Pricing and Daycare Hunting: An ode to transparent pricing pages
Overview
Let me start this off by saying I spend almost a decade in financial services and it still baffles me that three years after I left the industry, there is still almost zero pricing transparency.
This piece was triggered by my partner and I currently looking for infant childcare. We live in a nice-er area of Atlanta where we assume that the tuition costs will be extremely high. Imagine my surprise when I spend hours looking up about a dozen options and only one of them has their pricing listed. One. Uno.
The fact this is happening in an era where research clearly indicates that consumers spend a considerable amount of time researching you BEFORE they ever reach out is nuts to me. I know that infant care facility managers aren’t looking at modern pricing and marketing strategies, but still…it feels like I’m in 2004 all over again.
Why pricing transparency is important
In my hunt for daycares, it has taken (read: waste) a lot of time to just suss through all of the noise. Even though they hide the tuition information behind a tour, there is no “get tuition rates” button in the top corner which would lead to the tour workflow.
You have to hunt for it. It’s obscure and then when you finally find the correct page you realize that it’s just a mirage. You have to fill out extensive information to even get a tour. They have also not really read up on the website and CTA best practices either.
Having transparency means that your customers can self-select themselves out of your sales funnel. Funnels cost money and should be added to your CAC/LTV numbers because you are paying for each email you send…and angering your customers along the way. By making the front-end of your sales process self-serve, you are saving yourselves and your potential customers' inefficiency. The last thing we want is for it to be inefficient on the path to an inefficient pricing workflow.
It’s a waste of energy. And when someone has the momentum to get information about whether are not they can afford you — DO NOT THROW UP A CONCRETE BARRIER.
