Should you put your Prices on your Website?
A question I get asked a lot by small business owner’s whether putting your prices on your website is a good idea or not
And my answer usually?
It depends:
Here’s the thing about pricing on your website, and this is what I teach in my Get More Clients Saying Yes! course: There no absolute clear cut answer to the question ‘Should I put pricing on or not?”.
There are definitely pros and cons of both options. But it’s also the case that over the years of mentoring small business owners and seeing what works for them I’ve come to the firm conclusion that most of the time you will get better results for your business if you DON’T put your prices on your website. Read on for what to do instead
So why do I say “it depends”:
Here are the two sides of the coin:
On the one hand, if you put the prices on your website there is a real danger of somebody looking at that website and the price, and making a decision about whether they want to go ahead with you just from the price alone. And unless you are a REALLY skilled copywriter, or have made a significant investment in hiring a copywriter to create you a beautiful, convincing and compelling sales page it’s probably unlikely you’ll be successful at “selling” from the page. Added to that conversions from 121 sales conversations are always going to be much higher than conversions from the written word on the page (like over 2,000 times higher!).
On the other hand (and this is what small business owners worry about the most) if you don’t have the prices on your website, there are people who won’t even enquire in the first place without knowing what the price is. You actually might be one of those people – if you are beware of making decisions that could affect your business based on assuming that everyone else is the same as you.
This is why “it depends”. The only way for you to know exactly what’s going to work best for you is to experiment with it, to maybe try for three months with your prices on and try for three months with your prices off and see which gives you the best results.
But really truly honestly, I think I can hazard a guess…..
My expert opinion – don’t put your prices on!
Over the years of mentoring small business owner’s and observing what works for them I’ve definitely reached the conclusion that in the majority of cases NOT having your prices on your website is the best way forward.
Most clients I work with who are successful and end up fully booked with good established businesses, do not have the prices on their websites.
This is because when you put all the details of your programmes, package or services on your website – including the price – your potential client will feel as if it’s their job to read your website and make the decision on their own whether to work with you.
They will also look at that price and think to themselves “£1,000 – that’s a lot of money, I can’t afford to throw that away”. They are not not likely to connect in with the true value to them and the impact that making that investment will have for them – in other words they’ll be deciding based on price alone. This is why it is so important you take potential clients through a structured sales conversation to help them really connect in to the value to them of doing this work.
So what to do instead?
Instead of trying to “sell” your programme or service from your “Work with Me” page I recommend you introduce the work you do, and the benefits of that work in a more high-level way. Your aim is to inspire people to take the next step – not to “sell to them” from your web page.
Once you’ve inspired them the next step is to invite them to book in for a conversation with you – this could be a consultation, a discovery call or what I call a “high value free session”. You will outline the benefits of that session and explain clearly what they’ll get from it.
In other words you don’t use your website to “sell” your work. You use it to “sell” the conversation or consultation.
Ideally, you want to already be selling the value and benefits on the page, and then you invite them to book a consultation call with you.
This way you get the opportunity to guide them through an effective sales conversation and instead of your client making a decision on price alone (which often happens when you have your prices on your website) they will make a decision based on where they are at now, what they are struggling with, where they want to be and what that will mean to them.
In other words they will be considering the investment relative to the end result. As an example consider someone with chronic fatigue syndrome/ME. As a result of you helping them recover they will be able to rebuild their life, go back to work and start to travel again, maybe even start a new relationship – what would that be worth to someone?
I’m very familiar with this example because this was me once. Imagine if I hadn’t invested in my chronic fatigue recovery, I wouldn’t be here running this business today. The money I invested in my recovery paid itself back multiple times over. But was I scared of making that investment? Of course I was? Did I think my new practitioner was “too expensive” and did I hesitate? You can be sure I did.
Sometimes you need to be able to have that conversation with potential clients for them to understand that the work you do really is going to have the impact they really want whether that’s on their life, their business, their relationships or their happiness.
From what I observe, most people I work with have more success when they don’t put the prices on, but they do a really good job of encouraging people to book that initial consultation or conversation.
NB: Pricing on your website can also go against you in another way – if your potential client perceives you are “too cheap” they might judge you as inexperienced, or not up to the job, and this is another reason you might lose out on that client.
Here are 3 changes you can make to increase client enquiries from your website:
- When you talk about your programmes, talk about them in terms of the benefits and the value. Instead of listing your “features” e.g. what goes into it and what it costs, describe it in terms of the overall benefits to the client.
- Don’t try to “sell” from the page. Instead have a clear call to action for a ‘Next Step’ to book in for a consultation. And put it directly under the description of how you work with people to make sure they see it.
- Add some testimonials underneath the call to action – but testimonials for the consultation or discovery call itself – remember you are not selling your services here, you just want to encourage them to book to speak to you.
The bottom line
That’s my answer about the pricing versus not pricing question! It’s not always clear cut and there WILL without a doubt be cases where putting the pricing on does work better (putting pricing on your website can also be a strategy to reduce the number of enquiries you get as you get busier – this is something I like to do). But if you need more clients right now then I would always encourage you to focus on getting potential clients onto a call with you so you can have the conversation, and you can create the connection. This way you can find out what it’s really costing them to stay as they are, and help guide them to the that committed “yes please!” – providing you believe it’s right for them of course.
Learn the 7 Steps to Yes!
So what happens once they’ve booked in for that consultation or discovery call? You can learn how to have a genuinely authentic and effective sales conversation with my “7 Steps to Yes!” training – it’s a series of very short videos so you can get more confident about your sales conversations in less than 35 minutes. Sign up for the 7 Steps to Yes! free training here.
