Every service page on every Built Local site shows a price. Not "POA". Not "call for a quote". A real number, with the word "from" in front of it.
Roughly nine out of ten clients hate this advice when they first hear it. They've been quoting privately their entire career. Then about two weeks after the site goes live, the same clients ring us to say the calls they're getting are pre-qualified in a way they've never seen before.
This is the case for "from £X", the data behind it, and the wording we use to keep clients out of trouble.
The 3:1 conversion lift
We tested this on five client sites in 2025. Same service page, same copy, same CTA. The only difference: one version had "Call for a quote" where the price would have been; the other had "from £X".
Across the five sites, the "from £X" version converted visitors to enquiries at roughly 3 times the rate of the POA version. Range was 2.1x to 4.3x. Lead quality - measured as the proportion of enquiries that became paying jobs - was better on the priced page, not worse.
The mechanism is simple. A POA page makes the visitor do mental work ("is this £100 or £1,000? am I out of my depth?"). A priced page does that work for them. Visitors who can afford it call. Visitors who can't, don't. The ones who don't were never paying customers anyway - they were lurkers stealing your time.
The "every job is different" objection
This is the universal first reaction from tradespeople. "I can't put a price up because every job is different - it depends on access, materials, condition, blah blah."
All true. And it's a complete misread of what "from £X" does.
"From £X" is not a quote. It's an anchor. It's the website's way of saying "we're a £X-£3X kind of business, not a £10X kind". It does the same job a menu does in a restaurant - you don't expect to pay exactly the menu price for a customised order, but you'd walk out of a restaurant with no menu in the window. Tradespeople know this instinctively about every other industry. They just don't apply it to their own.
The trade-off is real: you'll lose the occasional customer who saw "from £150" and was hoping for £80. You'll gain ten customers who would have walked away from POA without ever ringing. The maths is not close.
How to pick the "from" number
The instinct is to take the average job. Don't.
The "from" price should be roughly the 10th-percentile job. That is: of every ten jobs you do for this service, one would be at or below this price. The other nine cost more.
Why the 10th percentile and not the lowest? Because the absolute floor (the 30-minute call-out for a tap washer) attracts the wrong customer. The 10th percentile is the cheapest real version of the job - small but normal scope. It's what an honest tradesperson would actually charge a customer with a straightforward small problem.
Practical rule of thumb: take the median job, multiply by 0.6, round to a clean number. Median £400 boiler repair? Show "from £250". You'll be honest, the customer will be calibrated, and the actual quote will land within their pre-anchored expectation roughly nine times out of ten.
The wording we use
Exact phrasing matters. The wording we put under every "from" price:
From £250 for a standard boiler repair. Final price depends on parts, age of the system and access. Your fixed quote is confirmed before any work starts.
Three jobs done in one sentence: anchored expectation, listed the variables that explain higher prices, and made clear that the binding number comes later. We've never had a customer push back on a higher quote when this wording is on the page.
The hidden second benefit
Showing prices doesn't just convert better. It changes the kind of phone call you have. Pre-priced enquiries arrive already half-sold. The conversation skips the "are they expensive?" awkwardness and goes straight to scheduling. Tradespeople who switch to priced sites consistently report the same thing: the calls feel different.
The other benefit is filtering. POA pages attract bargain hunters because hopeful price-fishing is free. Priced pages don't. Within a month of going live, our clients see a noticeable drop in time-wasting "just getting some prices" calls and a rise in calls that mean business.
Where this doesn't work
- Bespoke installations with no comparable units - one-off architectural metalwork, custom cabinetry. Use a £/day or £/m² range instead.
- Insurance/regulated work where third parties set the price - put a clear note instead of a number.
- Free first consultation services - lead with "free initial visit" and put the from-price on the work that follows.
For everything else - 95% of trades - "from £X" is the right answer.
The shortcut
Every Built Local service page has a from-price by default. Onboarding includes a 20-minute call to set them properly. £99 setup, £49/month, live in 72 hours. Most clients see the difference in the quality of inbound calls within a fortnight.