How to price your services — and whether to show prices

Two questions hide inside “how should I price this?” The first is what number to charge. The second — the one almost no pricing guide touches — is whether to put that number where a stranger can see it before they ever call you. This post answers both, because for a local business they're really the same decision made twice: once in your head, once on your website.

We'll start with how to land on a price you can defend, then spend the back half on the part that actually involves your site — because the research on what makes a customer rule you out is clearer than most owners expect, and it points somewhere specific.

The three ways to set a price

Strip away the jargon and there are only three ways anyone sets a price. Most good pricing uses all three, but it helps to see them separately first.

1. Cost-plus: add up what it costs, then add a margin

Work out what one job costs you — materials, your time at an hourly rate you'd accept, a slice of overhead like insurance and fuel — then add a profit margin on top. It's the simplest method and the one everyone starts with. Its weakness, as the Small Business Charter puts it, is that it's “inward-focused”: it tells you the floor you can't go below, but it says nothing about what a customer would happily pay. Use it to make sure you never sell at a loss — not as the whole answer.

2. Market pricing: charge roughly what everyone else charges

Look at what comparable businesses nearby charge and sit somewhere in that band. This is a useful reality check — if you're double the shop down the road, you'd better know why. But as the only method it has two traps. It assumes your competitors priced correctly (they may be underpricing too), and it ignores everything that makes you different. Copying the market is how a whole town of businesses quietly races itself to the bottom.

3. Value-based: charge what the result is worth

Price on what the outcome is worth to the customer, not on what it cost you to deliver. The mobile detailer who gets a car showroom-ready before a sale isn't selling two hours of labour — they're selling a few hundred dollars on the resale price. This is the hardest to do and usually the most profitable, because it breaks the link between your costs and your price. It's also where confidence comes in, which is exactly where most owners fall down.

In practice, blend them: use cost-plus to find your floor, glance at the market so you're not wildly out of step, then push toward value wherever you can clearly point to what the customer actually gets.

The most common mistake is charging too little

You'll often read that 80–90% of small businesses price too low. We went looking for the study behind that number and couldn't find one — treat the exact figure as folklore. What is well-described is the pattern itself. The Small Business Charter's pricing work (Prof. David Falzani, Jan 2025) lays out why owners underprice: a shaky belief in their own value, a fear that a higher price will scare customers off, and treating price as a set-it-once decision rather than something you revisit.

Charging too little does more damage than it looks like it does:

• It signals low quality. Price is the first thing a stranger reads as a quality cue. Being the cheapest option often reads as being the worst one.
• It attracts the wrong customers. The most price-sensitive buyers tend to be the most demanding and the least loyal — they'll leave for whoever undercuts you next week.
• It starves the business. Thin margins mean nothing left over to reinvest in better tools, help, or your own time off.

How to raise prices without losing everyone

Raising prices feels terrifying and is usually less dramatic than you fear. Falzani's advice, and the common experience behind it: many businesses that test a higher price find their conversion rate barely moves. A few concrete moves make it easier:

• Go in steps, on a schedule. A small increase once a year is normal and expected; a 40% jump after five frozen years is a shock you inflicted on yourself.
• Raise it for new customers first. Let existing regulars keep the old rate for a while. You test the new price on people who never knew the old one.
• Lead with what's included, not an apology. “Here's everything you get” lands better than “sorry, prices are going up.” You're not asking permission.

The bigger question: should prices go on your website?

Here's where your site enters the picture — and where the debate gets heated, because a lot of owners are convinced that publishing prices is a mistake. The consumer research points the other way, and clearly.

BrightLocal's “What makes consumers choose your business?” study — a survey of 1,227 US consumers, published July 2026 — asked what makes people reject a business they were considering. “Unclear pricing or no offers” came in second, at 32%, behind only negative reviews (33%) and just ahead of a low star rating (30%). In other words, vague pricing rules you out at almost exactly the same rate as bad reviews do.

It matters even more in the trades. The same study found that for home-services customers, clear pricing is something they research more than in any other industry — 36% cite it as a factor. (To be accurate: for trades, reviews and star ratings still outrank price, so this is a “both/and,” not a “price beats everything.” If reviews are your gap, that's a separate job — see how to get more Google reviews.)

The honest counter-argument

The case for hiding prices isn't stupid, and it deserves a fair hearing. Owners who leave prices off usually want the conversation first — a chance to explain value before a number scares someone off, or to price each job on its specifics. The real, defensible claim underneath it is this: showing prices tends to reduce the number of enquiries while raising their quality. Fewer tyre-kickers text you; the ones who do already know roughly what things cost and haven't ruled you out on price.

We'll be straight about the evidence here: we could not find a clean study proving which way that nets out on revenue for local service businesses. The lead-quality argument is widely made in marketing circles and is genuinely plausible, but nobody has measured the dollars-in-the-till effect for a salon or a plumber in a way we'd stake a claim on. So treat it as a real trade-off, not a settled fact:

• If your work is fairly standard — a haircut, an oil change, a class pass — the volume you'd lose is mostly people who were never going to book you at your real price anyway. Show the prices.
• If every job is genuinely custom and high-ticket — a full kitchen remodel, a wedding package — a firm price list can mislead more than it helps, and starting a conversation may be worth the lost volume.

The resolution: clarity, not a fixed price list

Almost everyone frames this as “show every price” versus “show nothing,” and that's the wrong axis. What the research actually rewards is pricing clarity — enough for a stranger to know whether they can afford you and whether you're in their ballpark. That is not the same as a rigid menu, and none of the ways to provide it commit you to a quote before you've seen the job.

A house painter doesn't need to price every wall in town. “Interiors typically run $2–$5 per square foot; most single rooms land around $400–$800” tells a homeowner everything they need to decide whether to text you, and commits you to nothing. That's the whole trick.

Putting prices on the page well

Once you've decided what to show, a few things make it land. Pricing is one of the core pieces every local site needs — it belongs alongside your hours, services, and contact details (more on that in what to put on a small business website).

• Put it where people look, not on a buried page. Prices hidden behind a “pricing” link get missed. On a services page, next to each service, is where the eye already is.
• Say what's included. A number with no context invites doubt. “$120 — cut, wash, and style, about 45 minutes” answers the follow-up question before it's asked.
• Use round, honest numbers. For services, $75 reads as more trustworthy than $74.99. The fake-discount pricing that works in retail feels off coming from a person doing the work.
• Give a clear next step next to the price. A price with no obvious way to act on it is a dead end. Put a “book” or “get a quote” button right there — and if you can, let people pay or deposit online, which removes another reason to hesitate (see how to accept payments as a small business).
• Keep it current. A price you raised in person but never changed on the site becomes an argument at the counter. Whatever you publish, it has to be easy to update — a price you're afraid to touch is a price that goes stale.

The bottom line

Set your price with all three lenses — cost as your floor, the market as a sanity check, value as your target — and lean against your instinct to undercharge. Then, on your site, choose clarity over secrecy: a “from” price, a range, or a few typical jobs answers the question a stranger is quietly asking without ever tying you to a quote. Being the business that's easy to price is worth more than being the cheapest — and it's one of the few edges you can build in an afternoon.