Showing prices on a trade website

Anyone looking for a trade business compares before they dial. 94 per cent (Bitkom 2025) of trade businesses run their own website, and someone with three of them open side by side is looking for the same three answers on each: does this business do what I need, will it come to me, and roughly what does that cost? Most sites now answer the first two properly — the services are listed, so is the service area. The third stays open. That is exactly where it is decided whether someone fills in the form or opens the next site. The question does not disappear because the page skips it; it merely moves to a place where answering it is more expensive — the phone call squeezed between two building sites.

That the question is being asked more sharply than a few years ago is not a mood, it is measured. 87 per cent (Bitkom 2025) of businesses observe that customers have become considerably more price-sensitive, and 74 per cent (Bitkom 2025) find that they have become more critical. Someone price-sensitive compares — and can only compare what they find. If your page offers no orientation, they compare anyway: with the business that did name a figure, or with what they heard from an acquaintance. The second benchmark is the worse one, because there is nothing there for you to correct.

Even so, the instinct to name no figure is not timidity but experience. A price that sits on a page without conditions gets quoted in conversation, in whichever version suits the other side at that moment. A business that once advertised a bathroom refit with a starting price knows the argument about screed, pipe runs and tile formats that follows. The decision is therefore not „price, yes or no“, but which of your services a figure can actually say something about — and for which it would only be a promise that the next old building overturns.

In project work no statement replaces measuring up. A bathroom refit, a roof structure, a facade, rewiring in an existing building: what these jobs cost is decided by things nobody can see from a desk — the condition behind the plaster, where the pipes run, the substrate, scaffolding access, disposal. 89 per cent (Bitkom 2025) of businesses report that customers expect individual quotations. An individual quotation and a flat figure on a web page are two statements that contradict each other; promise both and you will be measured against one of them.

The damage rarely appears at once. It appears in the appointment where you have to explain why the starting figure from the website has turned into a considerably different sum. At that moment you are no longer negotiating about your work but about your credibility — against a text you wrote yourself. A starting price for a project that in practice never happens at that price is therefore not a filter but a call-back machine with disappointment built in.

Even so, the page must not fall silent at this point. Whoever cannot name a price names the route to it: what does the survey appointment cost, and is it credited against the job? What drives the effort? How long does it take until the quotation arrives? Is there an order of magnitude that at least points in a direction — a note, for instance, that a project of this kind rarely sits below a certain size? These statements filter almost as well as a price and commit to nothing.

As soon as you advertise prices towards consumers, the German price indication rules apply. Their core is quickly stated: what has to be given is the total price, meaning the price including VAT and all other price components. For a trade business that as a rule means gross prices on the page as soon as the offer is also aimed at private households — and with heating, bathrooms, roofing, electrical and painting work it almost always is. A net figure with „plus VAT“ attached is the wrong form towards consumers, even though it is the familiar one inside the business.

The second rule concerns everything that comes on top of the price. Costs that regularly arise with the work belong inside the stated price or at the very least clearly and in its immediate vicinity — the call-out charge is the classic case. A large figure at the top and the travel cost small in a footnote three screen heights below: that construction is the most common complaint about price presentation and at the same time the easiest to avoid. Put both on the same line or directly underneath, and the presentation holds while your phone rings less often with queries.

For businesses using the small-business rule under section 19 of the German VAT Act a separate version applies: they do not show VAT, and the price on the page stands without a VAT statement. A short note about it belongs there so the figure is not read as forgotten VAT. This too is not legal advice but a description of common practice — how it applies in your case belongs in the hands of your tax adviser or a lawyer.

The difference between a robust and a risky price statement rarely lies in the amount and almost always in the wording. „Prices on request“ is the most widespread and at the same time weakest variant: it answers nothing, reads like an evasion and shifts the work entirely onto the phone. „Affordable prices for every budget“ is weaker still, because it additionally raises an expectation nobody has defined. Both sentences cost enquiries without saving a single call-back.

A statement becomes robust when it carries a unit, a scope and a date, and when the sentence after it says what happens next. „We charge the annual maintenance of your system per appliance; travel, inspection and the report are included. Price date August 2026. You receive the binding quotation after a short consultation.“ Four sentences, no assurances, and nonetheless a complete answer. How such passages fit into service pages without turning the site into a price list is something we work out with each business individually.

Where the price sits decides how it works. On a service page it belongs beneath the description of the service, not on a separate pricing page at the end of the navigation: someone arriving from search directly on the maintenance page should find the answer there and not one click further on. An additional overview page with all the ranges makes sense, but as a summary and not as the only place. For emergency services the call-out charge belongs near the phone number, because that is where the decision is made.

In design terms it needs less than many assume. One clearly set-off line with the figure, two or three lines underneath on the scope, the price date beside it — no more. Tables with twelve items look thorough but are read on a phone, and there the short form works considerably better. The structure decides, not the tool used to build the page.

The argument „prices on the website or not“ is put wrongly, because it tars the whole business with one brush. Put correctly it runs: which of my services have a scope that is settled before the appointment? Those get a figure on the page, with a unit, a scope and a date. All the others get the route to the price on the page: the survey, the basis of calculation, the time until the quotation. Together the two answer the question every visitor arrives with, without committing you to something the next building site will refute.

The effort involved is manageable: an afternoon with last year's invoices, a list of the types of work and three details per figure. The return does not show up as more enquiries but as fewer conversations that lead nowhere. Anyone unsure which of their services suit a stated figure can go through it in twenty minutes — there are usually more of them than the business itself would have guessed.