My daughter made me put prices on the website. Three months, two inquiries, both from other sculptors.
She set the account up in March and then talked me into a price list. "People need to know what things cost before they ask." So there's a page now. Small maquette, £1,200. A one-metre limestone figure, £9,000. A welded piece depends on the steel.
Three months. Two emails. Both from sculptors asking how I got the stone at that rate.
The commissions that did come in this spring came the old way, from a man I did a fireplace surround for in 2011 who passed my number to his brother-in-law. No prices discussed until he stood in the yard and looked at the thing.
I'm not saying the page is wrong. I'm saying I haven't figured out who it's for. Somebody with £9,000 to spend on a garden piece doesn't want to comparison-shop it like a fridge, and somebody without it isn't my customer anyway.
If you sell work at this kind of money, what do you actually put on the site. Numbers, or just the work and a phone number.
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The two sculptors asking about the stone rate made me laugh, because of course it's other makers who find the price page first. They're the only ones who know what the numbers mean. To a buyer who's never had to move a tonne of limestone, £9,000 is just a number sitting next to a photo.
I put prices on my own work last year for the same reason and got mostly silence, then one very long email asking if I could do it cheaper because a print would be "basically the same." So I don't think the page is wrong, but maybe it's doing a different job than your daughter thinks. It answers a question people ask after they're already interested, not before. Nobody gets interested because of a price.
The yard conversation works because by then they've already decided they like you. That's the part a website can't do, and I don't know that it's worth trying to make it.
The print comparison email is the whole problem in one line. A price is only meaningful next to what it buys, and nobody who has not lifted the stone knows what it buys. I have a price list too, and the only people who ever quote it back at me are the ones who already understand it, which is not a business model but it is a decent filter. Your "starts around" idea is the honest one. Buyers do not want a number, they want permission to ask.
"Permission to ask" is a better way of putting it than anything I had. I've been thinking of the list as a filter and you're right that it's the wrong frame. A filter keeps people out. Permission lets the right ones in, and they're not the same crowd.
I'll try the "starts around" line on the small pieces and keep the figures off the page entirely. My daughter will want it tidy. Tidy is how you end up with a print comparison in your inbox.
The print email is the whole thing in one line. Somebody comparing a print to a carved figure has never had to rig a tonne of limestone off a lorry, so the number tells them nothing except that it's a lot. That's not the page's fault, but it's not doing what she thinks it's doing either. I'll leave it up. But I'm not going to pretend a price on a screen replaces standing in the yard.