Should You List Prices on Your Website?
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One of my members brought a blog post to my community a while back, and I immediately made a note to discuss it here with you too.
The post shared was written by another designer—let's call him James—who'd run a little experiment: he put his prices on his website, got way fewer leads, panicked, pulled the prices back down, and then concluded that listing prices publicly was the reason all of his leads dried up.
The thing that stood out to me was that this person shared that post with me because it confirmed a fear she'd been dealing with herself, and that's where I'm coming from for this conversation.
It's not that his conclusion was right or wrong, necessarily, but no matter what it proved or didn't prove, that doesn't mean the same will happen to everyone else. There are lots of variables involved!
And I completely understand why it was scary to read! I have had the same fear(s) myself. Putting a big number on a page—especially when you're used to getting paid double digits per hour in your past life—and letting total strangers judge whether you're "worth it" is genuinely uncomfortable for a while. That feeling is totally valid.
But the conclusion he drew from his experiment...? I actually think it's wrong—or at least, not the whole picture. And I have a lot of thoughts about why.
Should You List Prices on Your Website? One Designer's Experiment
Before I get on my soapbox, let's walk through what actually happened in the experiment.
James added his base price for the cheapest logo package he offered, with an inquiry button for his other two tiers. The goal seems to have been what most of us want when we list prices: to filter out the people who aren't in the right budget range before anyone wastes time on a call (us, or our inquirers). Before the prices were added, he was getting five or six leads a week. Afterward, he got one lead over two months, and that one fell through, he says.
So of course he panicked. I mean, I probably would've too. That can be a scary thing to watch happen in real time when your bills are still due on a regular basis.
He lowered the floor price after four weeks, stripped his entry package down to basically just logo files, tried paid ads on Google and Facebook (neither of which worked either), and ultimately removed the prices entirely. He changed his navigation link from "prices" to "packages," went back to an inquiry-only model, and called it a day.
His takeaway: listing prices hurt his business.
Here's my takeaway: I actually don't think that's what the data proved, but I understand the knee-jerk reaction.
3 Common Fears About Listing Prices on Your Website
James wasn't just reacting to numbers—he named three specific fears that were fueling his decisions, and I think it's worth unpacking each one.
Fear #1: Competitors Will Undercut Me
This one comes up more than you might think, among other industries & even some of my clients have even voiced this concern too, so I get it. But think about it: Target knows Walmart's prices. Coach knows what Chanel charges. Neither of them are hiding their pricing from customers because a competitor might (will) try & copy them, or underprice them to compete.
Cheap is the easiest thing in the world to replicate. Zero personality or expertise is required to just charge less than someone else. Literally just lower the number. 🫠
If the only way someone can compete with you is to undercut your price, then your competitive advantage isn't the price—it's everything else. Your personality. Your niche. Your process. Your results. Your experience. Your expertise. None of that can be duplicated as easily, and certainly not by just slashing a dollar amount.
Letting your fear of what a competitor might do drive your business decisions is exhausting and, frankly, it's a losing game because there will always be someone that can do it cheaper than you.
You don't get to control what other people do. You only get to control what you put out there.
Fear #2: I'll Miss Small Budget, High-Exposure Jobs
James actually mentioned that he'd taken a fun, small job for a motorcycle club that came through Reddit, and the client hadn't seen his prices at al, so that opportunity worked out well.
And sure! Those projects can still find you through other channels. Referrals, Reddit threads, DMs from people who never visited your website—those things can happen regardless of whether your prices are listed publicly, and that's a good thing!
But I want I want you to ask yourself: are those jobs actually good for you? Do they cost you more in time, stress, and resentment than they're genuinely worth? Because the fear of missing one fun, potentially high-exposure, but low-budget gig is a really shaky reason to hide your prices from every single good client who's ready to pay what you actually need to charge.
You're making it harder for the RIGHT people to reach out because you don't want to scare off people who can't pay you. That logic is... —well, it doesn't really make sense. You don't want the wrong inquiries cluttering your inbox while the right ones bounce because the pricing transparency they needed wasn't there.
What I would've done as part of this experiment, if you want to keep attracting those smaller, scrappier projects for high exposure purposes, I would create a separate sales page or a standalone service offer specifically for those people. Maybe that looks like a design day, a one-hour session, or a discount with the agreement of backlinks, mentions, interviews, —whatever. It'd just be a clear "starter" option with its own sales page that would talk specifically to those types of inquiries, so they feel seen & understood, and separate from your higher package rates for other types of businesses. You don't have to choose between transparency and flexibility. You could actually have both, IF the messaging is clear on both sales pages.
Fear #3: Clients Will Use My Prices to Undercut Other Designers
This one is completely and utterly outside your control. The super uncomfortable truth is that people who are inclined to 'designer shop' for the best prices, they could still do this even after a discovery call where you finally shared your prices.
Yes, it's a shitty thing to do, to waste everyone's time like that & then just pick the lowest number. But it's not something you can prevent just by hiding information, even from the people who would actually hire you regardless of the price you charge.
Trying to solve for other people's potentially bad behavior by making your business less accessible to your good clients is not my recommendation.
I say this with tough love: you're making it harder for the right clients to decide whether you're the right fit for them, too.
What Hiding Your Prices Can Do to Your Conversion Rate
This is the part that gets me the most, because James actually had some genuinely useful data — and I think that possibly fear just got in the way of reading it correctly.
He said traffic went up over 30% during those two months while the pricing was listed. That tells me it wasn't a traffic problem; he HAD MORE eyeballs on those pages, or at least on his website. Meaning, more people were finding his website, they just weren't converting into inquiries.
His own diagnosis was that clients were seeing a big number before he'd had a chance to build context around his goals, his experience, the value of his work—and without that context, they didn't reach out or submit any inquiries.
He literally said "my sales funnel was fucked." And honestly, I don't think he was wrong about that part!
Here's where I think he took a wrong turn though: he removed the prices, but doesn't fix the broken sales funnel, which just hid the symptoms of the broken piece of the sales process.
If someone is landing on your prices page and immediately leaving, the problem doesn't HAVE to be the amount you're charging. It may just be that the amount showed up before they trusted you enough to care, or to reach out anyway & see if you'd negotiate the price. That's most likely a messaging problem. Bluntly put, it's a "the rest of my site isn't doing its job" problem.
Think about it like renovating a house. If your kitchen cabinets are ugly, you don't fix it by nailing drywall over the cabinets. You actually fix the cabinets: re/paint them, remove & replace them, etc. If the kitchen is still ugly, then you can reassess after you've addressed one of the problems that contributes to that issue.
What I think he could have done instead is to restructure the services' sales page so the value and trust was built before the price was shared. Lead with what you do, who you do it for, what the results look like, and then show the prices. Make the number land alongside the context where it makes sense. If you have multiple packages or tiers, list them strategically so that they can properly be compared to each other. That's how you test your variables.
Pulling prices entirely and going back to an inquiry-only model is a full retreat, and you can't learn as much from it because too many things changed at once & you won't know which change caused the outcome you saw. 🤷♀️
Why Clients May Hate “Inquire for Pricing” (A Real Story)
Now let's look at this from the other side of the street, so to speak. Way before the world had AI assistants to write things for us, back when I was trying to figure out how to write sales copy, and website copy in general, I was absolute garbage at it (relatable, I know! 😂).
I decided to look into hiring a copywriter to at least write the sales pages on my website. I did my research, found someone whose voice felt like a great match for my brand, and reached out to ask about her rates. No prices were listed anywhere on her site, just a contact form. I had a sense that she was probably out of my budget, but I reached out anyway. (See? With the right messaging the potential client —me, in this case— may reach out regardless!)
One of her team members replied the next business day and said something like, 'Great. Let's set up a call!'
And I panicked. 🤭 I was like, 'wait! I really just need a ballpark first, because I don't want to waste anyone's time,' especially if we were in completely different price ranges.
...And I never heard from them again.
To this day—almost ten years later—I have no idea what she charges. It could be $3,000 for a sales page. It could be $30,000 per word written for the sales page. No clue.
And that experience made me feel like I wasn't worth the time of day. Like my genuine inquiry wasn't worth a response, because I had the audacity to ask about price before committing to a call. In my case, it wasn't because I was being cheap, I had a VERY real (small) budget to work with and I had to ask because they weren't listed; I wouldn't have bothered them if they'd had any indication of their pricing on their website.
I wasn't scared off by a potentially high price. I had a sense her rates were probably outside my budget, but I wanted to check anyway. I was trying to be considerate of her time by not scheduling a full discovery call first, just to have the awkward conversation about how far outside my budget this actually was... And I was ghosted for it. 🥴
That's the type of experience you're creating when you make pricing a mystery. Not only "exclusive" or "premium." Just frustrating, and potentially inconsiderate.
And for the clients you most want to attract—the ones who do their research, who respect your time, who show up to calls prepared & ready to talk to you—those may be exactly the people you're losing without the transparency, especially if know/like/trust isn't built through your website, at the same time.
How to List Prices on Your Web Design Website
If listing prices is worth doing (& I think it is), here's how I recommend you do it in a way that ...actually works. 🤭
Start with starting prices
At a minimum, if you have one main service package you sell, put something like "Packages start at $_____" on your sales page. That gives potential clients enough information to self-qualify without requiring a full conversation with you, only to figure out they're wildly out of your league, price-wise. It's not as helpful as a price range, but we'll get to that in a minute!
Use tiered packages
Even better than just using a 'Starting at' price, if you have different package options at different price points (low, mid, and high options), that gives people a spectrum to place themselves on. Your "low" doesn't have to be your hourly rate or anything, it can be a Design/VIP day, an hour's paid work session, —basically, just a lighter-scope project option that's less of a commitment.
The point is that it signals what kinds of work you take without locking you into one single option, and shows your flexibility.
Try a price range
Instead of a single 'Starting at' price, you can list a range, too. The lowest end of the range should be your absolute base rate, —your "I literally can't do this for any less than $_____." Your highest end of the range should be somewhere above what you'd charge for the most complex project you've ever taken on, or want to do again. That way, you have a lot of wiggle room in between to deliver a custom quote for any project inquiry you get, and potential clients can look at that range and decide if it's in the realm of possibility for them before reaching out. That's the goal!
The price itself is not doing the selling, though. The price is just information. Your website has to do the work of building trust, demonstrating your expertise, and making someone feel like you, specifically, are the right person for their project—before they ever get to the amount it costs. That's what determines whether the price lands well, or triggers them to inwardly cringe & leave.
If someone trusts you enough, they'll reach out even if the price is a stretch for them. They'll want to have the conversation with you first, before they let you go. They'll show up to that discovery call already half-sold, and THEN you can talk through scope, budget, fit, payment plans, — all of it. But that only happens if the rest of your site has already done its job by the time they scroll to your pricing section on the sales page for the service they want.
Your Homework:
Pull up your website right now and ask yourself these questions:
If I were a total stranger who knew nothing about web design and landed on this page, would I trust this person?
Do they have testimonials?
Is there a photo of them? Or a video intro so I can see that they are real?
Anything that makes this person feel like a real human being to me, and one that I'd trust, pay, & hand my business or livelihood over to?
⭐️ Remember!
A price shared in isolation—with no context, no trust-building, no personality—is always going to land cold.
But that's not necessarily a pricing problem, it's probably a messaging problem & you need to find out whether you're communicating the value of that amount effectively.
Think Like a Scientist: Iterate, Adjust, Experiment with Your Sales Page, but Don't Abandon It
I'll be blunt: James is obviously a successful designer and a smart person; his experiment was genuinely interesting to read. But I think his understandable fears, and potentially even his panic, changed more variables than he realized, and "remove the prices" was possibly the wrong conclusion to draw from the results he got.
The best advice I've ever heard came from another James (Wedmore): to think like a scientist. Scientists don't prove a theory and then close the book on it forever—no! They stay curious, keep testing, and stay open to being proved wrong at a later date.
When this designer's services page wasn't converting, the right response was to evaluate, iterate, adjust, and pivot, not to go back to the known status quo.
We are designers, after all! We can restructure the page, move the page content around so that the value of the service itself (& the problem it solves) is shared BEFORE the amount we charge to solve it. We can add social proof & testimonials from other clients. We can test a different price point, or rearrange how prices are shared on the page.
Change ONE thing and see what happens after giving it some time to work (or not).
Fear is a terrible data analyst. When you're in fight-or-flight mode, you're going to pick the safest-feeling option, not necessarily the one that will actually move your business forward. And removing your prices feels safe because it removes the scary variable, but it also removes your ability to learn anything useful from the situation.
I'll be the first to admit I'm not great at this in my personal life. I can abso-fuckin'-lutely spiral with the best of them! (Hello—Enneagram 6, here!) But in my business, I've practiced treating things like experiments instead, which makes it easier to evaluate what's working vs. what's not. Ex: That didn't work the way I tried it, so what can I adjust? That's the question you have to ask! Not, 'that didn't work, so I'll never try it again.' 🫠🤦🏻♀️
Your fear of listing prices is valid. I'm not dismissing it. But valid feelings don't automatically mean your assumptions about the outcome were right. Correlation does NOT equal causation.
Try it. Look at your data. Adjust the variables. Try again.
👇🏼 Want to go deeper on this? This post covers why you might not be getting booked the way you expect, and how our pricing is displayed was a big part of that conversation. Watch/Read that one next!
