How High-Net-Worth Clients Actually Research Before They Buy

Quick answer: High-net-worth clients research carefully before they buy, and increasingly they do it with AI. A 2026 BCG and Altagamma study of more than 10,000 luxury consumers found that 87% use AI tools weekly and most of them use AI to research luxury, yet a brand's own website remains their most trusted source. People also judge a website's visual appeal in around 50 milliseconds and abandon slow mobile pages, so fast, beautifully presented websites and quick, personal replies to enquiries make the biggest difference.

There's a charming myth in the luxury world that wealthy clients don't really do research, because they simply "have people for that", point at the most expensive option and wait for someone to gift wrap it. I love the image, but the data tells a very different story. Your clients are researching you right now, they're doing it faster and more critically than you might think, and they're increasingly doing it with a little help from AI.

They're asking AI about you

In July 2026, BCG and Altagamma published their latest study of more than 10,000 luxury consumers, and the headline made me sit up. 87% of them use AI tools every week, 40% use them every day, and around 80% of those users are already using AI to research luxury, asking for recommendations and comparing options before they ever reach a brand.

My favourite finding was about trust. AI now sits alongside Google and almost level with word of mouth as a trusted source, but the one source luxury consumers trust more than any other is a brand's own website. So whether a client hears about you from a friend, a search or a chatbot, your website is still where they go to make up their mind (which is exactly why every post on this blog opens with a quick answer).

You have about as long as a blink

Researchers at Carleton University found that people judge a website's visual appeal in around 50 milliseconds which is a quicker than it took you to read this sentence. Rather annoyingly for anyone with a tired homepage, those snap judgements matched the ones people made after a much longer look. Stanford's Web Credibility Project is also widely quoted as finding that three quarters of people judge a company's credibility on its web design.

In luxury terms, your is your front door, your concierge desk and your packaging all at once, and a discerning client will notice a stock photo the way they'd notice a lipstick mark on a champagne glass.

Patience is not a luxury trait

Google found that 53% of mobile visits are abandoned if a page takes longer than three seconds to load. Deloitte then showed that making a mobile site just a tenth of a second faster lifted conversions by 8.4% in retail and 10.1% in travel, with retail customers spending 9.2% more on top.

A tenth of a second is quicker than a blink, and yet in travel it was worth around ten percent more bookings. If time is the one thing your clients genuinely can't buy more of, they certainly won't spend it watching your hero image load.

Your website lives on their phone

More than 60% of all web traffic worldwide now comes from mobile phones, and across the premium and luxury websites we look after, the figure is an average of 64%. Business owners are always surprised by this, usually because they admire their website on a lovely big desktop screen, while their clients are scrolling it in the back of a taxi, at the school gate or in an airport lounge. For most of them, the mobile version simply is your website.

Don't forget the assistant

Here the published data runs a little thin, so I'll lean on twelve years of experience instead. A surprising number of luxury enquiries come not from the client but from a PA, a family office or a concierge who has been asked to "find out more". They want availability, what's included and something easy to forward, and if you make their life easier you'll very often find yourself at the top of their shortlist.

The reply is where you win or lose

Harvard Business Review once tested more than 2,000 companies by sending them enquiries and timing the replies. Those that answered within an hour were nearly seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker than those that waited even an hour longer. The average reply took 42 hours, and almost a quarter of companies never replied at all, which I imagine did wonders for their inbox and very little for their bank balance.

Your first reply is the first real taste of what it's like to be your client, so make it quick, make it personal and make it sound like a human being.

So what does this mean for you?

Your clients will look you up (quite possibly with AI), judge you in the blink of an eye, do it on their phone and leave quietly if anything feels slow or dated. The lovely thing is that all of this can be measured and fixed, and the results tend to show up quickly: when we built Triple M Charters, enquiries increased by 77%.

If you're curious how your own website measures up, that's exactly what our Discovery & Strategy Phase is for. We dig into your speed, your mobile experience and how quickly enquiries turn into conversations, then hand you a clear plan for what to fix first.

Sources

• BCG and Altagamma, "Luxury Is Back on Track, With Healthier Foundations (And AI Is Here To Stay)", True-Luxury Global Consumer Insights, 12th edition (July 2026).

• Lindgaard, G. and colleagues, Carleton University, "Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!", Behaviour & Information Technology, 25, 115–126 (2006), as reported by Nature.

• Stanford Web Credibility Project, led by B.J. Fogg (widely cited figure on design and credibility).

• Google, "The Need for Mobile Speed" (2016), summarised on Think with Google.

• Deloitte and 55 for Google, "Milliseconds Make Millions" (2020).

• Oldroyd, J., McElheran, K. and Elkington, D., "The Short Life of Online Sales Leads", Harvard Business Review (March 2011).

• StatCounter, mobile share of global web traffic, Q2 2025, via Statista.