In my last video, on the sections a service business landing page needs, I said that a lot of people are scared of the pricing section.
It is understandable. You write your price down, then you open a competitor's site, and theirs is a bit lower. It feels like the same thing, and now you are asking why anybody would pick you over the company that is just a bit cheaper.
So do you drop your price and race them to the bottom, or take the price off the page and hope people call anyway?
I build landing pages for service businesses, through white label, under marketing agencies that manage over 120 clients. I have 5 variables I put on the page so the price is never the only thing a visitor compares, and that is what this article walks through.
Why the price becomes the only thing they look at
A while back I watched an Alex Hormozi video where he broke down a moving company. His point was that if you sell using the exact same measured unit as your competitor, you become a commodity. A commodity is something where one is as good as another, like petrol. Everybody knows petrol is pretty much the same between stations, so the only thing anybody considers is the price.
That is what happens on a pricing section. If your page says 50 an hour, the competitor's says 45, and that is all either page says, the visitor has one thing to compare. They pick the lower number, and they are not wrong to.
So the job of the pricing section is not to be the cheapest one on the market. It is to give them other variables to chew on.
Variable one, show a price, unless three things are true
The first variable is the price itself, because hiding it feels like the safe way out. The thinking goes that if the visitor does not know the price, they will reach out and you close the deal on the call.
That is not what happens. The Nielsen Norman Group, who study how people use websites, watched participants in usability tests on business websites leave for competitors' sites when a site did not show prices. People also saw companies that hide their costs as evasive. That research is from 2013 and about business buyers, but it describes the behaviour you are afraid of. A hidden price does not keep somebody on your page until they call, it sends them to a competitor's page that has a clear price.
You also do not need an exact quote on the page. The person looking for a service just wants to know whether you are in their range. What you need is a price signal: a starts at price, a range, or what a typical job costs.
This works for big custom jobs as well. McComsey Builders is a custom home builder in Pennsylvania, and every job they do is different. Their site still says kitchen remodels start around $60,000. That one line does the filtering for them, because somebody whose whole budget for a kitchen is $10,000 knows straight away this business is not for them.
So when is it right to leave the price off completely? I would only do it when three things are true:
- You really cannot ballpark the scope until you look at the job.
- Your industry expects a sales call before anybody gets a quote.
- Your page is doing a lot of social proof and a lot of qualifying in place of the number.
If one of those is missing, put a price, a range or a ballpark on the page. Hold on to the third condition, because variable five is how you build it.
Variable two, make the price the whole price
Once the price is on the page, the question is what it covers, and this is where the race to the bottom really starts. A low number that grows on the quote wins the click, and the company that priced the whole job looks expensive next to it.
Einstein Moving, a moving company in the US, fixes this. Their pricing page has a table of what competitors add on top of the hourly rate:
- a trip fee, plus $150
- a fuel surcharge, plus $89
- a credit card fee
- a booking deposit
And the line under the table says, "Our rate is the whole cost. Theirs is just where it starts."
Now the visitor is comparing a total against a starting point instead of 50 an hour against 45.
Do the same with your own service. List everything you could possibly charge for, fold it into the price, and write what is included directly under the number as plain lines, so the visitor compares the whole job instead of an hourly rate.
I do this on my own page: a single price, the landing page built in a week, and that is it. Back when I did automations that was far harder, because every business was different and every job came with a lot of variables. So what do you do when your job really is like that?
Variable three, say what moves the price
Maybe your job is too complicated to package like that. That is fine. You do not hide the price because of it, you list the variables. Variable two was what is inside your number, and this one is what changes it.
Marcus Sheridan built a pool company called River Pools, and he became known for an article breaking down what a pool actually costs, line by line, when nobody else in his industry would. His view is that explaining the variables that go into the price builds trust. Their page gives a range for the whole job and prices the add ons one by one, so an automatic pool cover is listed at $14,000 to $21,000.
That gives the person a ballpark for their own project, and it shows them the variables, so the question in their head changes from why are you more expensive to which of these apply to me.
In practice, put up a range, then the few things that decide where in it somebody lands, like the size of the job, access, materials and urgency. You will be tempted to build a price calculator for this. It is not mandatory, and a simple table does the job.
The first three variables are about packaging the price. The last two, the risk and the cheaper competitor, are about the psychology of what the customer is actually buying.
Variable four, put a number on the risk
This one comes out of the same moving company breakdown, where a customer can look at a move in two ways. In frame one, somebody takes my stuff from A to B. In frame two, I am handing a stranger everything I own, and trusting them not to break it, to turn up on time, and not to charge me double once the job is done.
In frame one there are so few variables that you just compare the price. In frame two you compete on trust.
The cheap option hides the risk as hard as it hides the extra charges. Do the opposite: name the risk, take it on yourself, and put it in writing. That is all a guarantee is, and it makes your offer worth more, because you carry risk the customer would otherwise carry.
Benjamin Franklin Plumbing does this well. If they are late, they pay you $5 for every minute, up to $300. Waiting all day for a tradesperson is exactly the worry, and they put a number on it.
Einstein Moving does it again with damage. Their page points out that the industry default payout for broken belongings is 60 cents a pound, so a mover who breaks your 50 pound, $1,200 TV pays you $30. Theirs comes with $2,000 of cover included, which makes their service worth more before the hourly rate even comes up.
In practice, take the one thing your customer is most worried about when they hire somebody like you, make it a guarantee, and put a clear number on it next to your price.
The limit is that a guarantee you cannot keep will cost you money and your reputation, so only promise what you are certain you can deliver.
Variable five, say you are not the cheapest, and put the proof beside it
The last variable is to stop pretending the cheaper competitors do not exist. The visitor will find them anyway, so it is better they hear it from you, with the reason right beside it.
ThrillX is an agency that builds landing pages, like I do. They do not list a price at all, which makes them one of the cases from variable one. Instead they say it out loud: if you are looking for the cheaper option, it is not going to be them, and they will point you to one. Right next to that they put the results they promise and how long their clients stay. They call it disqualifying, and it is what lets them leave the number off.
For a service business, the proof is usually your reviews. So write a short line like "we are not the cheapest in town, and this is why people pick us anyway", and put your best reviews directly under it. If you do not have reviews yet, I wrote a whole piece on what to put in that slot instead.
That line adds trust, and it moves away the people who were never going to be your clients. The person who leaves after reading it is the one who would have spent the whole call haggling for a discount.
What to do with this
Open your own pricing section and cover the number with your hand. Whatever is left is everything a visitor has to compare you on besides the price. If nothing is left, start with variable two and write what is included directly under your price today. It is only writing, and it changes the comparison straight away.