Longhand · what things cost
Should your website show prices? Usually, yes.
“Price on request” feels like the careful choice. To the person reading it on their phone, it says the number is high, or that it depends on how rich they look. Here is when to show it, when not to, and how to write it.
dm for price is a sentence that has never once been followed by a dm.
A reader has three tabs open. A physiotherapist in Satellite, a second one near Vastrapur, a third across the river. Two say “Contact us for fees”. One says “First visit ₹800, includes assessment. Follow-ups ₹600.” Guess which one gets the call.
It isn't always the cheapest. It's the one that let the reader stop guessing.
What a hidden price says
You hide the price because you want a conversation first. The reader doesn't hear that. They hear one of three things. The price is high and you would rather tell them in person. The price changes depending on who asks. Or you haven't worked it out yet. None of these makes them pick up the phone.
The ones who do call are often the ones you least wanted: people collecting quotes to forward to someone cheaper, and people whose budget is a tenth of yours, who will find that out ten minutes into the call. The person with the right budget and no time to spare closed the tab already.
What a shown price does
A price on the page is a filter that works while you sleep. The wrong people leave quietly, and the right ones arrive already agreed on the number.
It also changes the first conversation. Without a price, the call is a negotiation. With one, it's about the work, because the reader has already decided the number is fine. Our Contact page piece suggests a budget field on the form for exactly this reason. It only works if the reader has seen a price to compare it with.
We held out too. Our piece on what content writing costs admits that almost nobody in the trade publishes a number, us included, until that page. The prices on our service pages went up after it, under a heading that says “Prices, on a website. Strange, we know.”
The honest reasons not to
There are a few, and they are narrower than they feel.
- The price moves every day. A jeweller can't print a making charge against a gold rate that changed this morning. Show the making charge, and say the rate is today's.
- Every job really is different. An architect or an interiors firm can't price a house they haven't seen. They can say what the last three projects of a certain size cost.
- The buyer works from a tender. If your customers issue an RFQ and compare sealed bids, a public price list helps your competitors more than your customers.
“Competitors will see it” isn't on the list. They already know roughly what you charge. The only person your hidden price is hidden from is the customer.
Can't show a price? Show the shape of one
Most businesses that say “every job is different” can still say three things. A starting point: “from ₹4,800 a page”. What moves it up: research, rewrites, how much rides on it. And when the reader gets the real number: before anything starts, in writing.
That is how our own pages do it. Each line gives a price and a note on what it covers, and a line underneath says why a piece lands higher. Enough for a reader to decide whether to write to us at all, and no more.
Write the price like the rest of the copy
A price on the page is copy, and it gets read more closely than anything near it. A few rules.
- Say the unit. Per page, per visit, per month, per kilo. “₹12,000” on its own makes the reader do the work.
- Say what is included, next to the number. “Caption included.” “Includes assessment.” “GST extra.” Not in a footnote three screens down.
- Drop the “just” and the asterisk. “Starting at just ₹999*” tells the reader the real price lives in the small print, and sends them looking for it.
- Use the number, not a word. “Affordable”, “competitive” and “value for money” are what a page says when it won't say the number.
Do this with three services this week
Pick the three things customers ask the price of most often. For each, write one line: a “from” price, the unit, what's included, and the one thing that pushes it higher. Put those three lines on the page where the questions come from. Then watch what the next month of enquiries sounds like.
You will get fewer calls that end with “I'll think about it”, and more that start with “When can you begin?”
Still writing “price on request”?
Read next
More Longhand.
- Writing a price increase message customers don't leave overMost price increase messages apologise for a paragraph and hide the number. Put the number first.
- What a website should cost in IndiaThe real price bands, what moves a quote, and the line every budget forgets: the words on the pages.
- Hinglish in brand copy: when it works and when it's a costumeHinglish works when it is how your customer talks, and reads like a costume when it isn't. Three tests.
- The small words on a website: buttons, error messages, empty statesButtons, error messages and empty pages are written last and read at the moment people decide to leave.