Archive for February 11th, 2011

Today I went shopping for tyres for my car, and something occurred to me.   It struck me that I can’t actually remember the last time I went to a companies physical location to shop for anything – to traditionally shop.   For the tyres, I goggled all my local providers, went to their web sites, and checked on the prices of the range of tyres.   This has become my normal method of purchase now – using web sites to price up the products I want before I then go and purchase it (or order it if the price warrants an online purchase).   I suspect for more and more people, this is now the normal mode of shopping.

But you know what?  On a few of these sites, when I used the Price Enquiry button and was told to “Call now” for prices – I really could not be bothered.   I don’t want to get into a 5 minute conversation to get prices.  No, I expect to be able to find my prices on the web.  I don’t care if it’s a car tire, a tablet PC, a holiday or the services of a plumber – I want to know an idea of the price before I get in contact.

As I say, this has become the norm for me.   Yes, I will still ‘wander’ into shops for clothes, for food, for magazines and such.  But the times I use the web before I buy far out ways the phone up or wander in approach.   And I suspect that in the future I will start using the web for things like clothes and food shopping. 

Which brings me around to those companies with the ‘call me’ option as the ONLY way of finding out the price.  I went onto their web site (boosting their web hit count), tried to look at their prices, hit the call us area, and promptly moved onto the next site (so a web hit without a follow through).   Yes, car tyres are a commodity, but the tyres are actually part of a service (I am not going to fit the tyres to my car myself).   

So I am going so update my own site, and I am going to start listing typical project prices, and typical day rates – as part of an A/B site test.   If I demand to get an idea of prices before I make contract, you can bet there are others out there wanting the same from me.

So are you hiding your prices from your web visitors?  If so, is it costing you sales?