Should you list prices on your Website?
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A question that comes up all the time in the Facebook groups I’m in or when people join my group is whether to list prices on your website or not.
It’s a great question, and there is often a lot of uncertainty around which is the best option for you.
And this topic clearly strikes a chord with people because the debate is usually pretty intense!
There are 2 trains of through on this:
Include your prices
Skip them and leave the pricing conversation until later
But which is the best option?
As I mentioned, this is a hotly debated topic and everyone has their opinions, but the answer isn’t so clear cut.
It really depends on your situation, your industry, your packages, your values, how good your sales copy is, how good you are at selling on a call, and more.
There’s no right or wrong, just right or wrong for you.
And if you are just after some tips to improve your service page, check back next week and I’ll share some with you!
Let’s explore this some more so you can decide whether listing your pricing on your website is the best fit for you or not.
Including Prices on your Website
I’m firmly in the camp of listing prices on websites.
I’ve always felt this way about prices on a website for the reasons I’ll share in a moment, but I’ve also tested listing prices and excluding them over a period of time to see what happens and what works best for me.
I definitely prefer to be up from and transparent when it comes to pricing.
When I didn’t have prices listed on my website, I had about a third more people booking discovery calls through my website design page, but I found that the people who booked discovery calls were more likely to be shocked at the price, or would be the brain pickers who were just after tips for their website.
Either way, they didn’t lead to bookings.
Adding the prices back onto my website did reduce the amount of discovery calls I booked a little, but when I hope on a call with someone, they already know what to expect for the price, so there’s a less awkwardness around pricing and more focus on connecting and making sure we’re a good fit to work together.
It’s lead to more bookings because we can really focus on making sure we’re the perfect fit for a project instead of the price.
Let’s dive into the reasons why listing prices on your website works so well. Click each of the below to read more:
If visitors can't see your price, they may assume you're too expensive
Imagine this: You’re out shopping and head into a new boutique you’ve never seen before.
You love everything about the place... The decor, the clothes, the friendly staff.
While browsing, you see a handbag you absolutely adore. It has perfect soft material with amazing details in stitching and cute latch. Better still, it’s in a colour that will match what you have in your wardrobe and you can think of a least 5 outfits you’d use it with!
You go to check the price and there’s no tag. You look at the next one and still no price. You look at the purse on the shelf in front, and you guessed it... No price again!
Then it clicks it’s one of THOSE places! You know, the ones that don’t show their prices because you can’t afford anything in there anyway.
So you put the handbag down and make a beeline for the door. There goes the amazing bag for date night!
We go to look for prices when we want to buy something, and when your visitors don’t see your price on your services page, they’ll often expect the worst. And if your prices aren’t actually that high end, you’ll miss out on clients because of this assumption.
Not listing prices makes things harder for potential clients
Let’s look at this from a different perspective.
You’re looking for a wedding photographer for your big day. You’re super excited about getting married, you’ve picked the perfect location, and you have the most stunning dress ever!
Now, you need an amazing photographer to capture the magic.
You look online and see there are 8 photographers that work in the area of your wedding venue. So many great options to pick from!
You check out their portfolios to see who’s photography style you love and narrow it down to 5 choices you’d be excited to work with.
Of these 5 photographers, 3 have prices on their website, and 2 of these are within your budget.
Which photographers are YOU likely to reach out to?
As humans, we’re programmed to choose the easy option, so most people will reach out to the photographers within their price range, meaning you’ve missed out in the comparison game entirely if you don’t have your price listed.
It’s stressful enough finding the perfect person to work with, so who wants the extra step of emailing and waiting for a response?
Plus, if you’re making it hard for potential clients early on, they may assume working with you will be hard in the future once they’ve laid down their cash, so it’s often enough for people to say bye and check out someone else.
It’s a time-saver for you and your visitors
I don’t know about you, but my inbox is usually overflowing with new emails. It can be hard to keep up with on a good day, and the last thing I want is to add a heap of back and forth emails about whether someone can afford to hire me for their new website.
Showing my starting price on my website saves time for my visitors since they know right away if I’m within their budget or not, and it keeps me out of my inbox #winning
Another bonus of this? You save yourself from hopping on as many calls where potential clients genuinely can’t afford to work with you, so you’re not wasting their time, either.
You get to skip the awkward pricing conversation
Talking about your prices can be awkward, especially if you’re not the most confident with selling.
Think about how great it would be to avoid those conversations because the person booking a call already knows your rates? It’s much easier to confidently say your price if you know they’ve already seen it!
If you’re new to business or sales, jumping on a call can be challenging enough, so why add to your discomfort? Why not save yourself time to work on marketing to people who can afford what you do, rather than jumping on calls with people with people who can’t pay your rates?
If you think the pricing conversation is awkward, chances are the person on the other end will as well, especially if they love what you do and can’t afford to work with you. They’re likely already feeling deflated at not being able to afford what you do and for wasting your time, plus they’re left needing to figure out how to say no, which is never fun!
Is your website booking you clients while you sleep?
This free website audit checklist will show you what’s working on your website (and what’s not!) so you’ll know exactly what updates to make to help you grow your leads and bookings on autopilot.
Skipping Prices on your Website
While I’m all for including prices on your website, there can certainly be reasons not to have them there as well.
There are some of the main reasons I see for not including prices on your website:
Fear that the price will scare people off (news flash: if it does, they probably weren’t your ideal client anyway). You want to work with dream clients, not bargain hunters who are just after the lowest price. The project will be better for you, you’ll feel valued at getting paid well, and you’ll get the best results for your client by being in your zone of genius!
You’re not confident in communicating the value of what you do for your ideal clients on your services page and feel you can share it better by actually speaking to someone (if this is the case, I’ll share some awesome tips with you next week!)
You actually like having sales calls and are ok with jumping on as many calls as you can to sell, even if they aren’t necessarily an ideal client. I know selling isn’t for everyone, but I know some people are amazing at selling in an aligned way and really enjoy it
It’s not something that is generally done in your industry. If this is the case, adding your prices could actually be a way to set you apart from others out there and make it easier for your ideal clients, so it might still be something to consider
You worry your competitors will see it and try to undercut you. A valid concern, as some might, but if you can clearly display the value of what you do for your dream clients, it won’t matter if your price is higher since your clients will be coming to you for YOU just as much as the service you offer. And chances are if they were the type of competitor to do that, they’d likely already know your prices anyway
Your prices are custom and change based on your clients’ needs. Some people see this as a reason not to share your prices, but I’m actually still a fan of including a “starting from” or “average investment” price instead, so people can get an idea of whether you are within their budget and prequalify themselves (I actually list prices as starting from, since every website is different)
You’re early in your business and don’t have a full client roster, so you are trying to speak to as many people as you can. This can make total sense if that’s the stage of business you are at, and this is a great post by Greg Faxon that goes into depth about it, and even includes tips to help you prequalify bookings
How to decide what works best for you?
As you can see, there are plenty of reasons for listing your prices on your website and just as many reasons to skip them.
It really comes down to personal preference, but I always suggest testing both to see what actually gets you the best results overall.
Here’s how to test which is better:
Add your prices to your service page for a certain period of time and track how many visitors you get to the page and how many bookings you get from it during that period
Remove the prices from your service page for the same length of time and track the same details. Try to avoid any other changes to the page
Calculate your conversion rate for each. This is done by taking the number of bookings and dividing it by the number of visitors to the page. So if you had 5 bookings and 500 visitors, your conversion rate would be 5 ÷ 500 x 100 = 1%
Once you know your conversion rate for showing your prices vs not showing them, you can make a much better decision about whether to include or skip your prices!
Which side of the fence do you sit on when it comes to having prices on your website? Do you have your prices listed?
Is your website booking you clients while you sleep?
This free website audit checklist will show you what’s working on your website (and what’s not!) so you’ll know exactly what updates to make to help you grow your leads and bookings on autopilot.