Buying Intent
Buying intent is the demonstrated likelihood that a person is close to making a purchase, inferred from their behavior rather than their stated interest. A visitor who reads your pricing page twice and returns the next day shows higher buying intent than one who bounces from the homepage.
How it works in practice
Intent is inferred from behavioral signals collected during the session, not from anything the visitor tells you. The combination of pages viewed, time spent, scroll depth, and return visits produces a score. A high score means the person is in an active decision window, not just gathering information for later. The score is attached to the contact so your team knows who is close to buying.
What it is commonly confused with
It is commonly confused with interest, which is a person's general curiosity about a topic. Interest does not pay the bills; intent does. Someone interested in solar reads blog posts about the industry. Someone with buying intent uses your savings calculator and reads your installation page. The two look similar in analytics but produce very different close rates when you call.
Why it matters to a business owner
Intent is what makes a contact worth calling. A name without intent is a cold list. A name with high intent is a warm lead you can reach while the person is still deciding, which is why intent data, not just contact data, is what turns identification into revenue. Calling a high-intent visitor in the first five minutes is where the conversion lift actually comes from.