I would like to request your comments on whether it is best to

a) show prices on the website of a services-business and provide ballpark quotes or pricing example, (eg. http://www.translate-to-chinese.com/ ) or

b) not show prices at all and request visitors to enter their contact details so that they can then be contacted by a member of staff. (eg. http://www.asianabsolute.co.uk/free-translation-quote.html)

Obviously, it depends on the sales approach of a company but I'd love to hear what YOU think and what you have to say.

Personally I prefer prices to show because it's transparent, people know what it costs and if they contact you they know what to expect and they are prepared to spend what your product/service costs.

I think in a way A/B testing is an interesting option but will usually focus on what visitors prefer or no. of visits/enquiries rather than what is best for the business.

For example if you show...

No prices:
Qualification and quotation processes are better and more accurate but you may end up dealing with too many "non-serious" user enquiries. At the same time enquiries may be more qualified in the sense that the use has to do a little bit more work to get his quote, meaning he IS interested. But on the other hand it can be annoying for the user to not be able to get a simple answer about cost/timescales and he might not bother to make the enquiry.

Prices: The website will act as a filter and leads are sort-of automatically qualified. Customers interested in your service can see what it costs and if they do submit an enquiry it means they are interested and are also aware of the costs. At the same time though, the client's understanding might differ from what they really want. In other words, what they think they want and what they really want may be diffeent things. And this you can only deal with by talking to them.

So as a whole, I think it's not easy to say what's best of what works best.

Any thoughts?

Thanks to everyone for the comments. To make things a bit more specific please use the scenario/URLs mentioned above. ie. translation services.

Right, in my opinion, it is worth-while carrying out "testing". You personally need to test to qualify what is good for your business. You will need to run each test for a minimum of 30days. Using google analytics and which ever you use, you should be able to compare both results and see what is good.

That being said, it also depends on the type and nature of your business.

I strongly believe that showing pricing is good practice. This is make sure those without the budget can stay away.

But then if your business is that which is into email marketing, then having them enter the details on your contact form is another way to continue building your list.

Which ever way you go, testing seems like a very good option. There should be no guess work in Internet marketing nowadays.