I used to put every price right on the page
I still believe in being upfront about money. For most of this business’s life, my site showed real numbers — what a build costs, what training costs, no “contact us for a quote” games. I hate the runaround as a buyer, so I didn’t want to hand it to anyone else.
But something changed when I started paying for traffic. And when I looked at what the ads were actually doing, the pricing page stopped making sense as the front door.
The problem with a price tag on cold traffic
When someone finds you through a referral or a piece of content, they already have context. They know a little about how you work and why you might be worth it. A price lands softly.
Cold ad traffic is different. Someone taps an ad, sees a number with zero context, and self-rejects in about three seconds — before they ever learn how I actually work, what’s included, or why the cheapest option usually costs more in the long run.
A price tag lets a stranger disqualify you before you get to say a single word. On cold traffic, that’s a conversation I’d rather have than lose.
So I made a bet: fewer, better conversations over more, colder clicks. Take the prices off, get people to reach out, and have a real (free) conversation where the number actually means something.
This isn’t about hiding the ball
I want to be clear, because “call for pricing” is often a red flag. My goal isn’t to trap you in a sales funnel or soften you up for a mystery invoice. I’ll still tell you the number fast and plainly — I just want to tell it to you in a two-minute conversation instead of letting a stranger guess from a page.
If you’d rather just see rough numbers before you talk to anyone, I get it — I’ve written honest breakdowns of what websites actually cost, and those still live on the blog.
Why I also backed off SEO
At the same time, I trimmed a lot of the keyword-heavy copy. Chasing search rankings had quietly turned some of my pages into word salad — phrases written for Google’s crawler, not for the person reading. “Affordable local small business website design Oakland County Michigan” is not how a human talks.
Here’s the honest trade-off: I may rank for a few fewer phrases. But now that ads and referrals are bringing people in, I’d rather the page read cleanly and make the case than technically hit a keyword and sound like a robot. For a local business in Oakland or Genesee County, a handful of clean, genuinely helpful pages beats a pile of stuffed ones.
What I’m watching to know if it worked
- Contact form submissions, not page views. The whole point was more real conversations.
- Quality of those conversations — are people showing up warmer and more serious?
- Whether removing prices scares off good-fit clients. If it does, the prices go back. This is an experiment, not a religion.
Should you do the same?
Not necessarily. If most of your business comes from people comparison-shopping on price, showing it can save everyone time. But if you’re driving cold traffic and losing people before they understand your value, pulling the price tag and inviting a conversation is worth testing.
That’s the kind of call I help local business owners make — and I’ll change my own site back in a heartbeat if the data says I’m wrong. If you want a second opinion on your own site’s front door, book a free conversation and we’ll talk it through.