A noemica study · LED Lighting Supply · ledlightingsupply.com

What your site quietly disqualifies.

This isn’t a UX bug report. It’s an ICP test. The question on the table: can ledlightingsupply.com absorb a customer segment you don’t currently serve, before you spend ad budget to acquire them?

The reframe

Two participants ran the same path. One walked away ready to call sales. The other was filtered out by a single decision the site doesn’t know it’s making. Every dollar pointed at the second buyer’s segment is paying to deliver people to a door they can’t open.

01One axis. Two outcomes.#

The study held one variable: how confident the participant felt about commercial lighting. Same site, same goal. Only the vocabulary the buyer arrived with changed. That alone produced two clean tracks. Insiders (lumens, foot-candles, IES files) felt the site was built for them. Outsiders (my warehouse is dim, my electric bill is too high) kept hitting the same wall.

02The two participants#

Outsider track
Marcus Thibodeau
Owner, single-location barbershop, Austin TX. No prior commercial-lighting experience. Arrived from a Facebook ad.
research mode · tech-comfortable consumer · nervous around jargon
Insider track
Derek Osman
Plant maintenance supervisor, mid-size manufacturing facility, Ohio. Has done lighting retrofits before. Came in via a peer recommendation.
spec sheet in hand · skeptical of fluff · efficient

03The same calculator. Two reactions.#

Both found the LED Indoor Lighting Calculator under Resources. The site pitches it as self-serve. The promise lands very differently depending on what the buyer brings to it.

Marcus arrives at the calculator

I found ‘Calculators’ under Resources. That actually sounds promising, might help me figure out what I need without a contractor.Marcus Thibodeau · turn 3 · sentiment B
Calculator landing page on ledlightingsupply.com as Marcus first sees it
Calculator landing, Marcus, step 38

Derek arrives at the calculator

Found the LED Indoor Lighting Calculator and I’m already entering numbers. Exactly the kind of tool I was hoping they’d have.Derek Osman · turn 1 · sentiment B
The same calculator on ledlightingsupply.com as Derek encounters it
Same calculator, Derek, step 17

04The vocabulary wall#

Two fields decide everything: Lumens of Chosen Fixture and Foot Candles Required. The first assumes you’ve already picked a product. The second assumes a target most non-specialists have never heard of.

The calculator's input fields including 'Lumens of Chosen Fixture' and 'Foot Candles Required'
The fields that disqualify the under-confident buyer. To answer either, you must already know the answer.marcus_thibodeau · run_08fb9c67 · step 40
The calculator seemed perfect, but it’s asking for ‘Lumens of Chosen Fixture’ and ‘Foot Candles Required’, terms I don’t know offhand. I don’t have a fixture picked out yet, no idea what foot candles my barbershop needs. I’m hitting a wall right when I thought I was making progress.Marcus Thibodeau · turn 4 · sentiment F

The tool meant to bring outsiders in requires insider knowledge to use.

05Where Marcus goes when he hits the wall#

He doesn’t quit. He follows a link to a foot-candle blog article and scrolls an alphabetical table from Airplane Hangars to Vehicle Storage. He lands on “Retail Stores,” the closest thing to what he is.

Foot-candle recommendations table covering retail subcategories with no barbershop, salon, or personal-service entry
Department Store, Discount Warehouse, Drug/Convenience, Merchandising, Shopping Mall. No barbershop. No salon. No personal-service category at all.A buyer whose business doesn’t appear on the map cannot use the map.marcus_thibodeau · run_08fb9c67 · step 55
The site has genuine promise. But the calculator demanded inputs I didn’t have. I chased that through a blog article, scrolled an alphabetical table, landed on ‘Retail Stores’ that covered department stores and drug stores. Zero mention of barbershops, salons, or personal-service spaces. The knowledge base has a gap exactly where my use case lives.Marcus Thibodeau · final reflection · sentiment D

06Where Derek goes when he hits the same site#

UFO high-bay product page with a 'Download IES Files' link
“Download IES Files” on a UFO high-bay product page. Invisible to Marcus. To Derek, the entire validation of the supplier in three words. IES files are photometric calculation inputs; offering them assumes the buyer runs AGi32 or DIALux.derek_osman · run_970d23b5 · step 39
This spec sheet is exactly what I needed: power factor, THD, die-cast aluminum housing, IES files available for download. That last part is a serious sign these guys know their stuff.Derek Osman · turn 4 · sentiment A
Industrial-factories page with energy savings, IK10 impact resistance, UL844 explosion-proof callouts
Deeper in, a dedicated industrial-factories page: “60% energy savings,” “IK10 impact resistance withstands forklifts,” “UL844 explosion-proof.”Closes the deal for Derek. Invisible to Marcus, who doesn’t know to look for it.derek_osman · run_970d23b5 · step 43

Derek leaves ready to call the sales team. Marcus leaves uncertain whether the site is for someone like him.

If you’re still reading

This is what noemica produces in roughly thirty minutes of operator setup. The same instrument tests any new-segment hypothesis you have, on any environment you can point participants at: a live site, a static product line, a retail clone, a checkout, a landing page that doesn’t exist yet.

If your team is debating whether to chase a new buyer segment, the question to answer first is whether the surface they’ll land on can hold them. Run that test before you spend the ad budget. Reach out at seb@noemica.io.

07The vocabulary gap, named#

Marcus arrived speaking the language of his problem. The site only speaks the language of its solution.

How under-confident buyers describe their need
  • my warehouse is too dim
  • workers say the bay is dark
  • my electric bill is too high
  • fluorescents flicker, look dated
  • I want the space to feel brighter
  • I have a 6,000 sq ft feed store
  • my barbershop has eight old fixtures
What the site asks them to specify
  • lumens of chosen fixture
  • foot-candles required for the space
  • color temperature (3500 / 4000 / 5000K)
  • beam angle (60° / 90° / 110°)
  • IK rating, IP rating, CRI 80+
  • UFO high bay vs. linear high bay
  • UL844 hazardous-location compliance
left column · the customer’s vocabulary→ no bridge ←right column · the site’s vocabulary

Whoever can mentally jump from the left column to the right is your customer today. Whoever can’t, isn’t, even if they have the budget, the need, and the intent. The vocabulary is the gate.

08What the site quietly disqualifies#

Across nine participants, a pattern: under-confident buyers got out only by being more persistent than real visitors would be. Each line below is a potential customer segment.

Derek Osman plant maintenance supervisor · Ohio · had spec sheet in hand
A · “speaks my language”
Carlos Mendez auto repair shop owner · two locations · just wanted a price
A · “found it without anyone wasting my time”
Sandra Kowalczyk property manager · commercial office park · no prior lighting experience
C · made it because she found the help form
Marcus Thibodeau barbershop owner · Austin · came from a Facebook ad
C · “left a little deflated”
Aiden Cho junior coordinator · CRE firm · handed the task with zero prep
C · “got there through persistence, not the site”
Tom Whitfield semi-retired GC · small commercial jobs · no spec vocabulary
F · circled the catalog without ever landing

Three customer segments your site isn’t catching:

  • Small B2B operators upgrading their own space (barbershops, retail, gyms, restaurants). Budget and need, no vocabulary.
  • General contractors on one-off small commercial jobs. They want a phone-friendly entry, not a self-serve catalog.
  • Junior coordinators and ops staff handed lighting tasks for the first time. They judge your brand on whether the site makes them feel capable.

09What this means for ad spend#

If you’re paying to acquire customers in any of those three segments (Facebook ads to small business owners, Google ads on broad terms, LinkedIn campaigns aimed at junior facilities staff), this study identifies the moment the click goes to waste. The calculator. The foot-candle table. The gap between problem-language and solution-language.

The site converts insiders well. It has a vocabulary onboarding problem. The under-confident participants asked for a single page that takes their use case in plain English (“I run a barbershop”, “I have a 6,000 sq ft feed store”) and walks them across to a recommended fixture. A bridge.

The takeaway frame

noemica is not a UX bug-finder. It tests whether your site can carry a customer segment before you spend the ad budget to acquire them. For LED Lighting Supply, the gap is a small-business onboarding layer translating problem-language into solution-language. For your business, the same instrument will surface a different gap. It will surface one.

Full study and participant transcripts: noemica.io/studies/stu_37b6ed1e

Take it with you
If you’d rather just write, seb@noemica.io.