Almost every business owner who hides their prices gives one of three reasons: competitors will see them, every job is different, or they want the conversation first. All three are real. None of them survives contact with what the visitor does next.

What silence actually costs

A visitor who cannot find a price does not usually ask. They assume - and the assumption is almost always "expensive" or "they are hiding something" - and then they check the next result. You never see this happen. There is no enquiry, no bounce you would notice, no way to count it. That invisibility is the entire problem: the cost of hiding prices is paid in people you will never know were interested.

The enquiries you do get change shape too. Without a figure to filter against, you hear from people whose budget is a fraction of your minimum, and you spend real time discovering it. Publishing a starting price does not lose you customers so much as it stops you spending Tuesday on a quote that was never going to close.

The three objections, answered

  1. "My competitors will see them"

    They already can. Any competitor who cares has phoned you, mystery-shopped you or asked a customer. The only person your silence is keeping in the dark is the person deciding whether to contact you.

  2. "Every job is different"

    Usually true, and it is an argument for a range rather than for nothing. "Kitchens from £X" or "most projects land between £X and £Y" is honest, useful, and does not commit you to anything. A visitor is not looking for a quote - they are looking for whether they are in the right shop.

  3. "I want to have the conversation first"

    The most reasonable of the three, and the one that quietly costs the most. You are asking a stranger to spend social effort before you have told them anything about cost. Most people will not - and the ones who will are disproportionately the ones who were always going to buy, which makes the strategy look like it is working.

Four ways to be concrete without pinning yourself down

  • A starting price. "From £199." The single most useful sentence you can add to a services page, and it commits you to nothing above it.
  • A range with the middle named. "Most clients spend between £1,000 and £2,500, and a typical project is around £1,500." Honest, and it does most of the filtering for you.
  • A worked example. "A three-page site for a barber shop, with prices and a booking enquiry: £199." One concrete case teaches more than an abstract range.
  • What drives the number. "Price depends on how many rooms, whether the floor comes up, and how fast you need it." This turns a missing number into a useful explanation, which is the next best thing.

When hiding them is genuinely right

There are real cases. Bid work and tenders, where the price is a competitive submission. Businesses where the same job varies by a factor of ten depending on things you cannot know from a web page. Regulated work where quoting without an assessment would be irresponsible - and there, saying exactly that, in a sentence, is far better than saying nothing.

What is almost never right is the middle position most businesses take by default: no figure, no range, no explanation, just a contact form. That is not discretion. It is an unanswered question, and the visitor answers it themselves.

Every package price, in your own currency, on the page - including what each one covers and what it does not.

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