Putting prices on your website when every job is different
A price list, a starting price with the rule attached, or quote-only with exactly what you need to quote: how to decide what your website says about money.
Someone comparing three similar businesses will look for a number before they ring. Not because the cheapest one wins, but because a price tells them whether the conversation is worth having at all. Your website can answer that question, or hand it to the phone.
The hesitation is fair. Your prices depend on the job, and any figure you write will be out of date one day. But "it depends" is not the only alternative to a price list. There are three honest ways to handle money on a page, and each one obliges you to write something.
A missing price is still information
When one page says what a call-out costs and two say nothing, the two silent pages read as "if you have to ask". A visitor fills that gap themselves, and they rarely fill it in your favour. Some people ring anyway. Others close the tab and ring the one who told them.
You do not need a full price list to fix this. You need the thing that decides the price.
Write the rule instead of the number
For most small businesses the figure varies, but the rule does not. Here is a whole price section for a locksmith, in four lines:
- A lock change on a standard front door: about an hour on site.
- Travel is free inside the town, and quoted before I set off anywhere else.
- The lock itself is usually the biggest cost, and I fit the one you choose.
- Evenings and weekends cost more, and I will tell you how much before I travel.
No single price, and yet a reader can now work out where they sit. They know what moves the number, what does not, and that nobody is hiding anything.
Three ways to say it
Fixed prices suit work that repeats: a standard service, a class, a monthly visit, a fixed-length session. List the price, then what is included and what is added, because the additions are what turn a price into a total.
Starting prices suit work that varies, on one condition: the word "from" must come with the rule that changes it. "From a base figure, more if the wall is tiled or the fence runs past the corner" is useful. A bare "from" is the worst of both worlds, because the reader still cannot decide and you still get enquiries you cannot serve at that number.
Quote only is honest when you genuinely cannot price without seeing the job. It works only if you take the friction out of asking: say what to send (two photos, the postcode, the size of the room), how quickly you reply, and whether the visit itself costs money. If the visit costs money, that charge is the price to publish.
The lines people forget
- What is included and what is not: parts, materials, delivery, taking the old one away, any tax that applies.
- A minimum, meaning the smallest job you will travel for.
- A travel rule in place names, not "the local area".
- When the numbers were last checked.
Keep it true, keep it current
A price you forgot you wrote is worse than no price, because it turns into an argument. Keep the figures in one place on the page, put a date beside them, and revisit that page whenever something changes. If your prices move with the seasons, publish the rule and the current season's figures, then take the old season's figures down.
Write only what is true today. If you are putting prices up next month, leave the new numbers off the site until they apply, or say plainly which date they start.
One more trap: a price that promises something you cannot deliver this week. If you are booked solid or waiting on parts, the price section and the delivery time are the same conversation, so do not promise a two-day turnaround you already know is three weeks.
What you can do in twenty minutes
Open a blank note and answer four things:
- The smallest job you will take, and the largest.
- What makes a job cost more than the usual one.
- What is always included, and what is always extra.
- Which places are free to travel to, and where you charge.
Those four answers are the section, written in the words you would use on the phone. Add one line under each saying who it suits, and let the pages of your site use the same wording, so a person reading two pages does not find two different stories about money.
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