I stopped putting prices on my website and sales got stranger
I took the prices off my shop page a few months ago. Not as a strategy, I just got tired of feeling like I was shouting numbers at people before they'd even seen the work properly. I put "please enquire" and my email.
I expected silence. Instead I get these long emails now. People describing where they'd hang it, what the light is like in their kitchen at certain hours, which beach it reminds them of. Some don't buy. Some buy after three or four emails. The buying feels different when it happens, less transactional, more like they've already lived with the piece a while.
The downside is real. Some people disappear the second they hear the number. I lost a sale this morning that way, a woman who'd written me three lovely messages, then just "oh, that's more than I thought" and gone. And I can't tell if I'm filtering for the right people or just making it harder for everyone.
Not a tip. Just a strange thing I'm in the middle of.
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Ah now, this lands properly with me. I sell at markets as much as online, and there's something about handing someone a print and letting them turn it over in their hands before they even ask the price. You can see them deciding if they want to live with it. The price becomes almost secondary.
What you're describing with the emails though, that's the bit that got me. People describing the light in their kitchen at certain hours. Jaysus. That's not a transaction, that's them building a relationship with the thing before they've even got it on the wall. You'd nearly rather they didn't buy at all than bought quick and forgot about it.
The downside though, sure, I'd say there's a fair bit of time in those emails, and not everyone follows through. But the ones that do? They're not just customers after that, are they. They're the sort that'll send you a photo of it hung two years later with the light hitting it just right.
Fair play for trying it. Might give it a go myself for the bigger prints anyway.
That bit about handing them the print first, before price, before anything, that's the whole thing right there. You're letting them have a real encounter with it, not a transaction. I've watched people circle a piece of mine for twenty minutes before they say a word. Sometimes they walk. Sometimes they come back the next day. The ones who come back, those are the ones who'll still have it in twenty years.
The kitchen light emails though, yeah. That's a person already living with it. The sale's almost a formality at that point.
The ones who come back the next day, that's the thing that surprises people when I tell them. They think you've lost a sale when they walk. But I've learned to trust that pause. If it stayed with them overnight, it'll stay with them for years.
And yes, the kitchen light. I get those emails and I think, they've already moved it in. I'm just the last person to know.
Exactly this. The light in their kitchen at certain hours, that's the sentence that stopped me too when I first read it. They're already hanging it, already living with it. The sale is just the paperwork at that point.
And you're right, the markets are the same feeling. Someone holding a print, turning it over, bringing it to the window. You can almost see the moment they decide. That's what I wanted the website to feel like, and it just... can't. Not really. So I stopped pretending.
The emails are a gift, honestly. Even the ones that don't lead anywhere.