.
Find where they stop
Any public page. Nothing to install.