Have you ever asked yourself the question, “Should I put my prices on my website?”

Funny as it may sound, this is the second most asked question I get. I can see how the question plagues people yet I don’t think that people need to spend as much time “worrying” about it as they do. It is important to make a decision and then move on. This is a strategic decision and what’s right for your business won’t be good for someone else.

I recently ran a poll on LinkedIn around this and what happened as a result was fascinating. People we very passionate about their views on the subject – there were 3 “camps”. The “yes”, the “no” and the “it depends” camp. While there was a clear winner in the poll (see results here) it was interesting that each camp had significant support (i.e. votes). Your responses were very insightful too.

Here’s what you had to say

From the “yes” camp we heard:

“I am in team YES… I always want to know before the discovery call if I can afford…”

“If it’s way out of my price range, why waste my time (and the seller’s) for a discovery call.”

“My prices are on my website for private clients, because I need people to book and pay the service before starting…”

The “no” camp said:

“For me this is a no – most of my services are bespoke, so the pricing varies a lot based on each client’s needs.”

“Advertising your prices on your website gives information to your competitors about your prices – this can be a disadvantage in some situations.”

The “it depends” camp shared:

“… it very much depends on what you are selling. We sell business services and is sometimes hard because the complexity of the business and other variables drive the price…”

“It depends whether people buy online or not.”

“…for 1:1 tailored courses I would say probably not, but for group courses which have a set price, then sure.”

As you can see there are many opinions which is why you need to look at your business specifically.

In This Episode

In this episode we take a deeper look at some of the questions you can be asking yourself that’ll help you make a decision about whether or not putting prices on your website makes sense or not. A little critical thinking here can go a long way to make this decision easier for you. 

After you listen I suggest you grab a copy of my guide, with checklist, it’ll help you decided what’s best for your business.

Favorite Quotes

“Whether you choose to have prices on your website or not there will be pros and cons to each. You need to look at them to understand the risks.” Janene

Episode Link

Download the GUIDE: Should I Put My Prices On My Website Guide and Checklist

Course: The Psychology of a Pricing Page – Basics Mini Course

Rate, Review and Follow the Show on Apple Podcasts

“I’ve just found my Pricing Resource!” … “A binge worthy podcast.” … “I learned so much about how to improve my profitability.”

If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing the pricing podcast. It helps me spread the word to more people and ultimately get more small businesses on the path to sustainable profitability and business success. Click right here, tap to rate with five stars, then select “Write a Review.” Last let me know what you loved most about the episode!

One more thing. If you don’t already, follow my pricing podcast. New episodes come out every couple of weeks, plus bonus episode. If you’re not following there’s a good chance you’ll miss something.

Reach Out, Connect and Book a Call with Janene

Linkedin | YouTube | Facebook | Email List

Get started improving your business. Sometimes it’s difficult to know where to begin. I suggest you Download the the self assessment Pricing Scorecard. Get a view of what’s working and what’s not working when it comes to pricing in your business. Figure out where to start making improvements.

Get in touch with Janene, your Business Strategist & Pricing Expert. If you’ve got a business question that needs answering, a pricing challenge you’re facing or you have suggestions for future topics or guests, let me know. Your questions and insights often become episodes. Share yours with me and let’s see where it goes. Contact Janene.

Listen up! Don’t miss out. There’s a lot going on and you’ll want to be in the know. Follow my YouTube channel (rate it too please) so you don’t miss an episode of Live with The Pricing Lady or join my Email List.

Transform your business and life. My mission is to help you build a sustainably profitable business. One where you can confidently charge for the value you deliver. Curious about my coaching and consulting offers, check them out. Let’s see how we can work together. Book a complimentary Call today!

Episode Transcript

Janene: Hello, dear listener. Welcome to Live with the Pricing Lady. I am Janene Liston, your hostess. This show is all about helping you be more sustainably profitable. I work with small business owners to help them understand the tactics and strategies of pricing so they can be there for the long term for their clients and keep delivering great solutions while being profitable and growing their business.

Welcome. Today we’re gonna be taking a look at what I consider to be a pretty hot topic when it comes to pricing. In fact, this question I get asked almost as much as how do I set my prices? And the question is, should you put your prices on your website? I do a lot of guest speaking and make a lot of guest appearances on radio and podcast shows.

I would tell you this question almost always gets asked. Recently I decided to run a poll on LinkedIn around this question. (scroll above on those results)

Linkedin Poll on Answering the Question: “Should I Put my Prices on My Website”

Let me tell you, you guys responded in full form. Not only did it elicit great conversations, but it’s probably the best no it is the best poll I’ve done so far on LinkedIn in terms of how engaged you guys were.

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll and sent me your answers. Also, some of you responded to the email I posted about this as well, and I really appreciate that I responded to each and every one of you. Let me share with you a couple of the responses that we got. Now, when I ran the poll, the question that was posed is, should you put your prices on your website?

And people had three options. Yes, I should. No, I shouldn’t. And it depends. At the end, the it depends group won the poll. If you wanna say they had the highest response rate at 45% of the respondents say that 33 said yes and 22 said no. But at the beginning of the poll it really was running neck and neck with about a third, a third, a third.

But in the end the, it depends ones went out. And I would say that this is absolutely correct. There is no strict yes or strict no answer that you can give for whether or not prices should be on your website. It really is going to depend on your business, and you know what you are looking to do, whether or not that’s appropriate for you.

Some of the Responses that I Got

What I’d like to do in this episode is, first I’m gonna share with you some of the responses that I got from you guys, cuz I actually think you had some great ideas and really interesting insights. Then we’re gonna take a look at a few questions and last, as I said at the very beginning here, I also have a little goody for you at the end.

So stick with me. Here are a couple examples of the responses that I received as this poll was going on. Let’s first take a look at one of the people that said Yes. She said, I’m team yes, personally I’ve been a client of for all kinds of services, from relatively inexpensive to super expensive, and I want to know before I have a discovery call if it’s something I can afford.

Now, that is a strong indication that this type of customer would want to see prices on the website. Is that your entire customer group? That’s a good question. If it is, then they may have the expectation of that, and therefore you may want to do it, but it’s not the case for every business.

Let’s take a look at a couple of other comments people have.

Should it be a Yes or a No?

Another person who participated in this poll shared with us that when you asked could you put your prices on your website, the answer should not be yes or no. Think about the case where you’re talking about, and anyone can buy at this price case versus only customers in this industry can buy at this.

Unless you know who is on your website, how do you keep your channel management clean and have an appropriate price showing? This is a case where you may have different channels purchasing what you’re offering, and you may have different prices for them. So then which prices do you put on there? Also a good point.

None of these answers or comments that people wrote are right or wrong. They’re all part of what leads to the ultimate answer to this poll, which is, it’s really gonna depend on your business. Again, another person says, it depends whether people buy online or not. Yep. Totally true. A clearly defined product is usually a Definitely yes.

Again, thank you once again to all of those who participated in this poll. I really appreciate it.

Ask Yourselves the Right Questions

Now that you’ve heard some of the examples of what people say, I’d like to share with you what I do with some of my clients. When this question comes up with a client, one of the things that I like to do, whether it’s this topic or another, it’s helped people be able to ask themselves the right questions so that they can come up with a strategy that’s fit for their business, and that’s what these questions are based upon.

One of the first questions that I have people address is, who do you want to weed out first? Cause quite frankly, whether or not you choose to have prices on your website or not, you’re going to weed out some demographics, regardless of what you do. For example, if you don’t put prices on your website, then there’s a certain group of people who will come to your website and say, well, what’s he hiding?

He doesn’t have prices on his website. Right?  They’ll leave because they’re frustrated, there are no prices. You may want to weed those people out or if you put prices on your website, you will weed out people who think that’s too cheap or too expensive for what you’re offering. The question is who do you wanna weed out first?

That’s something that you should consider when you’re deciding whether or not to put prices on your website. Another question you might ask is, Will they or can they purchase online only? That was also one of the comments that we had around this poll as well. And that’s an important point.

Chain of Thought

Certainly if people are going to purchase online, then you’re going to have to have a price online at some point before they purchase, right? So that’s very, very clear. Now, if they’re not gonna be purchasing online, then we go down this, it depends chain of thought once again. Another question you might think about is, do you need to have a fit or a scoping question with a client before you understand the value and can therefore give them a price?

This is very important, especially in services and consulting world, because quite often you need to have an understanding of, okay, are we doing a mini version of this or a large version of this? How detailed are we going? You know, like for me sometimes when I do consulting projects, are we just doing this with an internal view or do you want me to go out and interview your customers and do external interviews and that changes the entire scope of the project and what we’re doing?

Or do you want me to do market research? Woo. That changes the scope and therefore influences the price, which is one reason why a lot of consultants and service providers can’t put a price on there because it really depends on the scope and the value that people are going to get out of it. Another thing that’s really important for you to consider is what aligns most with your brand, your vision, and your mission or the values of your company.

Some Indicators of Price

For example, if one of your company values is transparency, then you are going to want to have some indication of price. Now, it doesn’t mean you have to tell them everything, but you may want to have some indicators of price on there at the very least, so that it’s aligned with your branding and your values as well.

That’s really important, especially I work with a lot of sustainability businesses or businesses in this area. And for you, that’s going to be really important because it is the branding and the messaging that you’re giving is so important to you and to your customer base. You wanna make sure that’s aligned.

These are just a few of the questions that we use to have a discussion about what’s the right strategy for your business or not. There’s a couple other things that I’d like to encourage you to think about. Once you’ve thought about this, I also suggest you make a list of pros and cons if you have them on there.

If you don’t, what does it mean for your workload? For the questions you get from clients, for their understanding of the value? Because there are going to be pluses and minuses to both sides of this.

You Need to Mitigate Risks

Whether you do it or not, there will be pros and cons for each and then also think about any risks that you need to mitigate.

If you choose not to put them on there, what are the risks? If you choose to put them on there? What are the risks? Think about what you can do to mitigate those risks so that either the risk isn’t present or you can lessen the impact they have on your business. I love this line of thinking and questioning because it really helps you to make a confident decision about what you decide to do as opposed to just copying what someone else is doing.

This helps you to be a more strategic thinker and a stronger business owner because you’ll understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.

A Little Goody

Now, as I said at the beginning, I wanted to share with something with you. I realized you need a downloadable that’ll help walk you through this process.

If you click the link in the show notes below, you’ll be able to go grab a copy of a brand new downloadable that I created titled, Should I Put My Prices on My Website? And that’s what I wanted to share with you so that you can grab a copy of that and formally think through this process for yourself.

I’d love to hear what you guys think of this downloadable. If you have any questions be sure to reach out to me. I do love hearing from each and every one of you. That is what I wanted to share with you today.

Wrapping It Up

We took a look at should you put your prices on your website or not? We shared, I shared with you some of the feedback that I’ve gotten when I ran this poll, and we’ve looked at some of the key questions that you could be asking yourself. Now, there are more questions and if you’re curious to grab those questions or would like a written format of the conversation that we’ve had today.

Then you’re gonna wanna go on over to thepricinglady.com and grab that copy of the Guide. I wish you great success in your business, and as always, dear listener, enjoy pricing.