Should you put your prices on your website? Yes — even the ones that "depend"

Yes. Put a number on your website. Even if every job is different, even if your competitors will see it, even if you’re sure it’ll scare people off.

Here’s the reason in one sentence: the person who leaves your site because they couldn’t find a price doesn’t fill in your contact form to ask. They go back to Google and click the next result — the one that told them.

You never see that lead. That’s what makes hiding prices feel safe. It isn’t.

Price is the first thing people look for

This isn’t a hunch. Nielsen Norman Group, the usability research firm, has watched people use business websites for decades, and their finding is blunt: customers rank pricing as the information they need most, and in their studies people got frustrated and left sites that didn’t show it — straight to a competitor that did.

Think about your own behavior. You’re comparing three companies for anything — a gym, an accountant, a furnace tune-up. One of them lists a starting price. The other two say “contact us for a quote.” Which one do you call first?

“Contact us for a quote” doesn’t read as premium. It reads as this is going to be expensive and awkward.

The objections, honestly

We hear the same four every time. Some have a grain of truth. None of them justify a blank.

• “Every job is different.” True. So publish a range, a starting price, or three typical jobs with what they cost. Nobody expects a fixed quote for a roof. They want to know if it’s $800 or $8,000 before they spend 20 minutes on the phone.
• “My competitors will undercut me.” Your competitors can already get your prices — they call you, pretending to be a customer. The only people you’re hiding prices from are the customers who won’t do that.
• “It’ll scare people off.” It’ll scare off the people who can’t afford you. That’s the point. Those people were going to cost you a site visit, a quote, three follow-up calls and a no. A published price is a free qualification filter.
• “I want the chance to explain the value first.” Then explain it on the page, next to the price. That’s what the page is for. The customer who needs a phone call to understand why you’re worth it isn’t getting that call — they’re gone.

Where hiding prices genuinely makes sense

To be fair to the other side, there are a few cases where “let’s talk” is the honest answer:

• Large, one-off projects where scope varies by 10x — a full commercial build-out, a custom software build. Even here, a “projects typically start from” line helps.
• Regulated work where quoting before assessment would be irresponsible, like some legal and medical services. You can still publish your consultation fee.
• Prices that change weekly because they track materials costs. Publish the labor side and say materials are quoted at cost.

Notice that every exception still has something you can publish. “No information at all” is almost never the only option.

How to show prices when every job is different

You don’t need a pricing table like a SaaS company. You need one of these:

1. “From” pricing. “Furnace tune-up from $99.” Simple, honest, sets the floor.
2. Ranges by job type. “Bathroom renovation: typically $8,000–$18,000, depending on size and finishes.” Then list what pushes it up or down.
3. Worked examples. “A 3-bedroom house repaint, two coats, walls and ceilings: around $2,900.” Concrete beats abstract every time.
4. Packages for the repeatable 80%. Most businesses have a few jobs they do constantly. Price those; quote the rest.

Put it where people look: a dedicated pricing page linked from the main menu, plus the relevant number on each service page. It doesn’t need to be its own sprawling section — it’s one of the handful of pages that actually earn their place on a small business site.

And tell people what’s included. A price with no scope is just a number to argue about later.

The AI angle nobody’s talking about

When someone asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews “how much does a kitchen remodel cost in my area,” the answer gets built from pages that actually contain prices. If yours says “contact us,” there’s nothing to quote — so the assistant quotes someone else, and names them while it’s at it.

Published prices are exactly the kind of specific, factual, citable content AI engines look for. It’s one of the cheapest things you can do to get your business recommended by ChatGPT, and it takes an afternoon, not a strategy.

We do this ourselves

It would be a bit rich to write this with no prices on our own site. So ours are public. Yes, competitors can see them. Yes, some people see the number and leave. Those people were never going to hire us, and we’d both rather find that out in ten seconds than after a 45-minute call.

The calls we do get start in the right place: not “what does it cost?” but “here’s my project, does it fit?” That’s a much better conversation for everyone.

What to do this week

• Write down the five jobs you quote most often and what they usually end up costing.
• Turn that into ranges or “from” prices, with a line on what changes the price.
• Put it on a pricing page and on each relevant service page.
• Watch whether your inquiries get fewer but better. In our experience, that’s the usual trade — and it’s a good one.

If your site is built in a way that makes adding a pricing page a two-week ordeal, that’s a separate problem worth fixing — it’s part of what we look at in web design projects.

Tell us what you sell and we’ll help you work out how to price it publicly — or tell you honestly if yours is one of the rare cases where “let’s talk” is right.