Should you put prices on your website? Yes, even you.

Somebody is on your website right now trying to find out what you charge. If the number isn't there, a lot of them won't call to ask. They'll open the next tab.

That's the whole argument, and I know it's not the whole story. Owners have real reasons for hiding prices, and one kind of business should still leave them off.

The short version#

Put a starting price, a package, or a range on your site, whichever matches how you already quote. A price scares off the people who were never going to pay it and reassures the ones who were. If your work is genuinely bespoke and every job starts with a design phase, skip the number and show the process instead.

Why owners hide prices#

I've heard three reasons, and none of them is stupid.

"Competitors will undercut me"#

They might. But your competitors can already find out what you charge. They can call you and ask, or read a quote you sent someone's brother-in-law. Publishing a price gives them nothing they couldn't get in an afternoon, and it gives your customers a reason to stop looking.

The second half of this fear is that a customer will see your price and then find someone cheaper. Some will. Those customers were shopping on price, and you were going to lose them anyway, after you'd spent an hour on the quote.

"Every job is different"#

True for most service businesses. A weekly clean of a two-bedroom flat and a move-out clean of a four-bedroom house with a dog aren't the same job. But "every job is different" doesn't mean "every job is unpredictable." You know your floor, and you know roughly what a small job and a big job cost. That range is the number the customer wants. They don't want a quote yet; they want to know whether you're a $100 business or a $1,000 business.

"A number will scare people off"#

Yes, and that's the point. The number on your site is a filter. If your minimum is $180 and someone had $60 in mind, the site just saved you both a phone call. The people who read $180 and keep scrolling were bracing for worse, and those are your customers.

What happens when you show them#

Play out what a price-shopper does on a site with no price. They dial your number, you're on a job, and it goes to voicemail. So they open the next site, which has a number on it. They call, get through, and book.

You lost that job without knowing it existed. That's the cost of hiding prices, and it never shows up anywhere, because you only ever see the people who called.

Harvard Business Review published research in 2011 that found most companies don't respond to online inquiries anywhere near fast enough. If you run a business from a van, you're one of those companies, and you won't fix it by picking up faster. A price on the page answers the most common question before anyone has to wait for you.

Once the price is on the page, the calls change. The people who ring already accept your rate, so the conversation is about when, and rarely about how much. Quotes take less time because the customer has done half the qualifying for you, and the invoice matches the number they saw before they called, so there's less to argue about.

Three ways to show a price without quoting the whole job#

One honest line does the job. You don't need a whole price list. The prices in these examples are made up; use yours.

From#

"Standard cleans from $120." One number and one word. It works when your jobs vary a lot but your minimum doesn't. The "from" tells the customer where the floor is and that the ceiling depends on them.

Use your real minimum. If nobody has ever paid the "from" price, the customer finds out on the quote, and now you're the business that baited them.

Packages#

Three named options with a fixed price each. "Mini session, 30 minutes, 15 edited photos, $250." Packages work when you can define the job in advance and most customers pick one of a few shapes, which is anyone who sells blocks of time.

Name the packages after what the customer gets rather than what you do. "Headshots for LinkedIn" beats "Package B."

Ranges#

"Most kitchen repaints land between $1,800 and $3,200." Ranges suit trades where the job really does vary and the customer knows it. The range says you've done this enough times to know the spread. Add one line on what pushes a job to the top of the range and you've written the first half of your quote.

Keep the range honest. If the top is three times the bottom, the customer learns nothing.

The one case where I'd leave prices off#

If your work starts with a design or discovery phase and the price can't exist until that phase is done, don't make one up. Think of an architecture studio quoting a house extension, or a furniture maker building to a drawing. In those businesses the first job is to scope the second job, and a "from" price would be fiction.

Even here I'd put something on the page. Say how you charge (hourly, a percentage of build cost, a fixed fee for the design phase) and what the first step costs. "Initial site visit and concept sketch, $600, credited against the project if you go ahead." The customer doesn't have the whole price, but they have enough to decide whether to call.

How to write the pricing line#

One sentence, near the top of the services section, before the contact form. Say what the customer gets, then the number, then the one thing that changes it.

For a cleaner (the cleaning site guide builds the rest of the page around a line like this):

"Regular cleans from $110 for a two-bedroom home. Deep cleans and move-out cleans are quoted after a quick look at the place, usually somewhere between $250 and $450."

For a photographer:

"Portrait sessions start at $300 and include 20 edited photos. Weddings are from $2,400. Ask about half-day rates for events."

For a trainer:

"Single sessions are $75. A block of ten is $650. The first consultation is free, and you can stop anytime."

Read your line aloud. If it sounds like a contract, cut it in half. If it sounds like you talking to a customer at the door, it's done.

The cleaning service, photographer, and personal trainer examples on Mr Create show where a line like this sits on a finished page, and the one-page checklist covers everything else that goes around it.

Questions people ask#

What if my prices change?#

Change the line. A website isn't a printed brochure. If you raise your rate in January, edit the number in January. Nobody expects last year's price to hold forever.

What if competitors see them?#

They will. They can also see your van and your reviews. If a competitor's whole plan is to price a dollar under you, they'll learn your rate from the first customer who mentions it. Put the number up and let them race to the bottom on their own.

What about custom work?#

Give the price of the first step: a consultation fee, a minimum call-out, or a starting figure for the simplest version of the job. That's enough for the customer to tell whether they're in the right shop.

Should I put a full price list up?#

Only if it fits on a napkin. A long menu of prices invites nitpicking and goes stale fast. One line per service is plenty. Once the number is public, the quote and the invoice should match it, and if you write those by hand, a document generator that drafts a service agreement or invoice from your business details saves the retyping.

Whatever format you pick, get the number on the page this week. If you're starting from nothing, Mr Create's website builder takes a description of your business, including a pricing line like the ones above, and builds a single page you can publish to a free web address in a few minutes.