Answered: Should I list my prices on my website as a Designer?

"Should I list my prices on my website" is one of these questions that come up time and time again. I thought why not write a succinct but useful blog post to answer this to the best of my ability? I'll do this by presenting a brief pros and cons list, as well as outlining my own reasons for showing/not showing prices online. Hope this helps you to make up your own mind and come to a decision on how to proceed.

There are plenty of reasons why displaying prices on your website can be a good thing. some of them include:

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Weeding out clients who aren't a good fit

By displaying prices on your site you avoid getting requests or enquiries by potential clients who either can't afford you or who are not willing to invest money into their web design project. This saves you time, as you don't have to have a back and forth conversation about your services, the project and how much you charge just to find out that the client's budget doesn't match your price.

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Making billing and quoting easier

Quoting jobs is one of the tasks most freelancers don't enjoy and in many online forums and designer groups the question "How much should I charge for ... ?" pops up frequently. By having pre-made packages and displaying their prices online you can simply refer clients to this information. No need to think about what to charge, spend time and writing up a quote. After all these are all non-billable tasks, meaning nobody is going to pay you for doing this.

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Increasing your prices for new clients is made easy

Similar to what I've talked about earlier, if you decide to increase your prices, you can simply change a number on your site and be done with it. You don't have to think about what to charge every time you create a quote for a client. It's very much like selling a product: here's the price tag -  the client can either take it or leave it and when he contacts you, you usually don't have to talk about the price again, as it has already been determined by yourself upfront.

But hold on, there are also quite a few reasons why displaying your prices online isn't such a great idea:

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Your project scope and complexity varies too much

Especially with web design projects (but also a lot of other creative work), the type of work and skills required can be quite diverse. A 5-page website can be a simple brochure site or include lots of custom animations, transitions or integrations. Maybe your client needs extra features not included in your package which means that the price displayed on your site is already not applicable anymore and you have to do an individual quote anyway. Clients might be unhappy about the difference of the displayed price and the price they eventually get to pay. It is way easier to have a fixed price for a product or a subscription service as both of these usually don't change or vary in scope and complexity. But no matter if it is web design, video editing or Webflow development work: each project is different to then one before both in terms of scope, complexity and effort.

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One size doesn't fit all

Clients who look at your packages and prices might need something slightly different than what you're showing on your website. This results in them assuming you don't offer what they need (and thereby they might not even contact you to enquire). Alternatively they might get in touch with you anyway and you will have to adjust your packages to their request and charge more or try to remodel your packages to fit their needs (e.g. "Can we leave XYZ out, but instead include ABC?". This throws the whole premise of having less work with pricing jobs and having time-saving, "ready to go" packages out of the window.

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Value based pricing doesn't work like this

As you might know many well-known figures in the design community advocate for value based pricing. This means they encourage creatives to move away from hourly based pricing and assess the value the project has for the client and base the price on this. If you would like to learn more about value based pricing, I recommend this video by seasoned creative and business owner Chris Do.

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If you offer and display ready-made packages on your site you have chance of adjusting the price depending on the client and have put yourself in a box that is is hard to get out of. However, what you might consider is to simply add a "starting at" price range to your site with a sample project outline attached to it. This gives clients an idea of the minimum costs to expect but doesn't put you into a corner right away.

Now that I have given you just a few pros and cons for displaying (or not displaying) your pricing on your website, I'd like to tell you what I personally do for my own Webflow design freelance business. As you might have seen on my website, I don't display prices anymore. For me each project is just too different and includes too many variables that I cannot just determine one price up front. What I can say is that I usually charge a fixed price per project – only in certain circumstances I offer hourly billing or a day rate. This is mostly the case when I work on long term projects that don't have definite start and end date and that might go on for several months.

I hope this article has helped you a little determining if you'd like to display your prices on your website. In the end you have to see what's right for yourself and your own business and you might find that this changes over time. Questions? Get in touch with me via email!