How to Send Pricing to Your Clients using your Website

A tutorial explaining how to add a private pricing page, PDF, or client area to your Showit + WordPress website, and a discussion about the best way to send pricing to your clients.

 

Tips for Sending Pricing to Leads

Be clear. Clarity is key when it comes to pricing. It seems that every time we have a general contractor do work on our house, there’s some discrepancy between what they do and what they said they were going to do. Make sure your services and prices are clearly outlined, defined, and communicated. That way everyone’s on the same page.

Look professional. Guides that outline services, prices, or a proposal should look professional. Sure, you can type these things out in Microsoft word, but there are all sorts of easy-to-use programs and templates out there that will help you put together something that’s branded and looks good. Hire a designer to put together a pricing or proposal template for you that can be used for future inquiries.

Consider creating packages or collections. Collections or packages make it easier for people to realize what they need, and they also educate clients on what kinds of things they should get.

If I’m getting married and hiring a photographer, I might not know what typical coverage time is. If the only option is choose from an “a la carte” menu, I might try to only hire the photographer for 4 hours thinking that’s enough time.  And most wedding photographers would agree that’s not enough time. Creating packages around typical lengths of coverage time help the person interested in your service determine what kind of coverage they’ll need.

It also helps increase customer value. Some people will only want the bare minimum, while others will want all the bells-and-whistles. The people who are willing to pay more, pay more.

Send as an attachment PDF or send a link to a PDF. Do not send your pricing in the body of an email. Chances are that will be a LONG email, and there are more effective ways present your pricing. Consider creating and attaching a well-designed pricing PDF outlining your experience, services, and prices. That way it’s easier for people understand what you do and how much it costs without reading a really long email.

An alternative to attaching a PDF is to host the PDF on your website, and simply share a link for people to access it. That way no one has to go through the trouble of uploading or downloading a file.

Create a pricing page. Another way to present your prices is through pricing page on your website. This method is easy because it keeps crucial information in one place that’s easy for the client to access and navigate. This page could be password-protected or “hidden” from search engines so that it’s relatively private.

What’s the best way to send pricing?

As long as you’re presenting your prices to people in a clear, easy-to-consume manner, it doesn’t really matter much how you deliver the pricing.

We used to send pricing as a PDF attachment because we had different pricing for things like holiday weekends or for the next calendar year. If your pricing changes from event to event, it might be easier to simply attach it in an email.

Something to keep in mind about this method, however, is that it can be difficult to upload or download an attachment with a weak internet connection. There were times we were traveling where the internet was too slow to even upload a PDF file. And what happens if the person you’re sending pricing is somewhere where the internet’s not great?

Many people we’ve designed websites for have us create a pricing page. It’s easy to link to a pricing page in an email, present information clearly if it’s well-designed, and don’t require prospects to download any attachments.

And others decide to create password-protected pages on their websites. We don’t recommend this as much because it forces visitors to remember a password, and doesn’t make the information quite as accessible. Instead of password protecting a pricing page, we recommend people use the SEO settings on their website to prevent search engines from showing the page in search results (see below for more information on this).

Related Post: The Super Simple Guide to Pricing Your Services

How to Add a PDF to your Showit or WordPress Website

Note: The following WordPress tutorials assume you have installed the Yoast SEO plugin. If you have not installed this plugin, you can find instructions on installing the Yoast SEO plugin here. Also, keep in mind that there is currently no way to password protect a Showit website page. Please see the tutorial below for a workaround.

Showit:

1. Login to your Showit website.
2. Select Site and then Media Library .
3. Add the file to your Media Library.
4. Click or hover-over the file and select the link icon in the top-right corner.
5. Share that link with your client. We recommend running it through a link shortener.

Note: There’s currently no way to password protect a Showit page or PDF. See below for a workaround.

WordPress:

1. Login to your WordPress Website.
2. Select Media in the left-hand navigation.
3. Add/Select your PDF from your Media Library , and then select Edit More Details .
4. This will bring you to the attachment page. Scroll to the bottom until you see the Yoast SEO box. Select the gear icon, and find the area that says: Allow search engines to show this media in search results? Select No (Yoast currently has this selected by default).
5. Navigate back to Media and select the file. Copy the file URL in the Attachment Details, and send to clients (we recommend running the link through a shortener first.

For additional security, you can add put this PDF on a password-protect page. See below for details on how to do this.

 

How to create a “private” pricing page on your Showit website.

Private is in quotations above because there is currently no way to create a truly private, password protected page in Showit. However, there is a way to make sure that page doesn’t show up in Google search results.

1. Login to your Showit website.
2. Create a new page or find the page you would like to make “private.”
3. Select Advanced Settings in the navigation on the right side of the app.
4. Check the box that states Ask Google to ignore this page .

 

How to create a private pricing or client page on your WordPress website.

Creating a password-protected page on your WordPress website is super easy. But if you have a Showit website with a WordPress blog, this isn’t quite as simple. Follow the next set of directions to get your WordPress page password protected.

1. Create a new page in WordPress (or select the page you would like to password-protect).
2. In the Publish widget on the right side, find Visibility and select Password Protect .
3. From there you will be able to set the password.

Note: Follow the same instructions to password protect a post (just go to “Posts” instead of “Pages”).

 

How to create a private pricing or client page for your Showit website (on your WordPress blog).

If you have a Showit website and want to password protect a page, you’ll have to do so using a WordPress page—but first, you’ll have to create a WordPress page template. This video will walk you through each step. There are additional elements that can you can fool around with once you get this working, but we opted to keep the tutorial fairly straightforward.

Please note that you won’t be able to password-protect the elements of the page designed in Showit; only the content created in WordPress will be password-protected.

If you want to avoid the extra work, you could simply create a password-protected blog post with the content you want to protect.